23 April 2001

1. "Turkey Tumbles Toward Making Pressing Changes", Turkey's 1982 constitution described the state as "sacred"; but changes made in 1995 replaced that with "sublime." Today, few Turks would regard it as even that. The authority of the Turkish state is crumbling as the country's political elite gambles away its credibility.

2. "Turks mourn prison 'martyr'", reforms aim at ending jail crisis as 14th funeral foments sympathy for hunger strike.

3."Death toll in Turkish hunger strike rises to 17", a hunger strike by inmates and their relatives protesting prison conditions claimed the lives of three women Sunday, bringing the death toll to 17 since the fasts began, the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) said.

4. "U.S. Pledges to help Turkey in sanctions losses", the United States has pledged to help Turkey offset billions of dollars in losses from United Nations sanctions on Iraq, a key trading partner of Ankara.

5. "How to define EU's borders gets more complicated", as the EU moves hastily towards enlargement, the question of where Europe starts and ends comes up as a valid question. The case of Turkey, with its 65 million Muslim population, further complicates the issue.

6. "EU demands financial aid for Turkey", Finance ministers of the European Union's member states demanded that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G-7 countries provide exceptional foreign financial aid to help Turkey to overcome the economic crisis.

1. - Frankfurter Allgemeine - "Turkey Tumbles Toward Making Pressing Changes":

ISTANBUL / by Rainer Hermann

Turkey's 1982 constitution described the state as "sacred"; but changes made in 1995 replaced that with "sublime." Today, few Turks would regard it as even that. The authority of the Turkish state is crumbling as the country's political elite gambles away its credibility.

The crisis of confidence started on Nov. 3, 1996 when a minor accident in the town of Susurluk ended up revealing that parts of the state and the security services enjoyed rather close ties with the criminal underworld.

The earthquake on Aug. 17, 1999, further fueled public discontent, when the Turkish state showed itself unable to respond to the emergency situation.

But it was the country's plunge into economic crisis on Feb. 19 that finally robbed the Turkish people of the illusion that the state exists for their good. They now believe it is only there to serve a political class that lacks any interest, which has no interest in changing the status quo and has lost the power to do so.

In surveys taken three years ago, 5 percent of voters said they would not vote at all in an election. Today, this figure has risen to 38 percent; if the undecided voters are included, the figure climbs to 65 percent.

Pollster Tarhan Erdem sees this as the people's rejection of their country's politicians and political structure. A different party has taken the largest number of votes in each of the last four elections. Mr. Erdem, once general secretary of the Republican People's Party, says that Turkey is changing but its political elite is not.

Selim Oktar, chairman of the Mori polling institute, concurs, adding that Turkish politicians have failed to grasp that values are moving away from pure individualism and hedonism, toward group action with an emphasis on ethics. He points to President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Economics Minister Kemal Dervis as two politicians who embody the trend. Most Turks look to these two men to wipe out the memory of the 1990s -- which saw 10 governments come and go, governments that kept announcing stability programs but never implemented them.

A study by the Turkish Chambers of Commerce and Industry calculates that the country's politicians have squandered $195 billion in the past 10 years. Not only is that the equivalent of Turkey's annual gross domestic product, the study says that without such waste, Turkey could have achieved annual growth rates of 9.2 percent. Instead, it took an entire decade for per capita income to increase by that figure.

Per capita income, however, could have doubled, and as many as 5 million new jobs could have been created, according to the study. Instead, political interference led to write-offs of $20 billion in state-run banks and $32 billion in state-run enterprises. Throughout the 1990s, the state stood aside as the assets of private banks were plundered before stepping in and taking them over. Losses here come to at least $12 billion.

But the biggest costs have been incurred as high interest payments, a direct result of excessive debts, and an enormous redistribution in favor of a small circle of beneficiaries. These costs amount to some $95 billion.

Can Paker, chairman of the Turkish branch of German household cleaners and cosmetic giant Henkel and president of the research institute Tesev, says three factors have caused the economic crisis: populist politicians, corruption and excessive spending on defense. He sees no way out of the crisis, as long as things remain as they are.

In Mr. Paker's view, Turkey will only shake off its troubles when the state becomes transparent and corruption has been stamped out; when civil rights have a sound footing in society and truly protect the individual from the state; and when the law governing political parties has been changed to take power away from party leaders -- in short, when Turkey embarks on a true course to democracy and adopts the values of globalization. So far, the country's politicians show no sign of recognizing this. They are not yet ready to give up their sinecures.

