Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Photo: TRT Turk
ANKARA,— Turkey has summoned the Belgian ambassador in Ankara to protest a Brussels appeals court decision that said a Kurdish rebel group cannot be considered to be a terrorist organization.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official said Monday that Turkey “conveyed its unease” over the decision to Ambassador Michel Malherbe.
The decision relates to a case under which Belgian federal prosecutors were seeking to try around 36 suspected member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, who allegedly recruited young Kurds in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe, and then took them to combat training camps.
The Brussels Appeals Court ruled on March 8, 2019 that the activities of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are not terrorist.
A Brussels appeal court however, ruled Friday that “insufficient elements were provided to conclude that the PKK is guilty of terrorist offenses.”
In 2006, Belgium began investigations with 36 Kurdish politicians, including Remzi Kartal, Zibar Ayder and Adam Ozon. In 2016, the Belgian Chamber of Investigation announced that the PKK is not a terrorist party and it will not allow to open a case against it.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
The PKK is considered as ‘terrorist’ organization by Turkey, the United States and the EU. The PKK continues to be on the blacklist list in EU despite court ruling which in 2008 overturned a decision to place the Kurdish rebel group PKK and its political wing on the European Union’s terror list.
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