Turkey takes Kurd 'crackdown' to the courts

Trials against pro-Kurdish journalists and lawyers highlight a growing rift between state representatives who say they are confronting militants and Kurdish activists claiming Turkey is resorting to repression to solve the conflict.

ISTANBUL // Turkish courtrooms have become the latest battefields in the Kurdish conflict as dozens of lawyers and activists will be tried for supporting a Kurdish militant group.

The legal action against pro-Kurdish journalists and lawyers comes after fighting this week between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the military in the south-east, which left 18 rebels and 11 toops dead.

Some rights activists have condemned the trials. Emma Sinclair-Webb, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, condemned the trials as "a huge crackdown" and "a very blunt use of the criminal justice system".

"It is a very dismaying and a counterproductive way to counter the PKK's violence," she said.

The trials highlight a growing rift between state representatives who say they are confronting militants and Kurdish activists claiming Turkey is resorting to repression to solve the conflict.

On Monday, a court in Istanbul will hear the biggest trial ever against Turkish media. A total of 44 journalists, most of them from media known for their pro-Kurdish and their anti-government stance, are expected to be in the dock. The accused, 36 of whom have been in pre-trial custody since December, face long prison sentences if convicted of being members of an illegal organisation.

That trial comes on the heels of another in July against 46 lawyers accused of carrying messages for the PKK, a rebel group that has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule since 1984 in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people.

"There is a connection between the two trials," said Oguz Ender Birinci, the political editor of Ozgur Gundem, a pro-Kurdish daily that has had eight of its staff arrested, including Ziya Cicekci, the paper's publisher. "There is a political decision behind them."

He said the government wanted to weaken pro-Kurdish voices through mass trials. "The Kurdish problem is getting harder to solve" with so many people facing trial, Mr Birinci said. His newspaper has been calling on its readers to join a protest march in central Istanbul today.

Both trials are part of a wide-ranging investigation against the Union of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), a group closely linked to the PKK. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, has described the KCK, which is led by the PKK's top commander Murat Karayilan, as the rebel group's urban wing and an instrument to create illegal, PKK-led shdaow institutions.

Since the start of the KCK investigation in 2009, several thousand people, including municipal officials and academics, have been detained by police. There are conflicting figures of how many people have been put into pre-trial detention. The government in Ankara said last month about 1,000 people were in prison awaiting trial, but Mr Birinci claimed the real figure was close to 8,000.

Ms Sinclair-Webb said investigations into the KCK were worrying because they also targeted elected officials in the Kurdish area, trade unionists and students.

Mr Erdogan has publicly defended the action against the KCK as a legitimate move against "people involved in terror and aiding and abetting terror". Mr Erdogan's interior minister, Idris Naim Sahin, said last month supporters of the PKK in the media were just as dangerous as the rebels themselves. "There is no difference between bullets fired [in the Kurdish area] and writings in Ankara," the minister said.

Adding to the controversy is what activists and the accused's lawyers describe as flimsy evidence presented by the prosecution.

In one example, Zeynep Kuray, a reporter for the Birgun newspaper, is accused of trying to humiliate the Turkish state by writing about an alleged case of sexual assault at Turkish Airlines, Turkey's flag carrier, Birgun reported. Mr Birinci of Ozgur Gundem said emails, records of wiretapped telephone conversations and even jokes among colleagues were interpreted by the prosecution as evidence of criminal behaviour and PKK support.

Rezan Sarican, who is representing the lawyers accused of carrying PKK messages, said the conversations between his clients and the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan that served as the base of the prosecution's case had been recorded by prison authorities.

"The lawyers are on trial because they held talks with their client," he said. "The verdict has already been decided upon. A piece of theatre is being played here."

The trials could also result in new criticism from the European Union, which Turkey wants to join. In June, the EU Commission said it was concerned about the arrest of trade unionists in the course of Turkey's KCK investigation.

Stefan Fule, the EU Enlargement Commissioner, said in June that Turkey's anti-terror laws caused "recurring infringements of the right to liberty and security, the right to a fair trial and the freedom of expression, of assembly and association".

[e-mail] with additional reporting by Reuters