ISTANBUL, Turkey - A Turkish court on Tuesday released Tahir Elci, the head of the Bar Association in Diyarbakir, after detaining him earlier in the day for alleged “terrorist propaganda.”
Elci, a top lawyer and supporter of Kurdish rights, was questioned and detained after an interview with CNN Turk last week, in which he said the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) "is not a terrorist organization.”
“The PKK is a political movement which has important political demands and which enjoys widespread support, even if some of its actions can be characterized as terrorist acts," he said on CNN Turk.
The court decided to release Elci, but banned him from leaving the country.
Defending the PKK is unlawful in Turkey. The outlawed group fought a three-decade war in Turkey for autonomy for the country’s estimated 15 million Kurds. Since 2002, PKK has been designated a terrorist organization by the European Union and United States.
Speaking to the press after his release, Elci said that the case "clearly shows the state of freedom of expression in this country today."
“We should have the right to express our own views, ideas and suggestions on our own way,” Elci said. “As a representative of an NGO I am not bound by any particular political party’s definitions when I have to discuss issues that concern the public.”
Elci stressed he stood by his comments to CNN Turk.
"I don’t believe that the PKK should be defined as a terrorist organization," he said, and warned against "alienation" of the PKK and the Turkish army.
"We won’t get anywhere as long as the political Kurdish movement calls the Turkish army an 'army of invasion' or the Turkish state authorities call the Kurdish movement 'a terrorist organization,'" he Elci said.
After his 90-minute defense in court, the court took a short break to reach a decision. It concluded that the “strong suspicion of an offense is not sufficient to maintain an arrest warrant.”
Fighting between Turkish and PKK forces reignited following a July 20 bombing in the Turkish-Syrian border town of Suruc, in which 32 people were killed and 104 wounded. The PKK later took responsibility for killing two policemen, and Turkey responded with near-daily air raids or artillery attacks.
Hundreds of soldiers, Turkish policemen and PKK guerrillas have been reportedly killed in the new round of violence.
To solve the conflict, Elci proposed a resumption of the peace process that started in 2013 between Turkey and PKK.
“The weapons must be silent. We must go back to a solution by talking together and do it in a civilized manner,” he said.
