6 March 2001

4. "Disastrous devalution leaves Turkey struggling with its identity", being a millionaire in Turkey yesterday meant that you had enough in your pocket for two doner kebabs. Half a million gets a cup of coffee or a litre of petrol. For a billion you can buy a cheap suit or a bicycle.

5. "The Second Dersim Massacre 1: Munzur is tried to cease existing", with 8 dams to be constructed over Munzur Stream, apple of the eye in Dersim a massacre is cooked up. With dams having no economic use, the region will be depopulated, the nature will be damaged and some of the animal and plant species will extinct.

6. "A report on the Turkish- Israeli military cooperation", the Arab foreign ministers will discuss in their meeting to be heldon March 12 a detailed report on the consequences of the Turkish-Israeli military cooperation against security and stability in the region.

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1. - Reuters - "Turkey Says Missing Kurd Politicians in Pkk Camps":

DIYARBAKIR

Turkish authorities said on Monday they had evidence two missing Kurdish party activists were in separatist rebel camps in northern Iraq.

People's Democracy Party (HADEP) officials Serdar Tanis and Ebubekir Deniz have not been seen since January 25, when they were detained by police in the country's mainly-Kurdish southeast. Police have said they released the men unharmed.

Turkish forces searching a truck entering Turkey from Iraq on Sunday found a letter allegedly written by a member of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) central committee, saying the men were in its camps in northern Iraq, the governor's office in the province of Sirnak told Reuters.

Police arrested the driver of the truck, the official said.

Turkish prosecutors are seeking the closure of HADEP, Turkey's only legal Kurdish party, on the grounds that it maintains links with the PKK. HADEP denies those charges.

HADEP vice president Mehmet Metiner said the letter did nothing to ease concerns the two men had disappeared while in police custody.

"The uncertainty remains. The letter does not lessen our suspicions but increases them," Metiner told Reuters. "Until our party officials are found, the same questions remain."

HADEP and rights groups have held demonstrations demanding more information on the whereabouts of Tanis and Deniz, and HADEP leaders have warned that mass unrest could break out over their disappearance.

The issue threatens the relative peace in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, where fighting betweeen the PKK and security forces has dropped off since Turkey captured and sentenced to death PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999.

More than 30,000 people, most of them Kurds, have died since an armed struggle for self-rule broke out in 1984.

The Turkish military says some 5,000 PKK fighters remain in the mountains of Iraq and Iran. Ankara has sent troops into northern Iraq -- out of Baghdad's control since the end of the 1991 Gulf War -- and has pledged technical support for two Iraqi Kurdish factions to combat the PKK.

Two PKK leaders appeared on Kurdish television at the weekend and said rebels were prepared to re-enter Turkey.

Duran Kalkan and Kani Yilmaz told satellite channel Medya TV that Turkish soldiers had grouped along the Iraqi border and were planning an attack on PKK fighters.

"The Turkish army is moving toward the Iraqi border...with a plan to attack the PKK," Kalkan said. "Clashes could start at any time."

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2. - The Washington Post - "Muslim Tradition Clashes With Turkey's Urban Life":

Feast Day Marked by Backyard Sacrifice

ISTANBUL / by Molly Moore

Across the city - in back yards, along side streets, at parks and even on apartment balconies - the throats of thousands of struggling sheep were slashed in celebration of the start of the annual Muslim Feast of Sacrifice.

But this year, centuries-old tradition has slammed headlong into the modern era of city lifestyles, globalized rules of conduct and changing social values in one of the world's most rapidly urbanizing nations. The annual slaughter has embroiled health authorities, religious leaders, politicians eager to see Turkey join the European Union and animal rights activists in a debate that intersects many of Turkey's most contentious social struggles.

Images of writhing animals spewing crimson streams in the midst of a 21st-century European city have ignited impassioned arguments that even the most devoted followers of Islam are finding difficult to contest.

"The situation today is totally absurd," said Abdurrahman Dilipak, an author who writes extensively on religious issues. "The whole sacrifice has degenerated. It's like a butcher's festival. People are taking sheep to the ninth floor and cutting them in the bathroom. It smells, there are flies all over the place, there's blood going into the water system, and street dogs are grabbing the bones."

