Crackdown on Kurds tests limits of Turkish democracy

Turkey has liberalised laws regulating free speech in its bid to become a member of the European Union, but existing anti-terror laws give law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors vast powers.

Turkish soldiers patrol a road in Hakkari province on October 22. Turkish troops killed some 250 Kurdish militants in the country's south-east last month in retaliation for the death of 24 soldiers.

ISTANBUL // Opposition parties and intellectuals in Turkey say the arrest of hundreds of people accused of supporting Kurdish militants is part of a political crackdown that could undermine the hard-won democratic achievements of recent years.

Ragip Zarakolu, the owner of a publishing house, and Busra Ersanli, a professor of international relations, were among more than 40 suspects sent into pretrial detention by a court in Istanbul this week.

Prosecutors accuse them of supporting the Union of Kurdish Communities (KCK), an organisation they say is steered by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a rebel group fighting Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that has killed thousands.

The arrests were part of an ongoing investigation against the KCK that started in 2009. About 500 people, among them many Kurdish politicians, have been jailed awaiting trial, according to the interior ministry.

Prosecutors say the KCK has been trying to set up PKK-run institutions of administration and justice in the Kurdish south-east, but critics say the government is trying to silence Kurdish voices.

Following the arrest of Mr Zarakolu and Ms Ersanli, a group of about 700 academics, writers and other intellectuals issued a statement saying the move was a "severe blow" to democratisation.

"The arrests are going beyond the classical law-enforcement type of preventive action," Cengiz Aktar, a political scientist in Istanbul and a signatory to the statement said this week.

"They are directly targeting freedom of expression."

Turkey has liberalised many draconian laws regulating free speech in its bid to become a member of the European Union in recent years, but existing anti-terror laws give law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors vast powers to act against suspects even if there is scant evidence, critics say.

"The arrests of Ragip Zarakolu and Busra Ersanli represent a new low in the misuse of terrorism laws to crush freedom of expression and association in Turkey," Emma Sinclair-Webb, a Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.

Mr Zarakolu, the owner of the Belge publishing house, has been prosecuted before because of books dealing with the Kurdish and the Armenian issues. Ms Ersanli, a political scientist at Istanbul's Marmara University, is an adviser to the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Turkey's main Kurdish party. The BDP is part of a commission drafting a new constitution for the country.

No charges have been made public but news reports say the arrests centred on activities of the BDP Policy Academy, an institute for training officials. Courses included lectures on the PKK's history and the concept of local autonomy for the Kurdish area, but also lessons on women's rights, according to newspaper reports.

Critics say police and prosecutors are going overboard in their effort to prove suspects have actively supported the PKK.

The Radikal newspaper reported this week that prosecutors had asked Ms Ersanli about arcane details of some of her notes for a seminar at the BDP academy during their interrogation. According to the newspaper, the professor was asked why she used the term "citizen of Turkey" in her notes, instead of "Turkish citizen". Erkan Kanar, the professor's lawyer, told the newspaper the prosecution approached his client's notes as if they were PKK documents.

"We are seeing the Turkish police casting the net ever wider in the crackdown on legal pro-Kurdish politics," Ms Sinclair-Webb, the rights activist, said. "Unless there is clear evidence of people plotting violence or providing logistical support to armed groups, prosecutors and courts should throw these cases out."

The BDP has said the KCK arrests amounted to "political genocide" against Kurdish officials. But in a time of heightened tensions following the death of 24 Turkish soldiers last month in the bloodiest PKK attack in decades, other opposition parties found it harder to criticise the arrests.

The Republican People's Party, the main opposition group in parliament, decided not to vote on a statement condemning the arrests because some deputies said they would not sign a declaration of support for KCK suspects because of their alleged links to the PKK.

Prof Aktar said the arrests were part of a government strategy to solve the Kurdish conflict by force. Following the recent PKK attack, the Turkish military staged a week-long operation in south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, during which about 250 PKK fighters were killed, according to the general staff in Ankara.

"It is largely based on law enforcement and repression," Prof Aktar said of the government's approach. "What is missing is the democratic, the political component."