Mayor Demirbas Acquitted in Propaganda Case

Diyarbakir Sur district Mayor Abdullah Demirbas has been acquitted on charges of terrorist propaganda by means of the press in a trial at the province's 4th High Criminal Court where he defended a statement he addressed to the European Social Forum covering Kurdish language rights.

Demirbas was prosecuted under Article 220/8 of the Turkish Penal Code and faced up to three years imprisonment for opinions he expressed in the "Municipalities and Local Administrations in the Light of the Multilingualism" statement that was also published on the website of the Municipality.

The prosecution maintained at Tuesday's hearing that the views Demirbas expressed in the said article corresponded with the views of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on language rights and in content was in the nature of abandoning the nation-state, single state, single nation and single language concepts. He said the mayor's views supported the PKK's campaigns based on these.

No praise to PKK

Demirbas and his attorney Tahir Elci were present at the last hearing where they opposed prosecutor Muammer Ozcan's opinion on the case. Elci said his client had not been involved in any form of organizational propaganda and that as a Mayor, the speech he made contained nothing that implied he praised or agreed with the organization's activities.

"He has tried to help those people who cannot use Turkish which is the official language and who speak in different languages and dialects" Elci told the court. "The freedom of expression may be voiced so long as it does not contain violence and racism. The speech should be evaluated in the contest of the freedom of speech, expression. To limit freedom of expression on the Kurdish problem will only put that problem in more of a bottleneck".

Demirbas himself addressed the court where he rejected the allegations against him and maintained he had no intention of conducting organizational propaganda. In his previous defense, the Mayor had said "I do not believe that to say Turkey has a multi-identity is multicultural, multilingual is separatism" arguing that denying its multicultural and multilingual identity would be what could divide the country.

In the article subject to prosecution, the Mayor had called for citizens of the country to actively participate in developments that affected them under their own identity and language, suggesting mayoralties take measures and prepare for multilingual representation of themselves for their local populations.

After attorney Elci's appeal for an acquittal and the final defense was heard Tuesday, the court ruled that no offense had taken place in Demirbas's speech and decided on his acquittal.

220/8 cases escalate in Southeast

Interviewed by bianet on the case, attorney Elci pointed out at a recent increase in court cases launched under article 220/8 of the Penal Code against activists and local administration executives in the Southeast region.

The lawyer said this article, allowing charges to be brought up on grounds of "conducting propaganda of the organization and its goals" was being abused, adding, "unfortunately I think this is politics".

Noting that some of these cases were concluded with acquittals, Elci recalled that Mayor Abdullah Demirbas had been acquitted of separate charges of causing financial loss to the municipality by building a statue in memory of Ugur Kaymaz who was killed in the Kiziltepe district of Mardin. (EO/TK/II/YE)