TURKEY:A Turkish court has ordered the prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, to pay a symbolic fine to families of soldiers slain by Kurdish guerrillas for using a derogatory word to describe the dead men.
The office of the lawyer representing the families said Mr Erdogan was also being fined for referring to jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan as "Sayin", a term of respect meaning "esteemed".
Praising a crime or criminals is an offence in Turkey.
The case dates back to a radio interview Mr Erdogan gave in Australia in 2000 - before becoming prime minister - when he said "Sayin Ocalan" would pay for the "heads" he had taken, the statement from lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz said.
The word Mr Erdogan used for "head" was a derogatory one generally used to refer to enemy dead.
The Istanbul court ordered Mr Erdogan to pay three new kurus (about two US cents) in symbolic damages to eight relatives of soldiers killed by guerrillas of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mr Erdogan would probably appeal against the court decision.
"There will be thousands more such cases opened in the future. We are in touch with the families of other martyrs," Friday's Radikalnewspaper quoted Mr Kerincsiz as saying.
Mr Kerincsiz is a well-known ultra-nationalist who has in the past brought cases against Nobel Literature laureate Orhan Pamuk and other authors on claims that they had insulted Turkish national identity in their writings.
Ankara blames Ocalan's PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. Ocalan himself was captured and jailed for life in 1999.
- (Reuters)