Dear President, the demands for the closing-off of the Roj TV station, the necessity felt by 56 Mayors to write a letter to the Danish Prime Minister Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the tragicomic trial today of over 50 Mayors with the demand of fifteen-year-long imprisonment sentence for each is one consequence of the anti-democratic attitudes towards the Kurdish question. However, unlike what the office of the Prosecutor has done, we shall not raise details of the Kurdish question before the Court today.
The Prosecutor asks for a total of 840 year-long imprisonment sentence for crimes we allegedly have committed in our 405-word-long letter. With a rough calculation, each word corresponds to over two years of imprisonment sentence. The indictment associates our letter with the overall political process that has evolved since the foundation of the PKK Kongra-Gel, and claims that our act of writing the latter constitutes a "conscious and intentional support for the "Organization". With such features, the indictment provides a fertile ground for political polemics. Without entering into any polemics, we reject the indictment and disclaim the accusations raised against us.
We, however, claim hereby each of the 405 words of our famous letter and repeat the opinions we thereby expressed. Serious consideration of our letter shows that rather than simply claiming a certain TV station, it advocates respect towards freedom of thought and expression for the institution of a democratic life and a matured tolerance towards voices of dissent. That opinions expressed within such a letter have been made the subject of a trial process is but tragicomic.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Abdullah Gul had stated the following on 25 December 2006 : "Those who claim that prohibitions by law still exist shall see when the verdicts are released that this is not true. Journalists used to be imprisoned for what they would write, and mayors for their poems. These are now a thing of the past" (The Daily Radikal). We did not chant any poems, but penned a letter that expressed the demands of the people whom we represent. Therefore, we are brought before the Court today.
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