While it was widely expected that Turkey's State Security Court would find the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan guilty of treason, yesterday's decision to sentence him to death has attracted widespread condemnation around the world. This reaction underlines the difficulties facing its legal system, government and legislators as they process the case. They must balance popular revulsion towards him in Turkey against an awareness that carrying out the sentence would provoke a deep crisis in relations with Europe and a resurgence of fighting from the organisation he represents.
Turkish leaders do not have much room for manoeuvre between these conflicting forces. Ocalan's capture last February in Kenya was a triumph for a state which had been pursuing him for months around various European capitals and fighting a vicious war against him for 15 years. The revelation that he had been helped by Greek officials and the ambiguous attitude of other governments towards a man regarded officially and in the popular mind as a ruthless terrorist responsible for the deaths of some 30,000 people fed strongly into Turkey's elections last April. Nationalist parties did extremely well in the voting, as is reflected in the subsequent coalition government formed. There is a strong feeling that Turkey must assert itself against the perception that European leaders have rejected its application to join the European Union.
Many objections were voiced internationally over the use of a court which included a military judge subject to army discipline. But procedurally the trial was judged broadly acceptable by observers. Ocalan's extraordinary admission of responsibility for the cruel conduct of the war and his plea that his life be spared so that a political solution can be found to the Kurdish conflict deflected criticism. This verdict is a clear rebuttal of that plea, but is subject to a complex process of appeal legally and politically within Turkey and to the International Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. No death penalty has been carried out in Turkey since 1984; but there is no certainty of a similar approach in this case, given the raw emotions involved.
Turkish leaders must take full account of the international reaction to the verdict if they value their future relations with other European states and are serious about joining the EU. It has rejected the death penalty; were Ocalan to be executed Turkey's case that its human rights shortcomings are being properly addressed - the primary stated objection to its EU application - would be destroyed. No one would thank Turkey for the renewed wave of fighting at home and abroad that would ensue. It would also be taken as proof that there is no intention to address the issue of Kurdish rights highlighted by the long war with Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
State repression and militarisation of the conflict drove many Kurds in south-eastern Turkey to support the PKK even though they would certainly accept a political outcome falling far short of its demands, including cultural, media and linguistic rights and regional autonomy. To execute him would needlessly revive that discredited organisation.