Last week's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights calling for a retrial for imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan has increased nationalist tensions in Turkey, reports Gareth Jenkins from Istanbul The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last week called on Turkey to retry Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It ruled that his original trial in 1999 was neither independent nor fair and violated a number of international treaties to which Turkey is a signatory. Privately, government officials admit that Turkey's ambitions to join the EU mean that it has little choice but to accede to the ECHR's call. Few doubt that, if the retrial goes ahead, Ocalan will again be found guilty. But there are also deep concerns that a fresh trial could exacerbate a recent rise in ultranationalist hysteria inside Turkey against a background of an upsurge in PKK-related violence and growing signs that, two and a half years after it swept to power in November 2002, the Justice and Development Party (JDP) government's grip on power is beginning to loosen. Last Thursday's ruling by the ECHR came almost five years after Ocalan received the death penalty, later commuted to life imprisonment, for treason for his part in a 16 year insurgency which cost an estimated 35,000 lives, resulted in the displacement of several million people in the predominantly south-east of Turkey and was frequently characterised by torture and extra-judicial killings by the Turkish security forces and the deliberate targeting of civilians by the PKK. In August 1999, while Ocalan was still on death row, the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire and vowed to continue its struggle by political means. But in June 2004, it announced that it was abandoning its ceasefire and returning to violence. Over 100 people, most of them suspected PKK militants, are believed to have been killed in fighting so far this year. Over the last few weeks the PKK has been engaged in an urban -- and to date largely unsuccessful -- bombing campaign, mostly in Istanbul. However, on Monday two suspected PKK militants were killed in what appears to have been a failed suicide bomb attack on the governor of the southeastern province of Siirt. "To request a retrial for the monster who has committed a crime against humanity is playing with Turkey's honour and dignity," declared Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party (NAP). While Land Forces Commander General Yasar Buyukanit, who is widely expected to take over as Chief of the Turkish General Staff in August 2006, warned that no one should expect the Turkish military to be impartial on such a matter. "When you issue a political decision on a legal matter you get a crooked result," he said. General Buyukanit's statement reflects a widespread belief in Turkey that many in Europe secretly support the PKK and are seeking to divide and weaken Turkey in order to prevent it ever joining the EU. But the JDP government has staked its political future on moving Turkey closer to EU accession. On 17 December 2004 Turkey secured a date for the opening of official accession negotiations on 3 October 2005. It is aware that the progress of the negotiations will be seriously impeded if it fails to accede to the ECHR's call for a retrial. Last week Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul attempted to pre-empt a nationalist backlash by declaring that: "Ocalan will be found guilty even if he is tried a 100 times." While Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has tried to shift the blame onto the previous government by claiming that it was responsible for the irregularities cited by the ECHR, including preventing Ocalan's lawyers from having sufficient access to him and the presence of a military office on the three-man board of judges during the early stages of the trial. But the JDP is still going to be regarded as by Turkish nationalists and a large proportion of the Turkish people as the party which bowed to European pressure and gave Ocalan another chance to walk free. If it orders a retrial there is now a strong possibility that, given the recent rise in ultranationalist hysteria in Turkey, the JDP will feel forced to make a gesture on another issue in an attempt to demonstrate its "nationalist credentials". The JDP is also under increasing pressure from its grassroots. Two years of strong economic growth failed to create new jobs or an increase in standards of living amongst the urban and rural poor who form its electoral base. Perhaps more urgently, in its anxiety not to provoke Turkey's still powerful secularist establishment which is led by the military, the JDP has avoided trying to lift the ban on women wearing Islamic headscarves in state institutions, which prevents pious women from attending university. On Sunday nearly 2,000 protesters gathered in a square in Ankara in what threatens to be the first of a series of demonstrations to protest against the ban. Addressing the crowd, Ilyas Tongus, the head of the National Youth Foundation, which has close ties with some members of the JDP, described the headscarf ban as a "wound that can never be healed unless it is addressed by the nation". Ayhan Bilgin, the chairman of the pro-Islamist Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed Peoples (Mazlum-Der) noted that the mainstream secularist Turkish press was ignoring the protest but predicted the members of the international media who were present would ensure it was broadcast on foreign television channels. "The whole world will see whether or not Turkey is an Islamic country," he said. Already under siege from Turkish ultranationalists over the Ocalan retrial, the JDP can ill afford to alienate its increasingly restive pious roots as well.