Susurluk, the earthquake and the economic crisis have led Turkey closer to a thorough overhaul of the political order. But it may take a fourth shakeup before it really happens.

2. - The Guardian - "Turks mourn prison 'martyr'":

Reforms aim at ending jail crisis as 14th funeral foments sympathy for hunger strike

ISTANBUL / by Chris Morris

With red banners and revolutionary slogans, Ender Can Yildiz was buried in Istanbul yesterday - the 14th victim of a hunger strike against prison conditions which shows no sign of coming to an end.

The government has announced legal reforms to ease the regime of isolation which has been imposed on hundreds of prisoners for months. But it insists that there will be no negotiations with the extreme leftwing groups behind the hunger strike.

"We will not allow the prisons to become the headquarters of terrorism again," the prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, said on Thursday. "The state will not give in to pressure from people who are forcing their friends to die."

Yildiz died in an Ankara hospital on Wednesday. Doctors say dozens of other prisoners are in a critical condition, and the death toll is likely to rise at any time.

Yildiz's mother, Hanife, led the funeral procession yesterday. On a red ribbon wrapped around her head the words "Ender Can is immortal" were carefully written in black.

Leaning on a stick, but speaking clearly, she said: "My son didn't lose this fight. He won and I'm proud of him. We will keep fighting until victory".

Hundreds of mourners chanting slogans and pumping their fists in the air were closely shadowed by an even larger number of heavily armed paramilitaries.

On the other side of Istanbul another tragedy is unfolding. Five prisoners' relatives are on hunger strike in a small house overlooking the Bosporus. Two women have so far starved to death.
Zehra Kulaksiz has been refusing solid food for five months. She takes sugared water and high-energy drinks, but she is getting weaker. Her sister Canan starved to death last week, aged 19.
"Our prisoners are isolated and tortured," Ms Kulaksiz whispered. "It may be hard for you to understand, but that is why we have to die".

Her father said he supports her protest, and is ready to lose another daughter. It has become an ideological struggle in which martyrdom is the primary aim. Individuals are of secondary concern.
Most of the criticism, however, is being directed at the government.

Yesterday a group of leading artists and writers appealed for action. Even the association which represents Turkey's main business leaders has said that ministers are not doing enough.

The justice minister, Hikmet Sami Turk, has announced plans for legal reforms that will allow prisoners held singly or in threes in small cells to meet for educational, social, cultural and sporting activities.

Under current rules prisoners jailed on terrorism charges are isolated in cells and are not allowed to mix.

Mr Sami Turk said the changes would permit civilian inspection of prison conditions and give courts the authority to bring charges against prison officers without the consent of the justice ministry.

Human rights groups say torture is common in Turkish prisons and charges are almost never brought against prison officers. The proposed reforms will need parliamentary approval, and that could take time.

"I have done everything I can," Mr Sami Turk said, "and my conscience is clear."

Nevertheless, pressure from Turkey's western allies is beginning to increase.

European diplomats in Ankara have expressed concern about the death-fast and called on the government to take urgent steps to end it.

They have made it clear that they do not oppose prison reform in itself, but the way it has been forced through by the state has led to a rapidly developing crisis.

They support Ankara's decision to end the old prison system in which leftwing, Kurdish and Islamist groups were housed in dormitory wards which held up to 100 prisoners each. The groups ran the wards themselves, covering the walls in party flags and symbols, and holding military-style roll calls every morning.

Security forces raided jails throughout the country in December to force prisoners out of the dormitories, and transfer more than 1,000 to new high-security jails known as "F-types".
The new prisons have been heavily criticised, however, because, even though they are clean and modern, they do not meet certain international standards. The regime of "small-cell isolation" is a particular focus of complaint.

Mourners at Ender Can Yildiz's funeral dismissed the justice minister's new proposals, and said the hunger strike would continue. They have a long list of demands, including the complete abolition of F-type prisons.

As the dispute drags on, more hospital space is being prepared for dozens of prisoners who are getting weaker by the day. Newspapers say that more than 100 may die.

"They are the youth of our country... and the basic fact is that they are dying," Professor Huri Ozdogan of the Istanbul Medical Faculty wrote in an open letter to the prime minister published yesterday.

"My conscience is screaming that this should not be allowed, and I want my state to feel the same."

3. - AFP - "Death toll in Turkish hunger strike rises to 17":

ANKARA

A hunger strike by inmates and their relatives protesting prison conditions claimed the lives of three women Sunday, bringing the death toll to 17 since the fasts began, the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) said.

