AP
Jan 31, 2001

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkish lawmakers abruptly ended a meeting with visiting German
counterparts Tuesday after spotting a German lawmaker wearing a hair ribbon in the colors
of a Kurdish rebel group, Turkey's Anatolia news agency said.

Members of Turkey's parliamentary defense commission asked Angelika Beer, a lawmaker
of Germany's liberal Greens party, to remove a red, yellow and green ribbon braided into her
hair, Anatolia reported.

Beer refused, saying the ribbon was a present from a friend killed in northern Iraq, Anatolia
said.

Helmut Wieczorek, who leads the German parliament's defense commission, defended Beer,
insisting the ribbon was not meant as a symbol of Turkey's banned Kurdistan Workers'
Party, or PKK.

"I have known her for seven years. For seven years she has worn such ornaments," Anatolia
quoted Wieczorek as saying.

Some Turkish lawmakers walked out, and chairman Hasan Gulay cut short the tense
meeting.

Red, yellow and green are the colors of PKK, which has been battling Turkish troops in the
country's southeast for 15 years. The government rejected a cease-fire announced by the
group in 1999, vowing to keep fighting until all rebels have surrendered or are killed.

Turks are very sensitive to symbols seen as support for the PKK. A Kurdish deputy in the
early 1990s was jeered and subsequently tried for, among other actions, taking the oath in
parliament wearing a red, yellow and green hair band.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com