KEBABBLE Enough rope
to hang oneself By Fazile Zahir
"Every lamb is strung up by its own
leg." - Turkish proverb
FETHIYE,
Turkey - Every general election campaign is marked
by propaganda and extravagant gestures, and the
Turks are no exception as the country prepares to
vote on Sunday.
An old topic has had new
life breathed into it by the firebrand speeches of
right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader
Devlet Bahceli. Bahceli has
decided that one of the campaign platforms for his
party should be the issue of Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan's prison
sentence.
Originally sentenced to death,
Ocalan was reprieved after Turkey abolished the
death penalty to help its campaign for admission
to the European Union. MHP meetings have been
marked by frequent demands that he be hanged. The
demands have roused the ire of Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has now focused his
razor-sharp attention on destroying the MHP's
credibility with the electorate.
Bahceli
issued a challenge to Erdogan, asking publicly,
"If you have enough money to buy your son a boat,
why don't you have the money to buy a piece of
rope?" In a further effort to embarrass Erdogan
and demonstrate his hard line toward terrorists at
an MHP rally in Erzerum, he threw a piece of rope
into the crowd and suggested that the government
use it to execute Ocalan.
While the
polemics and theatrics have garnered Bahceli
plenty of media attention, the action and choice
of topic seem particularly poorly thought through.
As Erdogan has pointed out, the MHP was one of the
parties in the coalition government of 2002 that
voted to ban the death penalty in the first place.
He has asked Bahceli to explain, if it wanted
Ocalan hanged so much, why didn't the MHP do it
while it was in power?
The debate looks
set to continue until Sunday as the MHP has vowed
to clear itself of the accusation of hypocrisy by
producing and distributing a pamphlet showing who
voted how on the abolition law. It claims it will
demonstrate that not only did its 117 members of
Parliament vote to keep the death penalty, but
many Justice and Development Party (AKP) members
of the current Parliament, including prominent
political figures such as Abdullah Gul, Abdullatif
Sener and Salih Kapusuz, head of the parliamentary
AKP, voted to dispense with the death penalty even
though they were members of other parties at the
time.
Each side has become obsessed with
who is responsible for keeping terrorists alive.
Salih Kapusuz released a press statement saying,
"Each breath that a terrorist takes on Imralh
Mountain is owed to the liberal views of the
Bahceli administration, and Bahceli will have to
live with that on his conscience. The thanks that
he has received from the terrorists will be noted
by history." Imralh is the location of the jail
that houses Ocalan.
Incendiary actions and
personal jibes aside, the argument has raised the
important issue of whether the death penalty
should or can be reintroduced for those convicted
of terrorism. A moratorium on the death penalty in
1984 was Turkey's first step toward the eventual
abolition of this punishment.
In August
2002, Parliament voted to abolish the death
penalty in peacetime, and in 2004 a further vote
suspended its use under all circumstances
including during wars. The national legislation
was reinforced when the Turkish envoy to the
Council of Europe signed a European Convention
protocol in a step that brought the country closer
to the EU.
European Commission spokesman
Jean-Christophe Filori said at the time, "The
commission very warmly welcomes this initiative,
which is very good news for human rights in
Turkey."
Instead of the death penalty came
life imprisonment without parole, and crucially
the changes saved the life of Ocalan, former head
of the Kurdish militia group PKK. He had
previously been sentenced to death in 1999 for his
role in the 16-year guerrilla war against the
Turkish authorities.
Key members of the
MHP seem to be embarrassed by Bahceli's outburst
and rope trick, and Tugrul Turkes, son of MHP
founder Alparslan Turkes, gave an interview
recently saying that the throwing of the rope had
been misrepresented: "This move should be regarded
as a reply to Erdogan ... That rope is a response
to Erdogan. I believe a very serious leader has
been misunderstood." Despite playing down his own
party leader's spectacular activities, he
continued to insist, "The entire population in
Turkey would want Ocalan executed."
Could
the death penalty come back in Turkey? Perhaps,
but only with great difficulty. Its abolition was
one of the important criteria laid down by the EU.
It would need an overwhelming majority in
Parliament, which is unlikely to happen whatever
Turkes has to say about the feelings of "the
people".
However, even if capital
punishment were to be reinstated, the execution of
Ocalan is neither legally plausible nor practical.
Whatever the fantasies of Bahceli, the rule of law
is applicable in Turkey, and the death sentence
cannot be applied retroactively in the Turkish
legal system. In his attempts to grab the
headlines, the leader of the MHP may find from the
election results that he has been hoist by his own
petard.
Fazile Zahir is of
Turkish descent, born and brought up in London.
She moved to Turkey in 2005 and has been writing
full-time since then.
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