The Leyla Zana Case

Saturday, October 25, 1997; Page A18 The Washington Post 

EFFORTS TO TAKE political advantage of political prisoners are an old  story. The current case in Washington involves Leyla Zana, an  internationally known advocate of self-determination, or statehood, for  Kurds in Turkey. Elected to the Turkish parliament in 1991, she was  sentenced three years later to 15 years in prison for separatism and  promoting the destruction of Turkey's territorial integrity. She is 36,  the mother of two, articulate, courageous and culturally at home in a  Western setting. A campaign to free her is on now.

        There seems little doubt that Ms. Zana is a separatist: That is what her  bold advocacy of Kurdish self-determination is about. Kurds, who also  live in Iraq, Iran and Syria, pose a challenge to all of their hosts but  nowhere so keenly as in Turkey, where a no-holds-barred war, immensely  costly to both sides, is being waged by Turkish armed forces and the  avowedly separatist PKK. The Turks identify the PKK as a terrorist  organization; on this point the last three American presidents have  agreed with their NATO ally.

        For the Turkish authorities, a seamless web connects Kurdish political  advocates to military rebels to outright terrorists. In the official  view, separatism and terrorism are synonyms, and Ms. Zana is, if not a  terrorist, then someone who "serves the agenda of a terrorist  organization." But this goes way too far. The parliamentarian and the PKK  may share an agenda of Kurdish self-determination. But the one approaches  it politically and the other by violence. In a democracy, which Turkey  professes to be, this is a crucial difference. A democracy worthy of the  name cannot simply categorize its political opponents as criminals, jail  them and refuse to discuss their grievances.

        The current and recent Turkish governments have put the very great  problem of the Kurds in the hands of a Turkish military often insensitive  to human rights. Earlier leaders, including Turgut Ozal, had hinted at a  civilian solution. It is a fair question whether the rush of military  events may not have diminished the possibility of political compromise  between the side insisting on Turkey's unbreakable territorial integrity  and the side demanding full Kurdish sovereignty. Remote as it may be,  however, a middle way dealing with cultural and economic rights as well  as political ones offers the only practical alternative to permanent  conflict. Politicians like Leyla Zana could yet have a role.