Newly-elected Kurdish lawmakers came under pressure yesterday to boycott Turkey’s Parliament after one of them lost his seat, as Ankara faced warnings of renewed bloodshed.
Some 2,000 Kurds launched a sit-in in Diyarbakir, the largest city of the Kurdish-majority southeast, furious with an electoral board decision to strip veteran activist Hatip Dicle of the parliamentary seat he won in the June 12 polls over a terror-related conviction.
Mr Dicle, in jail since 2010 on separate charges, had been expected to be freed to assume his seat.
The Democratic Society Congress (DTK), a Kurdish umbrella organisation, appealed to the other 35 Kurdish-backed lawmakers elected along with Mr Dicle to boycott parliament when it convenes in the coming days.
The deputies “should openly declare their stance in line with their earlier decision not to go to Parliament if even one of them is missing,” it said, according to Anatolia news agency.
The statement also urged Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and Parliament to find a way to reverse the ruling.
The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which backed Mr Dicle’s candidacy and is part of the DTK, said it would convene today to evaluate the situation.
The electoral board’s ruling “is a decision to drag Turkey into chaos... to push our people into an environment of conflict,” Anatolia quoted DTK chairman Ahmet Turk as saying.
Ankara, he charged, is “trying to block (Kurdish) efforts to create a democratic political ground” for a peaceful end to the Kurdish conflict.
Adding to the tensions, a landmine explosion hit a police car in the eastern province of Tunceli, killing two officers, security sources said, pointing an accusing finger at the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has carried out similar attacks in the past as part of a separatist insurgency that has resulted in some 45,000 deaths since 1984.
Eager to boost its EU bid, Turkey has notably broadened Kurdish freedoms in recent years.
The Kurds, however, have upped the stakes, demanding constitutional recognition and autonomy.
On Monday, the PKK announced tough conditions for Ankara for the extension of a unilateral truce it had declared last August until the June 12 elections.
Mr Dicle was among candidates that the BDP, which is close to the PKK, fielded as independents to get around a 10-per cent national threshold for parties.
The Higher Electoral Board ruled late Tuesday that the 57-year-old was not eligible to run because of a 20-month jail term he had received for a speech deemed “propaganda for an armed terrorist organisation” – a reference to the PKK.
The legal jumble arose from the fact that the Appeals Court upheld Mr Dicle’s sentence just four days before the polls, when the list of candidates had been confirmed.
Mr Dicle’s seat went to a candidate from the ruling Justice and Development Party, which will now have 327 seats in the 550-member house.
In 1991, Mr Dicle was among the first group of Kurdish nationalists to enter Turkey’s Parliament. They were banished from politics in 1994 over links to the PKK.