DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, 31 July 2006 — Turkish police yesterday detained some 130 people at a meeting organized by the country’s main Kurdish party on the grounds that the function was linked to armed Kurdish rebels, security sources said. Police said the meeting in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa was held in the name of the “terrorist organization,” the official term used by Turkish authorities to describe the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The Democratic Society Party (DTP) said the meeting’s only aim was to hold a debate on the city’s problems. The detainees are expected to appear in court after testifying to police and some of them could end up facing criminal charges, the sources said.
Kurdish politicians in Turkey are routinely regarded with suspicion and often seen as instruments of the PKK, which has been fighting a bloody campaign against the Ankara government since 1984 aimed at winning self-rule for the Kurds.
The DTP was set up in November with a pledge to try to resolve the Kurdish conflict through peaceful means, but it has so far failed to achieve any progress. It has come under fire for sympathizing with the PKK and dozens of its members face prosecution for supporting the rebels. Last month, a Turkish prosecutor launched an investigation into whether the DTP’s first convention amounted to propaganda for the PKK, after participants waved Kurdish flags and brandished posters of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s jailed leader.
