Ocalan sentence means war
By Robert Allen
I am struggling for the unity of the country and for freedom ... for a
democratic republic, not against the republic.
Abdullah Ocalan, Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
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The decision by a Turkish court to hang Abdullah Ocalan will lead to war,
the Kurdish revolutionary warned before the sentence was announced. ``The
future of this country lies with peace, not war,'' he told the court after
he had offered the Turkish state a compromise. ``If you spare my life I will
negotiate peace. If I am hanged,'' he warned, ``thousands of people will
start the terror machine for me''.
By passing a death sentence for treason on the PKK leader, the Turkish
court has brought its state into conflict with the EU, Russia and the UN.
The U.S. said Ocalan was ``an international terrorist'', EU External Affairs
Relations Commissoner Hans van den Broek said the EU was opposed to the
death penalty, while some EU leaders said the Turkish decision to execute
Ocalan would harm Turkey's prospects of joining the EU.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, wondered whether the
Turkish court was impartial and whether the trial was actually legal. Since
Ocalan was arrested in Kenya by Turkish agents on 15 February, he has been
denied his basic human rights. Robinson said Ocalan had been subjected to
10 days of detention incommunicado, his access to lawyers had been severely
limited and confidentiality breached, and his lawyers had been threatened.
Ocalan said he did not ``accept the charge of treason''.
Before Ocalan can be executed, the court decision must clear the appeals
court and be ratified by the Turkish parliament. Ocalan's lawyers are
expected to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
The PKK responded to the sentence with a threat that economic targets in
Turkey would be targetted. Kurds gathered in many European cities in the
wake of the decision. The majority of Kurds, 11 million people, live in
Turkey in southeastern highlands. Another 4 million live in Iran, 5 million
in Iraq, 1 million in Syria and half a million in the Caucasus. In Turkey
and Iraq, Kurds have been persistently persecuted since the end of the
Second World War. In the late 1970s, the PKK was formed. Ocalan was one of
the founders. In 1984, the PKK started a war against the Turks to force the
creation of an autonomous Kurdistan.
Was it a Balkan oil war?
The U.S. government's decision to award Bulgaria a half-million dollar
grant to plan a pipeline across the Balkans to pump Caspian Sea oil to the
Adriatic Sea is seen as further evidence that NATO's bombing of Serbia had
a hidden commerical agenda.
The proposed plan would see Caspian oil shipped by tanker from the Black
Sea ports of Novorossiysk in Russia and Supsa in Georgia, and then pumped
by overland pipeline across Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania.
``This grant represents a significant step forward for this policy (of
multiple pipeline routes) and for U.S. business interests in the Caspian
region,'' an American government official said as speculation raged that the
pipeline may be part of a larger economic development plan by the Clinton
administration to stabilize the southern Balkans.
U.S. policy makers appear to favour the Balkan route because the estimated
cost of $1 billion would be cheaper than other proposed routes. A
previously proposed 1,100-mile route through Turkey has been compromised by
geopolitical and economic problems. Other routes include a
Turkmenistan-to-Iran route that would ship Central Asian oil south to
Persian Gulf oil terminals and a proposed 2,100-mile pipeline across
Central Asia to the east from Kazakhstan to China.
The wars in the former Yugoslavia made the Balkan route appear impractical
until U.S. business interests urged Congress in 1997 to guarantee economic
and political security in the region.
The Bulgaria-Macedonia-Albania route is supported by Moscow and the
Chevron-led Caspian Pipeline Consortium that is developing the
Caspian-Kazakhstan oil deposits.
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