It said Sibel Surucu, jailed for membership of an extreme-left underground group, died in an Istanbul hospital after being on hunger strike since December. The 24-year-old woman weighed only 29 kilogrammes (64 pounds) at her death and had refused all treatment, the Anatolia news agency reported. The IHD said Senay Hanoglu, the 30-year-old wife of a prisoner died shortly afterwards in Istanbul after a 160-day fast. A third woman, Hatice Yurekli, 33, also jailed for belonging to an extreme-left group, also died Sunday in an Ankara hospital 180 days after she began her fast, Anatolia said.

Twelve inmates and two relatives of prisoners had already died since March 21. Around 800 inmates in 29 prisons, including a number of women, are taking part in the hunger strike. Police in the southeast town of Diyarbakir Sunday used truncheons to disperse about 250 people demonstrating against the government's attiude towards the hunger strikers. Police made five arrests.

Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk Sunday pledged the government would do everything possible to ensure Turkish prisons conform to "European standards", and accused "terrorist" organisations of forcing inmates to join the protest. He noted that eight hunger strikers had ended their fasts since the government Thursday announced a bill to ease isolation conditions in controversial high-security jails, allowing prisoners to spend time together during certain common activities.

However, under Turkey's anti-terrorism laws prisoners accused of terrorism are barred from having any contact with fellow detainees. Human rights activists have said the move was insufficient to end the hunger strike. The inmates' isolation has been at the core of the movement, launched by mainly left-wing inmates in October to protest prison reforms setting up new jails with cells of up to three people at most. The new jails replace existing dormitories housing up to 60 inmates which the authorities blamed for much of the hostage-taking and riots frequent in Turkey's unruly prisons.

The prisoners, backed by human rights activists, claim they will be more vulnerable to mistreatment and torture when isolated in smaller units. But the government counters that the hunger strike movement is organised by illegal organisations such as the DHKP-C, who find it much easier to maintain a mafioso system in large dormitories than in the new smaller cells. To back its claim, the government points to the fact that no Kurds have been involved in the hunger strike. But the movement has sparked little sympathy among the general population in Turkey, their attention being focused on the severe economic crisis. But what is becoming clear is that as more inmates die from their hunger strike, the more Turkey's human rights record will be tarnished, which does not bode well for the country's hopes of joining the European Union.

4. - Middle East Newsline - "U.S. Pledges to help Turkey in sanctions losses":

ANKARA

The United States has pledged to help Turkey offset billions of dollars in losses from United Nations sanctions on Iraq, a key trading partner of Ankara.

Turkish officials said this was the message of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Edward Walker, who ended a weekend visit to Ankara. Walker focused his talks on Turkish participation in enforcing so-called smart sanctions on the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Ankara has complained that Turkey has been the main victim of UN sanctions. Until the Gulf war, Iraq was a major trading partner of Turkey.

Walker toured the Middle East to obtain commitments from Iraq's neighbors to allow increased UN supervision over Iraqi imports. This would include the deployment of UN inspectors along the borders with Iraq to ensure that components do not benefit Saddam's missile of weapons of mass destruction programs.

5. - AP / Turkish Daily News - "How to define EU's borders gets more complicated":

As the EU moves hastily towards enlargement, the question of where Europe starts and ends comes up as a valid question. The case of Turkey, with its 65 million Muslim population, further complicates the issue

Foreign Minister Ismail Cem says the current EU borders are drawn purely according to economic priorities but stressed that the defence and security considerations will inevitably reshape the boundaries

As the European Union takes quick steps for its largest enlargement in 2004-2005, the question of "what is Europe and where are its boundaries" has been a valid and often asked question. The case of Turkey makes the issue more complicated. With its 65 million Muslim population and most of its territory being in Asia, some European circles argue that Turkey should not be in EU. However, those who think defence and security-wise say Turkey is indispensable.

Today, most of those former communist countries of central and eastern Europe are negotiating to join the EU, creating new democracies, reforming their economies and patching up differences with their neighbors. Over the next decades the borderless, largely single-currency bloc is supposed to swell from 15 member states to 27.

Then what? Is the prosperity line merely being shifted eastward? What about Ukraine? Belarus? Even Russia? And what about Moldova, half the size of West Virginia, whose 1999 average income per capita of $590 was just one-twentieth that of Portugal, the poorest EU country?
Beyond the old communist bloc, Turkey poses a different challenge to the definition of Europe. Officially, the EU is willing to consider it as a future candidate. But many Europeans are still unsure whether they want 65 million Muslims to join the club. And if Turkey joins, where does that leave the poor and hungry of the Caucasus?

