Dozens of lawyers went on trial in Turkey on Monday on charges of links to Kurdish militants and foreign jurists rallied outside the court to protest at the latest in a series of cases that have drawn criticism of Ankara's human rights record. All 50 defendants - including 46 lawyers - had been involved in representing the jailed Kurdish militant chief Abdullah Ocalan. Among the charges listed in the indictment against them was passing orders from Ocalan to rebel fighters.
The trial, and others like it across Turkey, have led lawyers and civic groups to question the stated commitment of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government to human rights and to criticise the widespread use of pre-trial detention. "How bitterly funny is it that a country teaching democracy and human rights to Syria and the whole region is stealing the right to defence on its own soil," said Dogan Erbas, one of the lawyers on trial, told the court on behalf of other defendants. "Going to bed as a lawyer and waking up as an executive of a terrorist organisation shows that this case is not trying a crime, it is trying a political stance. This case has been political since the very start," he said.
The defendants, who include a journalist and three members of a law firm, stand accused of maintaining ties to the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK), which the state sees as the urban wing of the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). A founding member and leader of the PKK, Ocalan, 64, was captured in 1999 and is serving a life prison term.
The PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, has waged an armed campaign against the Turkish state for autonomy in the mainly Kurdish southeast that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984. (Reuters)