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A Turkish prosecutor yesterday asked a court to imprison more than 50 Kurdish mayors for allegedly supporting a separatist Kurdish group by asking Denmark's prime minister to keep a Kurdish television station on the air, a news agency said.
The prosecutor in his closing arguments asked the court in Diyarbakýr in the southeast to sentence 56 mayors to up to 15 years each on charges of aiding and abetting a terrorist group. The prosecutor asked the court to acquit three other mayors.
The court adjourned the trial until May 8 at the request of the defense.
The mayors have pleaded innocent and say that their letter was an act of "free speech." The trial is seen as the latest test of freedom of speech in Turkey, which has been under pressure from the European Union to strengthen the rights of its Kurdish minority and eliminate limits on free speech.
The mayors from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party were indicted last year after writing a letter to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen asking him to keep the Roj TV station, which is banned in Turkey, on the air in Denmark, despite claims by Turkey that it is a propaganda machine of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
PKK militants often join the station's broadcasts by satellite telephone from their mountain hideouts in northern Iraq, and the station broadcasts images of PKK members training or attacking Turkish soldiers.