Tradition is not easily discarded, however, in a nation where 98 percent of the population is Muslim and in a city with a large population of rural immigrants. To many Muslims, the annual sacrifice of an animal, most commonly a sheep or cow, is one of Islam's principal tenets, representing devotion to God and a sharing of wealth. After the sacrifice, families divide the meat into thirds, with equal portions for their family, neighbors and needy members of the community.
City fathers have attempted to reconcile traditional values, nurtured in Turkey's agrarian past, with the realities of cramped urban living by establishing 169 municipal sacrifice centers throughout this metropolis of 12 million people for the three days of slaughter, which continues through Wednesday. Turkey's director of religious affairs, Mehmet Nuri Yilmaz, issued a statement this weekend urging city residents to make use of the government-provided facilities: "Animals slaughtered on the streets may cause various disease, and their blood could create images of aggression and violence that does not exist in Islam."

The municipal centers also offer one-stop shopping: Residents can purchase a live sheep or cow from a farmer, have it reserved for the slaughter, then return for the butchering and cutting.
At one of the largest centers, where hundreds of makeshift tents have been erected overlooking the Bosporous Strait, entire families turned out Sunday afternoon for the search for the perfect sacrificial sheep or cow, as much of an annual rite as an American family's outing to select the perfect Christmas tree.

The city of Istanbul's official Web site lists the following attributes as "criteria for a good sacrifice": The animal should have no physical disability; its horns, ears and tail should be intact along with a full set of teeth; and it should not be sneezing, coughing or depressed or tired looking.

Banners throughout the livestock corrals declared: "Turkey's champion butchers are here! Hurry to make your appointment for cutting and chopping!" The champion carvers - with arms the size of small tree trunks - sauntered about the stalls, knives and hooks clanging on their belts.
One city resident, preferring to slaughter his purchase himself, stuffed a feisty ram with exquisitely curved horns into the trunk of his white Nissan and slammed the lid, twice querying the seller: "You're sure he'll be okay? He won't suffocate in there?"

Animal rights activists, treading carefully, have tried to advance their message in a slowly changing society where 2½ million sheep, cows and goats were sacrificed during last year's holiday. "We cannot openly say don't kill" the animals, said Dirgul Rona, head of the Turkish Association for Protection of Animals. "That would be defying religious practices and tradition."
Rona said residents have become increasingly sensitive to the treatment of the animals. "Before, people would tie an animal in the building's garden and assign the doorman or just anybody to do the job."

Muzaffer Karaoglu, who grew up around animals in a rural village, came up with a cyber-solution, offering Turkey's first online sheep sale and butchering service. Karaoglu, who said he has made about 100 sales, sees his service as an example of how the "basic roots will stay the same, but methods and approaches will change."

And the dean of theology at Istanbul's Marmara University, Zekeriya Beyaz, suggested that it's time for Islam to remold itself for the needs of a more modern society. "Some meat to eat is not the most urgent need of the people anymore," he said. "Maybe helping someone to find a job or providing a scholarship to a student would also work."

Not for the several families who gathered this morning in their small common dirt yard in a neighborhood on the edge of Istinye - one of the city's most prosperous districts and future home of a new U.S. consulate - to conduct the ritual that has been passed down for generations.
A community elder wielded a freshly sharpened knife nearly as long as his arm. A massive black and white bull was led into the hard-packed yard. Sixteen panting men pulled his feet from under him and left him heaving on his side.

"Wrong direction!" shouted the elder. "The head must face this way," toward the holy city of Mecca. Men and bull struggled. Two restless heifers, next in line for sacrifice, stood nearby, their faces discreetly draped with cloth to prevent them from seeing what was to come. Women and children leaned out every window of the adjacent four-story apartment building.

The men bent over the bull in a moment of prayer. The elder raised the knife. A child on the second-floor balcony buried his face in his hands. A teenage girl one floor above him covered one eye and peeped out the other through her fingers.

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3. - International Herald Tribune - "Wanted or Not, Needy Migrants Will Keep Coming":

PARIS / by Flora Lewis

For several years the warnings have been sounded with increasing urgency but not much response. The pressure of migration from poor countries with bulging populations or internal violence is growing inexorably. Like global warming, it seems too awkward to confront and too demanding to prevent.

Now, 908 Kurds dumped just off a French beach by greedy smugglers are a reminder to the thriving nations of Europe that they have neighbors determined to enter what is seen as their land of plenty.

It is to the credit of France that these refugees, more than half of them children and more women than men, were taken in, given food and medical attention and promised consideration of their request for asylum.

They had been crammed for a week in the hold of a rusty old ship flying the Cambodian flag, given no food and no chance for sanitation by a captain and crew always wearing headmasks so as not to be identified. The crew disappeared after grounding the doomed ship, and while the French believe that they have identified the owner as a Syrian, it is evident that the operation was simply one in the continuing traffic organized by international gangsters. The people of Fréjus, the town nearby, brought clothes and toys to comfort the frightened newcomers. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said humanitarian considerations had to come first in deciding what to do about them. But at the same time there is intense concern, and not only in France, that a blanket welcome would only open floodgates to masses who want to move.

The argument about sorting out clandestine immigrants into which were persecuted and deserve a haven, which are desperately in need of work, which are simply ambitious and ready to make every effort to improve their lives and their children's opportunities is essentially a form of nit-picking. These are people prepared to take enormous risks. The ones on the East Sea apparently paid at least $2,000 each for adults and $1,000 or $1,500 for children, providing some $2 million for this part of the smuggling, although there were other expenses before. They could not bring anything with them, and most didn't know where they would go, but they left their homes willingly. The dilemma is coming to affect every industrial country, although geography exposes some more than others. Obviously, the target countries cannot simply discard all controls and take in anybody who wants to come.

They would be overwhelmed, their economies distorted, their social structures run ragged and their people infuriated. But, just as obviously, they are not going to be able to fence their prosperity safely behind police barriers. Like drug trafficking, the smuggling of people has become too lucrative to be prohibited easily. Temptations for corruption are considerable. And there is still a sense of humane compassion for people so eager to abandon their own societies for an alien one that offers both material benefit and freedom. Migration is as old as human community. It is only in the 20th century, after World War I, that established states came to see it as a danger to be circumscribed. The tremendous increase in the pressure to move is the consequence of globalization, plus population increase in the Third World.

People know from television and films, as they never did before, what life looks like in the comfortable countries. Transportation is easily available. It is a matter of money, which can be scraped together in many cases, and permits that can be avoided, particularly with some more money.

Ease of movement, of people as well as goods and cash, is an essential element of the modern world that its beneficiaries don't want to abandon for themselves, even at the cost of having to let other people also get through more easily. The Schengen agreement of the European Union suppressing border controls is a great facility for citizens of participating countries, as well as for illegals.

There is not going to be any quick, effective answer to the widening gap between rich and poor. Those development efforts which succeed in the reduction of poverty help to diminish the appeal of migration, but it is going to grow faster than anything done in trying either to lessen the incentive or increase the difficulty.

EU countries are trying to sort out among themselves some cooperative policing so that they don't just shove the burden of illegals into the country next door. Some standardized rules could be helpful. But the fact has to be faced that so long as it is possible to earn even the most meager living in the industrial world, people with less will seek to join it and they will have to be accommodated, for everybody's sake.

This is one of the problems arising from the way the world is changing that cannot be solved by the old ways of keeping everybody to themselves. It is desirable to do all that is possible to break up the criminal gangs which exploit the migrants, but it won't be possible to stop the movement.

The more that is done, and the faster, to help poor countries and oppressed minorities, the better the chance of not being overrun. But come they will.

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4. - Daily Telegraph - "Disastrous devalution leaves Turkey struggling with its identity":

By Patrick Bishop

BEING a millionaire in Turkey yesterday meant that you had enough in your pocket for two doner kebabs. Half a million gets a cup of coffee or a litre of petrol. For a billion you can buy a cheap suit or a bicycle.

The Turks have a reputation for stoicism but dreams have been swept away after the lira collapsed last week.

People are apprehensive and touched with bitterness towards the guilty men. Early evening near Taksim Square and a crowd is surging along Istiklal, one of the main shopping streets, looking at goods they cannot afford to buy.

The air is rich with black tobacco, fried chicken and roasting chestnuts. From the mosque's loudspeaker, the muezzin calls the men to prayer, competing with a rap number pounding from a record shop. It's a pure Istanbul scene, neither Oriental nor Western - simply Turkish.

Asli and Jul, both 21, are on their way to the cinema. Asli said: "I'm studying to be an English teacher so I hope I will always been secure. But I worry about my fellow citizens. How are they going to survive?"

Jul said: "This is the worst injustice that has been done to the Turkish people. There's a small minority in this country who benefit from all this and they should feel ashamed of themselves. They're the people inside the state who know how to squeeze money out of the system. They're crooks.

"But we're to blame as much as anyone. We're young but we've been asleep and gone along with things." Turkey is a young country. More than 60 per cent of the population is under 25. It is they who are behind the amazing economic energy which has been grappling with the state-directed economy and frequently winning.

The rulers though, are ancient. Bulent Ecevit, the Prime Minister, who presided over the latest mess is 75. Suleyman Demirel, the former president, was only prised from power after parliament refused to change the law to allow him to try for a further term, which would have meant him leaving office at the age of 82.

A foreign political consultant said: "The only way politicians here want to leave power is in a coffin. The lure of patronage and money is too great." Old things may not be much valued in Turkey, but old age is. That attitude, at least as far as politicians are concerned, may be changing.

