ANKARA, 21 May 2005 — Turkey will not retry jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan after Europe’s top human rights court ruled his 1999 prosecution was unfair, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was quoted as saying yesterday.
But Gul did not rule out taking up an alternative recommendation from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that the original case against Ocalan be reopened.
“The court said retry him or reopen the file due to this or that procedural inadequacy,” Milliyet daily quoted Gul as saying in an interview with television station Kanal D.
“Since we have the option to reopen and look at the file, we are honestly not thinking of taking any steps for a retrial.”
The government earlier signaled it might retry Ocalan after last Thursday’s ECHR ruling, which comes at a sensitive time for Ankara as it tries to meet European Union human rights standards before the expected start of EU entry talks in October.
Any move to re-examine Ocalan’s case will face strong opposition at home from Turkish nationalists who see the ECHR verdict as an example of European bias against Turkey.
Ocalan is widely reviled in Turkey as a terrorist for leading a Kurdish separatist rebellion in which at least 30,000 people, mainly Kurds, have been killed. But he remains a figurehead for many members of Turkey’s large Kurdish minority.
He was sentenced to death in 1999 but capital punishment has since been abolished as part of Turkey’s EU-inspired reforms. The verdict of the Strasbourg-based court must still be confirmed by the Council of Europe, to which Turkey belongs.
Gul said this was the first time the ECHR had ruled on the head of a major terrorist organization — Ocalan’s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — and the fact that it gave options in its verdict showed the court was “uncomfortable”.
“This is a problem for the whole of Turkey. Making politics out of this will neither benefit Turkey, nor help us get rid of this problem easily,” he said.
“We have to do our work meticulously so we don’t have fresh problems and face new retrials or new files.”
