Kurds to observe 2nd anniversary of Ocalan's imprisonment

By Claudia Parsons

ANKARA (Reuters): Two years after Turkey's most wanted man, Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, was captured in mysterious circumstances in Kenya, Kurdish groups have called for mass protests to mark the anniversary.

The response will be a test of how much sway the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) still holds after its leader was sentenced to death for treason and called a cease-fire, promising to give up violence in favor of democratic means.

"I'm expecting demonstrations, but how big I don't know," said leading Turkish media commentator Mehmet Ali Birand.

"It will be a sign of whether they're really seriously going to put the pressure on the government right now."

Turkey rejects the cease-fire as a cynical ploy for Ocalan to avoid the noose and has vowed to wipe out the PKK, whose guerrillas have largely withdrawn from Turkey to Iraq and Iran.

Ocalan himself lives in isolation on the remote prison island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara. He was condemned to death in June 1999 for treason in heading the PKK's fight for Kurdish self-rule in which more than 30,000 people were killed.

The death sentence is on hold while the European Court of Human Rights considers Ocalan's appeal.

Birand said there were factions within the PKK who wanted to return to violence but for the moment Ocalan was keeping them in check and the cease-fire was holding.

"They're becoming a political animal. They're already becoming politically strong. That makes Ankara very nervous but there's nothing they can do about it," Birand said.

While most observers agree that Turkey has defeated the PKK militarily, the battle to win over the people is another matter.

"The decision makers in Turkey have not yet understood that the center of this struggle is the people," said Nihat Ali Ozcan, director of Terrorism and Conflict Studies at the Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies. "Accordingly they have not won the hearts and minds of the Kurdish people."

Dogu Ergil, a liberal academic who has carried out extensive research on the Kurds, made a similar point. "Turkey never solved the Kurdish problem, it just repressed and postponed it."

Ergil says the majority of Kurds never wanted an independent state. "They wanted several things -- first of all to be counted, to be respected as Kurds," he said.

"Now that so many years have passed and the futility of armed struggle is proven, the government has promised a lot of things -- bringing up the standard of life in southeastern Turkey, being more respectful to the Kurds.

"These were all acknowledgements of the elevation of the Kurds' status. They brought relative satisfaction, but it has stopped there," Ergil said.

A key Kurdish demand, the lifting of a ban on broadcasting and education in Kurdish, has all but dropped off the agenda after a brief flurry of debate last year notable as the first time such a taboo subject was discussed openly.

"The government has so many problems," Birand said. "The economy is the priority now so they don't have time to tackle the Kurdish problem."

Kurdish activist groups based in Europe have called for Feb. 15 to be marked as a "National Unity Day". The PKK leadership council has called for demonstrations, blackouts, shop closures, school boycotts and hunger strikes.

The events will mark the second anniversary of Ocalan's capture by Turkish intelligence agents in Kenya where he had been hiding out in the Greek embassy.

The exact circumstances leading up to the arrest remain unclear but Kurds say he was abducted illegally and allege that Israeli intelligence may have helped Turkey pull off the dramatic swoop. Ocalan's capture, followed by video footage of him handcuffed and blindfolded in an aircraft coming back to Turkey, sparked violent protests by Kurds around Europe.

Public emotion, fueled by highly-charged newspaper and television reports of the capture of the "baby-killer", has lessened in two years. Ocalan's moustached face is no longer so familiar, his deeds rarely the subject of public discussion.

Violence has also fallen sharply since the 1999 cease-fire, but Ocalan's brother, Osman, a senior PKK leader, said this month that the guerrillas were running out of patience with the official Turkish refusal to respond to their cease-fire.

"Do not forget that our capacity to fight is high," Osman Ocalan said on the Kurdish satellite TV channel Medya TV.

"War will not be started by us, we will not be the ones to start it, war is not our preference. I want to stress that it would be a road we were forced to take," he said.

Such statements ring alarm bells in Ankara.

Just last month Turkey's justice minister said Turkey might have to review the stay of execution if Ocalan continued to make "provocative" public statements. Ocalan, however, says through his lawyers that he speaks only in favor of peace.

But Ankara knows that Ocalan's death sentence will be a key test for Turkey's ambitions to join the European Union, and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit himself opposes the death penalty.

"If you asked the majority of people in Turkey they would say yes he should be hanged, but the wisdom is that he should not. There's a consensus in Ankara," Birand said.

However Hasan Unal of Ankara's Bilkent University said that Turkey's relations with the European Union (EU) had deteriorated sharply since it was made a candidate country at the Helsinki conference at the end of 1999.

Relations have been soured since the EU laid out the economic and political changes it wants to see from Turkey, including big improvements on the human rights front as well as progress in long-running disputes such as Cyprus.

While some nationalists are among the first to warn that such demands threaten Turkey's security and advocate a cautious approach to Europe, Unal said turning away from the EU could have unwanted consequences since the PKK was depending on pressure from the EU to bring about the changes it wants.

"If the Helsinki process were to come to an end officially, and in my opinion it has already ended unofficially...the PKK might despair of their demands being realized so they might resort to violence once again," Unal said.