54 Pro-Kurdish Mayors Acquitted of "Propaganda" Charges

The Diyarbakır 5^th High Criminal Court acquitted 54 mayors, former members of the closed-down pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (BDP), who stood accused of "spreading propaganda for the PKK terror organization", the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party.

The mayors had held a press conference at the South-East Journalists Association on 4 March 2007 to comment on an alleged attempt to poison imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. They were tried under article 220/8 of the Turkish Criminal Law (TCK) on the grounds of calling the PKK the "Kurdish opposition". The mayors were facing imprisonment of up to 4.5 years.

Article 220/8 stipulates that "a person propagandating for a terrorist organisation and its objectives shall be punished with imprisonment of between one and three years. The punishment shall be increased by half if the offence was committed via the media".

Prosecutor: No propaganda, no praise

As reported by the Turkish news site NTVmsnbc.com, the case was based on the following utterance of the mayors: "Everybody knows the efforts taken by the Kurdish opposition and the democratic public to make the weapons fall silent in order to overcome the heavy agenda of the year 2007".

In the hearing on Tuesday (14 September), the Public Prosecutor stated that these words are "neither organizational propaganda nor praise of a crime".

The prosecutor claimed that taking the text read out at the press conference into consideration as a whole, the sentence on subject "did not contain propaganda for an illegal organization and moreover did not constitute the offence of praising crime and a criminal". Thus, he demanded the acquittal of all defendants.

The court followed the final plead of the prosecutor and decided for the acquittal of all 54 mayors.

Baydemir was in the dock as well

The current Diyarbakır Metropolitan Mayor, Osman Baydemir, was among the defendants as well as the Mayor of Sur, Abdullah Demirbaş, the former Mayor of Tunceli, Songül Erol Abdil, the former Mayor of Hakkari, Metin Tekçe, the former Mayor of Şırnak, Ahmet Ertak and the former Mayor of Batman, Hüseyin Kalkan. (EÖ/VK)