Turkey calls in Belgian ambassador over PKK ruling
March 11, 2019
Turkey's Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned Belgium's ambassador in Ankara over a Belgian judicial decision it said prevented the prosecution of people with alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), according to a foreign ministry official.
The summoning of Belgian Ambassador Michel Malherbe comes after a case in which Belgian federal prosecutors were seeking to try around 30 suspected members of the PKK who allegedly recruited young Kurds in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe, and then took them to combat training camps.
But a Brussels appeal court on Friday ruled that "insufficient elements were provided to conclude that the PKK is guilty of terrorist offenses."
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"The Belgian ambassador was summoned to the ministry today to share our disapproval of the decision by the Belgian chamber of accusations on March 8," a Turkish foreign ministry source told French news agency AFP.
"Despite the evidence submitted by the federal prosecutor of Belgium on the PKK's terrorist nature, this decision, as it stands, provides terrorist organizations with a very dangerous area of exploitation," they added.
Belgium judiciary separate to government
Belgian law states that the terrorism label does not apply to forces engaged in an armed conflict, despite the European Union, the United States and Turkey all deeming the PKK a terror organization.
Malherbe on Friday said that despite the Belgian judiciary's decision, Belgium's view that the PKK is a terrorist organization had not changed.
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"The position of the state which I represent should be well noted: the PKK is a terrorist organization," he said in a statement.
But Malherbe said it was necessary to accept that the Belgian judiciary and the Belgian government were independent of each other.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry source told AFP it would appeal the decision and that Turkey would continue its legal fight with determination.
Earlier appeals rejected
A Belgian appeals court in September 2017 rejected an objection to an earlier ruling by a lower court which said PKK activities in Europe could not be classified as terrorism.
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In 2016, the court had already refused the prosecutor's request to send the 36 to a higher criminal court, saying that "an armed campaign cannot be considered as an act of terror."
The PKK has been fighting an insurgency in Turkey since the 1980s and some 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
law/ (AFP, AP, Reuters)