Turkey's powerful military willing to accept abolition of death penalty

May 29, 2002

By SUZAN FRASER, 

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey's military says it is willing to accept the abolition of the death penalty as long as parliament enacts laws to ensure that imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan is never freed, newspapers reported Wednesday.

 The European Union (news - web sites), which Turkey aspires to join, is demanding that Turkey abolish the death penalty.

 Right-wing Turkish legislators are insisting that Ocalan be executed.

 The military is revered in Turkey, especially by the right-wing, and the military's proposal is likely to soften demands that Ocalan be hanged.

 Turkey sentenced Ocalan to death in 1999, but Ocalan's lawyers have appealed the death sentence to the European Court of Human Rights.

 The comments by an unnamed general on behalf of the military were headline news in most Turkish newspapers.

 "That brave step from the military," the daily Milliyet said in its headline.

 On Tuesday, the nationalist party's leader, Devlet Bahceli, said he would agree to help carry out EU-demanded reforms if parliament is allowed to vote on whether to execute Ocalan. Two main opposition parties have backed Bahceli's call for a vote on Ocalan's execution.

 "Let the prime minister take it to parliament and parliament will do what is necessary," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the opposition Justice and Development Party.

 Although dozens of people have been sentenced to death in Turkey in recent years, Turkey has not executed anyone in almost two decades and no government has even asked for the required parliamentary approval since 1984.

 The military, which wields huge influence over the government, is expected to introduce its proposal at Thursday's meeting of the National Security Council when Turkey's leaders are scheduled to take up the death penalty and other EU-demanded measures, Hurriyet and other newspapers reported. The council groups Turkey's top civilian and military leaders and is one of the most influential bodies in the country.

 The media has branded the military's proposal "The Rudolf Hess Model" in reference to the Nazi leader tried at Nuremberg after World War II. Hess spent 46 years in prison before he committed suicide.

 "Let (Ocalan) rot away in prison," read a front-page headline in daily Sabah.

 Turkey's influential business and industrialists group, TUSIAD, meanwhile, called for urgent steps to meet EU criteria for membership, taking out full-page ads in major Turkish newspapers.

 The group, made up of Turkey's largest conglomerates, later released a statement backing the military, and calling on the government to amend death penalty laws and replace them with life prison sentences with no possibility of parole.

 It also called on the government to make amendments that would allow the use of Kurdish in education and broadcasts.

 Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, whose party favors abolishing the death penalty, warned that EU membership would "become a dream" unless Turkey lifted capital punishment and undertook other reforms.