Leading advocates for increased Kurdish self-determination visit Oslo

The Norwegian Council for the Rights of the Kurds (RKR) invites to an open meeting on 15 November with Ahmet Turk and Aysel Tugluk, both leaders of the Democratic Society party (DTP) in Turkey. DTP is a legal party, which since 2001 has had 55 mayors in municipalities in the Kurdish regions of Turkey. DTP will run for parliamentary elections in Turkey in November 2007.  (13-NOV-06)

Based on the invitation distributed  by RKR today, this article has been written by HRH-F / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

The meeting, which takes place at the Human Rights House in Oslo, will last from 18.00 to 19.30. Vidar Birkeland, Chairman of RKR’s board, will be the chair. Translations will go both ways, from Turkish to English and vice versa.

Background
In Turkey, Law # 2820 on political parties prohibits parties that represent minorities and that promote ‘non Turkish’ cultures and languages. The law is meant to protect the Turkish state’s integrity. To make sure the party doesn’t get prohibited (as it happened to its predecessors HADEP, DEP and DEHAP), DTP must balance its message very carefully. Legal proceedings against DEP people are ongoing, for example for having spoken Kurdish at election rallies, or for having produced posters in Kurdish.

In the parliamentary elections in 1992, HADEP did extremely well and won 22 seats in parliament. Ahmet Turk was among HADEP’s MPs. Leyla Zana, right, and four others were later deprived of their diplomatic immunity and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, for having broken the prohibition against speaking Kurdish. Dressed in Kurdish clothes, she gave the constitutional oath in her mother tongue. “I give this oath to enhance the brotherhood between the Kurdish and the Turkish people,” she said. For this, it wasn’t until 2004 that she was released.

DTP will run for elections again in 2007. To be granted representation in parliament, any party needs a minimum of ten percent of the votes nationally. The Kurdish population makes about 20 percent of the entire population of Turkey, but is predominantly settled in the southeast of the country. The national threshold particularly harms parties with their strongholds in rural areas, where election participation is traditionally lower.

In relation to the reforms put in place to meet EU’s criteria for membership, positive changes have taken place also with regards to political parties. Unlike what was the case in the past, a two-third majority among eleven members of the constiutional court is required for a party to be forbidden. Parties can no longer be forbidden with sole reference to the law on political parties. Instead the reasons in favour of prohibitions have to refer tothe constitution.

Read more about the situation in Turkey in the recent issue of RKR’s members’ magazine ‘Tema: Kurdistan’.