Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-22-Speech-4-008"
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"en.20040422.1.4-008"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank the Commission for its statement. Probably uniquely in this House, I actually knew Leyla Zana before she was tried and convicted. I first met her in the late 1980s. She is, to put it mildly, a controversial figure.
Nonetheless the action that she took is perfectly within the realms of democratic expression. After all, all she did was to say something in the Kurdish language within her Parliament. Mrs Ahern and others sometimes choose to use the Irish language within this Parliament. Indeed my Quaestor colleague, Mrs Banotti, did so in her opening speech. However, I do not think even the worst enemies of Fine Gael would wish Mrs Banotti to be locked up for 15 years for that.
There has been complete over-reaction from the very beginning. The way in which the trial was conducted was unacceptable and it was thanks to the intervention of the Council of Europe that a retrial was held. It is a great disappointment to me and my group that the Turkish judicial authorities did not show themselves to have sufficient flexibility to use this opportunity of having a retrial that would effectively have exonerated Mrs Zana.
She has been the victim of what is in effect a struggle between a reactionary judiciary and a state that is trying to reform. I welcome the packages of reforms that have been adopted and I also welcome the fact that the state security courts are to be abolished. This is not before time.
Some people are indeed working hard for democracy in Turkey, and the AKP deputy Faruk Ünsal spoke out against this particular verdict. I hope that in passing in what I think will be a unanimous resolution, supported right across the House, that we can send a message, not to the Turkish Government but to the Turkish judiciary, to be realistic, to get up to date and, for a change, to support their government in trying to restore respect for the Turkish judiciary within Turkey."@en1
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