Word: ocalan
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...bang. Once one of Turkey's most potent terrorist organizations, the p.k.k. fought a 15-year war with Turkish security forces throughout the 1980s and '90s that left some 30,000 dead. Declaring a cease-fire in 1999 only after the capture and imprisonment of its charismatic leader, Abdullah Ocalan (known to Kurds simply as "Apo"), the group, numbering several thousand, retreated to the mountains of northern Iraq. There, its members abjure worldly goods and alcohol, practice strict gender equality (though sex between members is not allowed), while rising early to pore over left-wing political tracts. While they fought...
Tears glisten in Sencan Bayramoglu's eyes. The retired schoolteacher is describing how her son was one of 30,000 victims of the 15-year-long Kurdish uprising that ended with the capture and imprisonment of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999. Bayramoglu's tears are not of grief, but of anger. Last week, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that, in order to comply with European law, Turkey must give Ocalan a new trial. Her fury is directed not only at Ocalan, whom she blames for her son's death, but also at the European institutions...
...Aktar, a political scientist at Galatasaray University. The result is an increasingly divided society and, in Turkey's volatile southeast where most Kurds live, a greater number of abuses by the authorities, claims Selahattin Demirtas of the Human Rights Association in Diyarbakir. "The verdict by the European Court on Ocalan only reinforces the idea [in Turkish minds] that Kurds are to blame," he says. E.U. officials monitoring Turkey's pro-gress toward accession talks say the recent problems are no reason to push the panic button - yet. Once talks start, "we will have real leverage," argues Krisztina Nagy, spokeswoman...
...succor to their enemies: For decades the principal expression of his conflict with Israel over the Golan Heights was the space and support he gave to Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon; while Syria's conflict with Turkey over water resources led him to allow the Kurdish guerrillas of Abdullah Ocalan's PKK to make their rear base in Syrian-controlled Lebanon...
...Apart from sparing Ocalan, the E.U. factor may also help the Turkish leaders who oppose the execution prevail over their ultra-nationalist coalition partners. But not without some political cost, as was underlined on Thursday when two relatives of soldiers slain by Kurdish rebels attempted self-immolation in protest against the government's decision. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit opposes the death penalty, and believes executing Ocalan is not in Turkey's interest. Pro-government newspapers have warned in recent days that killing the rebel leader could reignite a wave of terrorism that has subsided since the imprisoned Ocalan called...