Walnut farmer Elena Pirau knows she's European, even if the bigwigs in Brussels do not, even if some of them think Moldova is next to the edge of the world, even if tortured reality is slowly sucking this little country away from its newly won freedom back into the Russian sphere.
Out here on the fringe, Europe means prosperity. For Moldova, which has achieved the dubious distinction of overtaking Albania as the poorest country on the continent, it means hope. But the EU -- the club of the prosperous -- hasn't decided what Europe is or what the real limits of the continent are.

"I think that is one of the most fascinating questions which we never discuss," said Foreign Minister Anna Lindh of Sweden, current president of the 15-nation union.

Pirau does think about it, though. She has found a way to export her walnuts to Germany, opening a new lifeline for a struggling business in a small country that only a decade ago arose from the wreckage of the Soviet Union.

"Europe is absolutely everything for us, for the future," she said, taking time out from her 48th birthday party. "But we feel a bit pushed away. I think we are European because we are in Europe, but the mentality is the old Soviet mentality."

In school, everybody learns that Europe stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains, from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean. They also learn that for half a century, Europe was split by the Cold War and the Iron Curtain into a West that flowered and an East that struggled.

The EU is probably the most powerful engine for change. One reason is the euro. It adopted a single currency two years ago and will begin using new euro coins and bank notes on Jan. 1, which is sure to have a huge effect on its neighbors. Another is the criteria it sets for membership.
To join the EU, a country has to be a democracy and have a free-market economy. It has to reform its legislation using an EU manual of 80,000 pages and growing by the day. Even a country with only a distant hope of joining the EU has to start reforming itself now if its candidacy is ever to be considered.

Some 190 kilometers south of this Moldavian village, through beautiful rolling farmland streaked by wretched roads and dotted by muddy, rutted villages, Marc Ciolac has already had enough of democracy, of Western ideas.

Ciolac, 49, is from the minority Gagauz, Orthodox Christian Turks who make up 3.5 percent of Moldova's 4.5 million people. His cracked, callused hands testify to a lifetime of labor. He is a tractor driver on a collective farm -- a holdover from communist times -- and earns about 1,200 lei ($100) a year, paid in grain, not cash.

"In the Soviet Union, we lived," he said, explaining why many Moldavians are looking back nostalgically to the east. "Now, we are only surviving."

"It can't get any worse," said Ana Anghelcev, 62, a Gagauz woman wearing a blue babushka and carrying a bag of apples, "Only God can take care of me."

The EU doesn't seem interested in these people, European or not. Javier Solana, the EU's foreign and security policy chief, said enlargement to 27, or possibly 28 with Turkey, will be the end of expansion for the foreseeable future. That means a new east-west dividing line that stops short of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. A new list of ins and outs. Of haves and have nots.
"That will be the extent of Europe for a long time," said Solana. "It may not be forever. Should we forever say no to Moldova? I don't know."

Squeezed between Ukraine and Romania, Moldova is torn between a longing to be southeast European and a fondness for its former masters in Moscow.

"We are 240 kilometers (150 miles) from the geographical center of Europe," said Moldavian President Vladimir Voronin, leader of a resurgent Communist Party that swept back into power in parliamentary elections in February. "We would be very smart to enter the EU, but they won't have us. We don't want the border of Europe to be here."

The only alternative, Voronin and his communist followers believe, may be a reunion with Russia.
What about Russia itself? Sprawled between western Europe and Asia, Russians have argued for generations about whether they are Europeans or have a unique national identity with strong Asian traditions. But as far as the EU is concerned, Russia is not part of the club.

"If Russia was a member of the European Union, it would be a completely different animal," Solana says. "Because Russia is so big, the institution would be a different institution."

Defining the new Europe is not just a question of economics and electoral systems. Much of Europe's attention currently is focused in the Balkans. Vast amounts of energy are being expended just to contain the festering wound on the belly of the continent. This turf is clearly Europe, and the one corner of the continent where Europeans have been willing to send troops: 60,000 to Bosnia in 1995, and 45,000 more operating in and around Kosovo.

The generals, however, see Europe as an even bigger picture. The end of the Cold War and the decline of the Russian threat has changed the nature of the security game. The dangers today are on the periphery. Some military men speak of an "arc of potential instability" stretching from the southern Urals in Kazakhstan through the Middle East and across North Africa to Morocco.
"Frontiers drawn from a purely economic point of view would differ radically from those that gave priority to defense and security," said Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem: "Borders are generally drawn in relation to geostrategic goals. The decision of the EU on where it eventually sets its borders will therefore be defined by a mix of the interests that its member countries share."

