The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) yesterday gave full backing to convicted leader Abdullah Ocalan's call for rebel forces to be withdrawn outside Turkey.
The backing came as the country's chief prosecutor called yesterday for the death sentence on the PKK leader, on treason charges, to be upheld.
The PKK leadership council said in a statement: "Our party clearly declares that it completely supports the historic declaration made by Comrade Chairman Abdullah Ocalan on August 2 and that it will pursue all its efforts on this basis." In his statement, distributed by his lawyers, Ocalan (50) had called on PKK forces to lay down their arms and move outside Turkey's borders from September 1st, 1999. The statement is an attempt to resolve the 15-year bloody conflict between the Turkish army and rebels in pursuit of Kurdish self-rule.
Describing Ocalan's appeal as a "turning point in the history of the Kurdish and Turkish peoples", the PKK said it would take his call as the basis for its political-ideological, organisation and military activities.
The PKK also called on the Turkish leadership to "adopt a sensible, responsible and respectful stance" towards their move.
However, Ankara has already rejected the call, saying it will not negotiate with the PKK, which it regards as a "terrorist and criminal organisation".
"Everyone should contribute to efforts to end terrorism in Turkey. But the state will never make this issue a bargaining point with anyone or any organisation," Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said on Wednesday.
Ocalan was sentenced to death in June by a Turkish State Security Court for seeking to divide Turkish territory with the aim of setting up a separate state.
Yesterday, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Mr Vural Savas, asked the High Court of Appeals to uphold the verdict against Ocalan.
He said it was clear that Ocalan had "violated Article 125 of Turkey's penal code hundreds of times by making his militants carry out attacks, every one of which can be considered a crime against humanity, since he set up the PKK, the bloodiest terrorist organisation of the 20th century".
The Ocalan case was formally handed to the appeals court last week, but the court is not expected to review the sentence before the end of its summer recess on September 6th. If confirmed, Ocalan's death sentence still needs to be ratified by the President, Mr Suleyman Demirel, and the Turkish parliament, which has withheld consent on such sentences for the past 15 years. AFP reports: Hardline Turkish nationalists lodged a complaint in parliament after a deputy listed Kurdish among the languages he speaks, an act that they considered an affront to national sovereignty.
The row broke out on Wednesday at a parliamentary commission meeting, when deputies of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) attacked Mr Mehmet Fuat Firat for listing in his curriculum vitae Kurdish along with Arabic and Persian as the foreign languages he speaks.
"Kurdish is not an official language. It cannot be cited in the parliament's official documents," MHP deputy Mehmet Ceylan was yesterday quoted by reports as saying. Turkey does not recognise its Kurdish community, mostly living in southeastern Turkey, as a minority and refuses to grant it the right to educate in its own language, describing such a move as a danger to the country's unity.