Turkey on Thursday indicated that it would bow to international pressure to retry Kurdish rebel Abdullah Ocalan after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that his original trial had not been independent or impartial.
Attempting to head off a domestic political storm, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared, however, that the man reviled as a terrorist would not be allowed to walk free.
"Whether this dossier is re-opened or not, the matter [of Ocalan's guilt] is a closed one for the nation's conscience," Erdogan said during a trip to Hungary.
The Strasbourg court ruled that the presence of a military prosecutor at the trial and the eight days Ocalan spent alone in custody beforehand were in breach of European conventions Turkey has signed.
Ocalan, the head of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was public enemy No.1 in Turkey before he was captured and condemned to death for treason in 1999. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment three years later.
Desperate to inject new impetus into its flagging efforts to get an accession date from the EU in October, Turkey has little choice but to call a retrial.
The country's leaders have battled against the involvement of the European court from the start. But faced with a national outcry, they were doing their best to play down the consequences of the ruling yesterday.
"The Turkish republic is a state based on the rule of law and will undertake the procedures required by the law," said Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, a senior member of the ruling Justice and Development party.
"Even if [Ocalan] were retried a hundred times, he would get the same sentence," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said this week.
Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said: "We must be as cold-blooded [dispassionate] as possible. This is not the end of the world. Our people must not be concerned, they must trust the state and the judiciary."
Such words are unlikely to reassure ordinary Turks, most of whom share the Turkish media's view of Ocalan as a "baby killer."
Throughout the PKK war, EU insistence on Kurdish rights was seen by many Turks as indistinguishable from support for the PKK.
Army chief of staff Hilmi Ozkok said that the PKK was "dictating its demands in the guise of cultural rights with the EU acting as intermediary."
Ocalan said the call for his retrial should be seen as a chance by Turkey to meet the demands of its Kurdish minority for greater rights and make peace with his armed guerrillas, a pro-Kurdish newspaper said yesterday.
Ocalan, anticipating the ruling, told his lawyers on Wednesday that Turkey should see it "as a chance given to Turkey to resolve the Kurdish question,"the Web site of the pro-Kurdish Ozgur Politika said.
Ocalan also said he would use his retrial as a platform to push for a democratic solution to the Kurdish problem, calling it a "democratic struggle," instead of armed struggle, the Web site said.
Meanwhile, Turkish intelligence officials say evidence is growing that the PKK is planning bomb attacks on western Turkish cities.
The government is struggling to contain a wave of anger sparked in March when a group of youths tried to desecrate the Turkish flag at Kurdish new year celebrations in the southern city of Mersin.
Ocalan was captured in Kenya in 1999 and flown to Turkey for trial. He was sentenced to death for treason for leading a 15-year rebel war for autonomy which killed 37,000 people.
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