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Kurdish party leaders jailed in Turkey over leaflet

ANKARA, Feb 26, 2007 (AFP) - A Turkish court Monday jailed two leaders of the country's main Kurdish party for 18 months over a Woman's Day leaflet, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The court found Ahmet Turk, chairman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), and his deputy Aysel Tugluk guilty of "praising criminals" because the leaflet mentioned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan who is serving a life sentence for treason.

The two politicians were also convicted of violating the law on political parties because the leaflet, published last year, was in Kurdish.

They can appeal the sentence.

Even though Turkey has relaxed strict restrictions on the use of Kurdish in recent years, the law states that Turkish must be used by political parties in their writings and functions.

Kurdish politicians in Turkey are routinely regarded with suspicion and often seen as instruments of Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting a bloody self-rule campaign against the Ankara government since 1984.

The DTP was set up in November 2005 with a pledge to try to resolve the Kurdish conflict through peaceful means, but it has so far made no progress.

Moreover, it has come under fire for sympathizing with the PKK, which is blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States. Dozens of members face prosecution for supporting the rebels.