ANKARA (Reuters) – Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed in an interview broadcast yesterday that Turkey’s parliamentary election would take place on schedule “in October or November” and dismissed pressure to bring the date forward. Turkish media, opposition politicians and some investors have speculated that Erdogan might hold the election as early as June or July in order to remove uncertainty they say could harm the economy and political stability. “The elections will be held in October or November. Our government wants to prove that Turkey can be governed for a full five-year term... The election campaign will start in July,” Erdogan told CNN Turk television.

ANKARA (AFP) – A Turkish prosecutor yesterday requested life sentences without parole for four alleged Islamists charged over an attack on a courthouse in which a judge was killed last year, a report said. Prosecutor Salim Demirci said alleged gunman Alparslan Arslan and his three suspected accomplices should be locked away for the rest of their lives over the attack on the country’s top administrative court in May 2006. They have been charged with attempting to overthrow the constitutional order by force, the creation and leadership of an armed organization, murdering a judge in the exercise of his duties, and attempted murder of public officials. Demirci sought prison terms of five to 75 years for another four people charged over the attack. Arslan, a 29-year-old lawyer, allegedly burst into the Council of State in Ankara shouting “I am a soldier of Allah” and shot dead a senior judge and wounded four others before being overwhelmed by security forces. He is said to have told police later that he wanted to “punish” the court for upholding a ban on Islamic headscarves in public institutions and universities.

Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has been poisoned in jail in Turkey, his lawyers said yesterday, demanding the United Nations dispatch a medical team to investigate. Ocalan’s defense team showed reporters in Rome the results of tests indicating the presence of what they said were toxic metals in the Kurdish leader’s hair. Italian lawyer Giuliano Pisapia said Ocalan was suffering a “progressive poisoning” and ruled out the possibility that the metals had entered his body naturally from the environment. “There are only two other possibilities – poisoning through his food or through his water,” he told a press conference. Lawyer Mahmut Sakar called on the United Nations and the Council of Europe to send an “independent medical delegation” to examine the PKK chief. (AFP)