HURRIYET- Columnist Oktay Eksi comments on the EP’s decision to include the PKK on its list of terrorist organizations. A summary of his column is as follows:
I have previously written that after telling Turkey that ‘terror and the struggle against terrorism are over’ European Parliament (EP) Joint Commission’s Dutch Chairman Joost Lagenjik advised Turkish officials to establish dialogue with the PKK, just as in Northern Ireland, and he added that if such a dialogue wasn’t established, then the body would consider one of the Copenhagen unmet by Turkey.
First of all, let’s start with the example of Northern Ireland. There are many differences between the situation in Northern Ireland and Turkey. First of all, Britain was unable to defeat the IRA in Northern Ireland. However, Turkey was capable of defeating the PKK. The British government searched for a dialogue, as it was incapable of defeating the IRA. It was out of question for an undefeated organization to hand over its weapons. Actually the IRA is to a large extent keeping its weapons. However, the PKK had to surrender as the party which lost the armed struggle, and it doesn’t have the right to request dialogue.
Moreover, a person must either have gone mad, or he must be never heard the word ‘terror’ or ‘terrorism’ if he asks Turkey to establish dialogue with an organization which has even -– finally -– been included in the terrorist organizations list of European Union.
In order to have the right to ask Turkey to establish dialogue with the PKK, Europe has to explain why it considered both Northern Ireland’s IRA and the ETA organization in Spain terrorist groups and why it waited for 18 long years (since 1984) to put the PKK into the terrorist organizations list.
Actually even as one says that they finally included it on the terrorist organizations list, the situation isn’t quite as it seems.
I recently attended a roundtable meeting with our colleagues in Germany. Meanwhile, a friend of us asked, ‘As the EU put the PKK on its terrorist organizations list, if a person applies to the German authorities and says, ‘I am being prosecuted because I am a member of the PKK and I request political asylum’ then is this person treated as a terrorist suspect, or is he given political asylum?’ Then a German official answered, ‘Of course he will be granted asylum.’
We asked how this could be. The official said, ’Germany prohibited the activities of the terrorist organization but it didn’t say that its members were terrorists.’
As you see, they seem to be very sensitive concerning the ‘human rights.’ However, they don’t say anything about the laws in ‘the war against terrorism’ which have been passed in the US, Great Britain, Canada, India and which violate basic principles of law and ignore human rights. For example, they don’t criticize the US presidential order making it possible for a suspect who isn’t a US citizen to be tried by a military tribunal, convicted, and executed.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION