ANKARA - Turkey reacted stoically on Thursday to a ruling from the European human rights court condemning the trial it put on for the captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, who it sees as a "terrorist," in 1999.
"The Turkish Republic is a state based on the rule of law and will undertake the procedures that the law requires," Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, the deputy chairman of the governing Justice and Development Party, told reporters.
"If the rest of the world wants to review the case of a terrorist, the Turkish judiciary is independent and Turkey is a transparent state of law," he added.
In a widely-expected ruling, the European Court of Human Rights said the trial, which saw Ocalan sentenced to death for treason, was unfair and called for a retrial of the rebel leader who is currently serving a life sentence on a prison island after Turkey scrapped capital punishment three years ago.
The Strasbourg-based court's ruling is not binding on Ankara, but has far-reaching implications on the popularity of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government at home and its ambitions to join the European Union.
The EU on Thursday bluntly reminded Turkey that it had to abide by European institutions and values if it wants to succeed in EU membership talks set to begin on October 3.
"As a member of the Council of Europe and because of (EU) candidate country status, it is evident, Turkey will have to comply with the decision of the European Court of Human Rights," EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn told reporters in Nicosia.
A possible retrial would largely be seen as a test of Ankara's arguments that it has overhauled its judicial system to European standards and could win Ankara points amid a raging debate on whether the country has a place in Europe.
Its main objective would be to rectify procedural flaws that the European Court of Human Rights found in the original trial and is not expected to result in a more lenient sentence.
But it could also unleash fierce public anger in Turkey.
Ocalan, 56, is still a figure of hatred for many Turks for his role as the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which waged a bloody campaign between 1984 and 1999 for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast. Some 37,000 people were killed in the fighting.
Faced with the risk of a backlash, Erdogan vowed Thursday that he would not let the ruling stir tensions at home or deviate Turkey from its European vocation.
"I want to particularly emphasize that temporal problems cannot influence neither our national unity nor our EU (membership) objective," Erdogan told reporters during an official visit to Budapest, the Anatolia news agency reported.
"No one, no institution -- be it political or not -- should never use this issue as a ground for exploitation. If they do, they will drown in it," he added.
A retrial of Ocalan would also leave the government facing opposition attacks at a time when nationalist feelings are on the rise, partly because of EU-minded reforms that ultra-nationalist and leftists circles claim are undermining Turkey.
"Demanding a retrial for a murderer which has committed a crime against humanity equals to playing with Turkey's honour and dignity," the Nationalist Action Party -- a strong opponent of the EU -- said in a written statement, calling on the government not to agree to a retrial.
There are also concerns that a new Ocalan trial could become an opportunity for the PKK leader to rally his rebels at a time when they are making a comeback after calling off a five-year unilateral truce last year.
But the country's main Kurdish party argued that a retrial might encourage Kurdish insurgents to announce a new ceasefire with the government.
"We believe Mr. Ocalan's retrial under universal legal norms will offer a new opportunity to discuss and resolve the Kurdish problem," Tuncer Bakirhan, chairman of the Democratic People's Party, told a news conference.
"We believe that a retrial will mark the beginning of a new process towards lasting peace," he said.

05/12/2005 15:47 GMT