Turkish leftist editor gets 18 months in jail

A military court here has sentenced an editor of a leftist newspaper to 18 months in jail for "weakening Turkish national unity by making separatist propaganda," martial law authorities said. They said Engin Aydin, an editor of the banned Marxist daily, Politika, was convicted of writing an editorial two years ago which supported Kurdish separatist activities in eastern Turkey. Politika, a small-circulation daily claimed to be the mouthpiece of the underground Turkish Communist Party, was closed by order of martial law authorities a year ago.