Omer Izgi, the acting Chairman of the Nationalist Action...

Omer Izgi, the acting Chairman of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) parliamentary group said that the MHP would not allow the abolition of the death penalty because of conditions in Turkey. He said, "When the Justice Ministry's proposals for an amendment to the Turkish Penal Code were opened to debate through the end of 1997, we, as the MHP, found it appropriate to change death sentence into heavy imprisonment. However, we later saw that the abolition of death sentence to criminals who commit the crimes mentioned in Article 125 is impossible due to the conditions in Turkey, and we decided not to annul the death sentence. This opinion of the MHP has not changed." Noting that Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the [Kurdistan Workers' Party] terrorist organization, was not the only person sentenced to death within this scope, Izgi said that the terrorists who waylaid and killed Turkish soldiers and those who gave the orders to terrorists like Semdin Sakik would also be executed.