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A Turkish court today sentenced Aysel Tuğluk, a leader of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and elected member of parliament, to two years’ jail for ‘disseminating propaganda’ for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in a speech she made in Yuksekova, in south-eastern Turkey, on March 17, 2010.
Following the sentence, Tuğluk told NTV television: “What do politicians do? They speak, they express their views. This can disturb some people. Everything should be explicitly discussed unless it includes violence. Everything would be different today if we had been able to discuss the Kurdish issue 20 years ago. I am receiving a sentence due to a speech in which I called for peace. What did I say in that speech? I said Öcalan (the jailed PKK leader) should be accepted as an interlocutor. The state itself is talking to Öcalan. Why is my reference to Öcalan a crime?”
Aysel Tuğluk was re-elected to parliament for Van in the general elections of June 12. The BDP won a record 36 seats, but declined to take the oath of office due to a dispute with the national electoral board. Tuğluk also co-chairs the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Congress (DTK), which last month announced democratic autonomy for Turkey’s Kurds.
