ISTANBUL — Turkey's parliament has passed a law allowing defendants to use Kurdish in court, but Kurdish politicians said it fell short of their demands as the EU candidate country seeks to advance peace talks with the jailed leader of a 28-year-old insurgency. Courts have rejected suspects' efforts to use Kurdish in defense against charges of membership of a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) umbrella group. The law allows defendants to speak in their mother tongue, if they speak it better than they do Turkish. In an immediate sign of the law's application, a court allowed Batman Mayor Nejdet Atalay to defend himself in Kurdish at his trial in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele welcomed the law. “This is an important step towards having a broader access to public services in mother tongue. Looking forward to a rapid implementation,” he said in comments emailed to Reuters. The law was among the demands of hundreds of jailed PKK rebels who late last year staged a hunger strike which was ended by the intervention of their leader Abdullah Ocalan, in prison on the island of Imrali, south of Istanbul. Ocalan's intervention is viewed as having paved the way for peace talks aimed at ending a conflict in which more than 40,000 people have been killed since his rebels took up arms in 1984. Intelligence agency officials have held talks with Ocalan, establishing a framework for a deal under which the PKK would stop fighting, withdraw from Turkish soil and disarm. In return, the government would boost Kurdish minority rights. Only Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and a few officials are believed to have first-hand knowledge of the peace framework. They have not disclosed details of it but have also not denied press reports on it reported by media close to the government. With next year's local and presidential elections in mind, Erdogan is keen to keep the process under wraps due to fears of a nationalist backlash among voters and within the state against talks with a man reviled by most Turks. Deputies from Erdogan's ruling AK Party and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) voted in favor of the new law, while other opposition deputies voted against. The BDP was still critical however of the law's requirement that defendants speaking their mother tongue pay for a translator.— Reuters
