Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RIVISTA STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASlN ÖZETi
• 26 SEPTEMBER 1993 TURKISH DA IL Y NEWS ON SUNDAY
DEP takes decision:
We will stay in parliament
• Kaya's newspaper, the
out~poken Özgür
Gündem, faces 11
separate charges
demanding its closure
and one of its Istanbul
correspondents, Aysel
Malkaç, is still "missing"
since being detained last
month by the police.
Turkish Daily News
ANKARA- Turkey's. Kurdish-based
Democracy Party (DEP) decided on its.
future this weekend and the outcome is
certain to affect the future of Turkish p0-
litics.
Having come under constant fire, persecution
and prosecution the DEP -- as
the only legal formation on the Kurdish
wing of the political spectrum - will stay
in Parliament despite the pressures
confronting it.
Despite initial demands from grassroots
and radical Kurdish activists for the
party to withdraw from Ankara, there
has been a recent change in the wind.
Perhaps realizing that pulling out of
active politics would only be butter on
bread for the Turkish hard-liners, the
party now appears to be gener.illy inclined
to stay in politics and maintain its
struggle from that vantage point.
If it had decided to leave, this would
have perhaps been a greater blow to
Turkey than to the pro-Kurdish movement,
closing the doors on the only legal
alternative to armed activities and boosting
support for the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK).
Moreover, DEP's overall boycott of
Parliament would have increased the
number of vacant seats in that body to 23
-- meaning a 5 percent vacancy, which,
according to the Constitution, requires
that early by-elections are held in three
months.
With the DEP staying in Parliament
though, the party's executives who have
no intention of becoming live bate to
plots cooking around them, will seek a
more active policy to attract global attention
to developments in Turkey.
The party this month lost one of its 18
parliamentarians to an armed attack in
the Eastern refinery city of Batman where
the local security is suspeëted of having
links with the radical Islamic Hezbollah
organization thought to have carried
out the murder.
The murder of Mehmet Sincar marked
the 54th assassination of DEP activists
since the Oct. 20, 1991 elections which
put the coalition government into power.
And, at least 15 journalists writing
on the Kurdish issue have been killedin
the meantime. Kurdish activists find it
hard to believe that such a campaign is
not systematic and that some officials cfa
not condone -- if not actively cooperate -
-with the killers.
A'i if these were not enough, there has
been a successful official cover up of an
assassination attempt on DEP Deputy
Leyla Zana this month, and not a single
investigation has been launched against
security officials who have threatened
her with death over the past year.
The fillal straw, on top of two years of
persecution, was a prosecution this
month of DEP Chairman Ya~ar Kaya
who. was thrown into prison simply for a
speech he made on Kurdish rights while
in neighboring northern Iraq.
Kaya's newspaper, the outspoken Özgür
Gündem, faces Il separate charges
demanding its closure and one of its Istanbul
correspondents, Ayscl Malkaç, is
still "missing" since being detained last
month by the police.
Thesedevelopments have heightened
the "should we stay in Parliament or
should we go" argument on the Kurdish
agenda with the PKK leadership claiming
that the means for a political
struggle were'being gradually blocked.
Despite this initial assessment and an
appeal from the PKK in Europe for "DEP
to withdraw from Parliament," the orga-
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