Gen. Jean-Pierre Kelche, chief of staff of the French armed forces, sees no defined limits at all in Europe's area of interest.

"We have two problems of limits," said Kelche: "Europe can't ignore Africa. It is no doubt one of the elements of future security. And to the east, the big questions are the Caucasus. Should Europe get involved in the prevention of crises in the Caucasus, and under what conditions? That is the real question."

With today's mobile armed forces, geography and distance matter only marginally. It's no longer a question of lining up heavy tanks to defend against an onslaught across central Europe. The key elements today are time and strength, how quickly you can move forces and how hard you can hit when you get there, said Gen. Joseph Ralston, the supreme allied commander in Europe.
"If you deploy troops in a hurry, the geographic limit of Europe from a strategic point of view is not as important as it might have been at one time."

The threats themselves have changed dramatically, too. The survival of NATO members is no longer at stake. The Russians are still a worry, but not a threat. According to the alliance's new strategic concept, threats to Europe's security today are regional instability, ethnic conflict, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction.

During the Cold War, distant places like Central Asia rarely rose on the strategic radar screen. Today, the oil and gas reserves around the Caspian Sea define these areas as "vital interests" to the West.

Ask at NATO what the "Euro-Atlantic" region means, and they will point to the membership of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a forum created in 1997 whose 45 members include Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- far from what one thinks of as a European area of interest.

Many of the problems of these Central Asian countries are similar to those of the emerging democracies in the West, and many of those problems are already leaking heavily into Europe, said NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson.

"The old limits simply do not exist," Robertson said. "The world is moving with such speed. The Caucasus and Central Asia are certainly areas where there is genuine instability at the moment and where the problems all too easily spill over and we've got to be one step ahead of it," he said: "Eighty percent of the heroin that will be sold on the streets of Brussels tonight, or in Birmingham tonight, will come from Afghanistan, which is just beside these countries."
Again, where does Russia lie in this mix? Even as the Bush administration in the United States takes a harder line toward Moscow, the European allies are pressing to move closer. If Russia can't be a member of the EU, European thinking goes, it should at least be a partner.
"I think we should be prepared to make more concessions to Russia," said Patrick McCarthy, professor of European Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy.

"Russia is not finished as a great country." Given tensions with China and instability throughout Central Asia, Russia's only stable border is with Europe.

"Russia has no choice but to cooperate with the West because Russia traditionally has a geopolitical dilemma and several theaters of conflict," said Jiri Sedivy, director of the Institute of International Relations in Prague. "Russia needs the technology, Russia needs markets for selling its raw materials, it needs hard currency, Russia needs cooperation. This is pushing Russia to the West."

Robertson, the NATO chief, believes Russia must not only come closer to the West, but must also regain much of its old strength.

"A weak Russia is of no use to the West," Robertson said: "A strong, self-confident Russia that feels it's part of the international security family is a Russia that will bring good, will bring quite a bit to the party, and that in itself will bring stability and security."

6. - Anadolu Agency - "EU demands financial aid for Turkey":

Finance ministers of the European Union's member states demanded that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G-7 countries provide exceptional foreign financial aid to help Turkey to overcome the economic crisis. At the Malmeaux summit of the Council of Ecofin, finance ministers of the 15 EU member states and the 13 candidate states declared that Turkey deserved this aid.

At the communique, which was declared following the meeting, the amount of financial aid was not touched but important structural reforms, such as the restructuralization of the financial sector and measures to prevent unlimited spending were praised. The communique said the reformation of the stability of Turkey, makes Turkey deserve foreign financial aid.

Turkey was represented by Finance Minister Sumer Oral at the Ecofin meeting, which was held in Malmeaux, Sweden. Ecofin President Boss Eringholm once again confirmed full support for Turkey and emphasized that the structural reforms and the restructuralization of the financial sector, which had been declared last week as part of the new economic program by Economy Minister Kemal Dervis, were satisfactory. The Ecofin statement asked Turkish government authorities to implement the economic programme without any delay, and pointed out the close cooperation with the international financial bodies. Ecofin declared that the support of the Turkish private sector was also important for the success of the Turkish economic programme. Meanwhile, 1000 demonstrators gathered in Malmeaux, protested the globalization policies lead by the United States. Police arrested 50 demonstrators. Sweden, as the term president of the EU, hosted the Ecofin Summit.

EU presidency supports Turkish efforts

Swedish Finance Minister Boss Eringholm declared support for the efforts and structural reforms of Turkey, Turkish Finance Minister Oral told the Anatolia news agency.