The European Court of Human Rights has found that Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the armed Kurdish nationalist organisation (PKK) imprisoned for life in Turkey, did not receive a fair trial and has recommended that his case be reopened.
Öcalan 's human rights had Deen violated, ECHR found, because a military judge had been present for some of his trial hearings, because he had not been given adequate time and facilities to prepare his defence and because his access to his lawyers had been restricted.
However the ECHR did uphuld an earlier ruling by its lower chamber that there had been no violation of Ocalan 's rights in the way he was kidnapped, drugged, bound and abducted from Kenya by US and Turkish intelligence.
The Court's jurisdiction extends to all European states that are signatories to human rights agreements. This made it possible for various aspects of Öcalan's trial, at which he given a death sentence (later commuted to life imprisonment) to be examined.
Predictably the Court's decision on May 12 provoked a media-led wave of anger in Turkey. The recommendation of a re-trial poses difficulties for the Turkish authorities as Turkey hopes to become an EU member and is already under some pressure from human rights campaigners and from the EU Commission to be seen to be striving to reach "European standards" for human rights and due legal process.
They could re-run the trial
Abdullah Öcalan with no military judge, but still with one who would not permit any examination by the defence of the context of Ocalan's alleged offences as a guerilla leader - 80 years of oppression suffered by the Kurdish people since the founding Turkish Republic in 1925.
But to concede that he did not get a fair trial the first time round may be too much for Turkey's leaders to stomach, or for them to get past the Turkish public without suffering a loss of political credibility.
Although they see EU accession as strategically desirable the prevailing view amongst the military and the rest of the Turkish state apparatus seems to be that in order to defend Turkey's interests a much tougher stance needed in dealings with the EU, the Kurds, and maybe their major ally and financier, the United States, as well.
The army has stepped up its attacks on the PKK guerrillas, who ended their cease-fire a year ago. It has launched a big operation
South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) using Fl6s to bomb PKK bases in the Kandil mountains. (This is territory nominally controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose leader, Jalal Talabani, is the new puppet president of Iraq.)
Interestingly, the intensification of the war against the Kurds, including in US-occupied Iraq, has not met with any hostile comment from the Americans who have openly admitted they want to see the destruction of the PKK.
With Turkey's 'get tougher' stance, have come new moves
political activity inside Turkey itself. The Turkish parliament has just passed a package of amendments to the penal code, still to be ratified by the president.
While ostensibly making reforms aimed at satisfying the EU, these amendments include clauses that curtail the right to freedom of expression. A new crime of "humiliating the state institutions" is to be created.
The intensification
of the war against the Kurds, including in US-occupied Iraq, has not met with any
hostile comment
from the Americans
who have openly
admitted they want
to see the
destruction of the
PKK.
This could make it illegal, for example, to call for an end to the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus or to refer to the massalic. of the Armenians genocide (penalty three to ten years' imprisonment).
And in May a national security bill was passed allowing the confiscation and examination by a judge of documents from prison interviews between lawyers and their clients - a move clearly aimed at further hampering Ocalan's already intermittent contacts with his lawyers.
The dilemma facing the Turkish military and Turkish government is that adopting harsher policies is likely to lead to even more overt repression like the police
on this year's International Women's Day demonstration and the intimidation that caused a recent academic conference on the genocide in Armenia to be cancelled.
More brutality could run the risk of attracting condemnation from European leaders at a time when (following the French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution) hostility to Turkey's bid to join the EU appears to be growing.
Since most of the Turkish population want to join the EU because they believe it can bring more freedom and less poverty, a failure to deliver membership could render the Turkish government deeply unpopular.
Turkey also has to be careful, in its relations with the US, that it does not end up on the Americans' list of rogue states'. Turkey is very impor tant to the US from a strategic point of view but it is hard to believe that Washington has forgotten or forgiven Turkey's refusal to allow it full freedom
to use Turkey as a staging post
during the attack on Iraq.