Although the Court did not make any further statements, it concluded that there was missing information in the General Court’s decision, Fırat News Agency reports. According to the Court of Justice, the General Court did not provide sufficient justification for the removal of the PKK from the ‘terrorist list’ in 2018.
The Court of Justice demanded that “thirteen of the 14-points in the decision made by the General Court in favour of the PKK” be justified in more detail.
Mahmut Şakar, one of the lawyers who has been following the case since the beginning, states that the decision does not mean that the PKK will continue to stay on the list.
“When the General Court decided on the removal of the PKK from the terrorist list in November 2018, it only considered one of the seven reasons presented by the Kurdish side,” he said. “After the latest development, all the remaining arguments will have to be discussed again.”
In 2014, the PKK executives Murat Karayılan and Duran Kalkan filed a lawsuit against the European Union’s “terrorist list” in Luxembourg through their Dutch attorneys.
On 15 November 2018, the European Court of Justice found the reasons for keeping the PKK on the list insufficient and it decided that the PKK should not be kept on the list (which was covering the period between 2014-2017). However, the EU appealed the decision.
After the decision of the Court, a new application was made to keep the PKK on the list for 2018, and the PKK was re-listed on 9 January 2019. The Kurdish side filed a lawsuit one more time against the new list on 7 March 2019.
While the EU was re-listing the PKK, the Belgian judiciary took a historic decision regarding the PKK. In its decision announced on 8 March 2019, the Court of Appeal ruled that what has been going on between Turkey and the PKK was a “non-international armed conflict” and the PKK is not a “terrorist organisation”.
