Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Tuesday that the government had ruled out any change in the detention conditions for Abdullah Ocalan, a founding member of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Responding to journalists' questions in the Turkish Parliament on claims about Ocalan's demand for a change in his detention conditions, Bozdag said: "We are not even thinking about changing Ocalan's imprisonment to house arrest."
Ocalan was arrested by Turkish forces in 1999 and sentenced to death for forming armed gangs under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment as the death penalty was abolished in Turkey in 2004.
Bozdag also talked about the new electoral system in Turkey, saying that the Justice Ministry and the ruling AK Party were working on whether constituencies should be single-member or multi-member ('narrowed').
Under the current system, Turkey has 85 electoral districts and each one has a different number of MPs.
In the single-member district system, Turkey would be divided into 550 constituencies and each would elect an MP. Under the alternative narrow-district system, Turkey will be divided into 145 constituencies, each with a varying number of MPs according to its population.
Bozdag drew attention to democratic autonomy demands by the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, saying: "The solution process is still continuing on which everyone can carry out the evaluation." However, the justice minister added: "We don't even have any work on it."
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