Ismail, who runs a gift shop on Istiklal, said: "Most of our problems stem from the fact that the same old gang are messing things up. Thank God that Demirel has gone. Now Ecevit should follow suit." For the ill-educated young the alternatives seem to be apathy or flight. In an old covered market in Pera, no one was buying the kitschy oil paintings from Serkan, 19.

He said: "I hate this job. I don't want to be standing out here in the cold. I'd rather be sitting behind a computer somewhere but I didn't go to university so it isn't going to happen. If I could learn a foreign language and get a visa to live in one of these European countries I could have a much better life."

At least Serkan has a job even if he only gets 130 million lire a month. Ten miles away in the working class suburb of Gazi on the edge of Istanbul, Sultan Kiziltepe, 61, was terrified that she was about to lose hers. She earns 10 million a week cleaning at an office block.

She said: "My husband has bronchitis and can't work and three of my four sons aren't earning. Everything is so expensive, I can't afford anything. What will I do if I get laid off? Who will feed us." The probable answer is neighbours or more fortunate members of the extended family.

For all the dismay, you get the impression that for most people the economic crisis is a setback rather than a catastrophe. Turks are feeling bruised but there is little sign of self-pity.

Unlike their Balkan neighbours in the former Yugoslavia, no one seems keen to be seen as a victim. "There's nothing we can do about things," said one stout lady in a headscarf. "So what's the use of complaining?" The Turkish currency may be in freefall. Turkish spirits are already bouncing back.

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5. - Kurdish Observer - "The Second Dersim Massacre 1: Munzur is tried to cease existing":

With 8 dams to be constructed over Munzur Stream, apple of the eye in Dersim a massacre is cooked up. With dams having no economic use, the region will be depopulated, the nature will be damaged and some of the animal and plant species will extinct.

OKTAY UCAR/ SAVAS POLAT

Dersim, a witness to a number of massacres in its history, is facing a new massacre. The Turkish state, aiming to depopulate the region completed the construction of 2 dams out of 8 over Munzur and began to construct two of them. A dam over Mercan stream, a branch of Munzur, was completed as the construction of Uzun Cayir Dam is continuing. Konaktepe and Konaktepe II dams in process of construction, and Kalatepe, Bozkaya, Harcik and Akyayik dams are planned.

Everywhere will become swamp

Reminding that in case the project was completed, graver outcomes than 1937-38 Dersim massacre at which 60-70 thousand Kurdistanis were murdered would be witnessed, experts said that the region would be totally depopulated and a number of species would cease to exist. The experts emphasized that with dams the climate in the region would change and caused bacterium and illnesses, adding that the land around Munzur would become swamp.

Demographical structure will be changed

The insistence of the Ecevit-Bahceli-Yilmaz coalition government on the project which has no use to economy and people of the region is considered as completing of the Dersim massacre. According to the demographical projection there must be 800 people living in Dersim, whereas at elections of 2000 the population in Dersim was only 71.500. The experts say that this is the result of the official policy to depopulate the region and evacuate the people forcibly. They add that with the dams this policy is aimed at to be completed.

A number of animal and plant species will become extinct

Extinction of plant and animal species which have a role on making the Munzur Valley a "National Park" will be unavoidable with the dams.

Solution is sun and wind

Dersim vadilerine kurulacak 8 barajin toplam maliyetinin 2 milyar dolar olacaðinin altini çizen uzmanlar, güneþ (solar) enerjisi ile ihtiyacin 60 milyon dolarla karþilanabileceðini kaydediyorlar. Ekonomik verilerin dahi, barajlarda israr edilmesinin siyasi bir tutum olduðunu gösterdiðini, bazi rant çevrelerinin bunda etkili olduðunu vurguluyorlar.

Stressing that the dams will cost 2 billion dolars, the experts say that it can be met by solar energy costing only 60 million dolars. According to the experts, economic data show that the insistence on the dams is a political.

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6. - Arabic News - "A report on the Turkish- Israeli military cooperation":

The Arab foreign ministers will discuss in their meeting to be heldon March 12 a detailed report on the consequences of the Turkish-Israeli military cooperation against security and stability in theregion.

The report stresses that there is a coolness in the Turkish- Israelirelations as it has been noted that Turkey has taken several positivestances revealing a new vision and attitude towards the neighboring Arab states and causes of the region, foremost being its stances concerning the military cooperation with Israel and al-Aqsa Intifada towards which Turkey has pursued a political attitude with Israel and the Arab world.

The report explained that this Turkish political attitude can be classified in the following:

A - abrogating the deal of renovating Turkish tanks with Israel

B - Canceling the visit of the Israeli army chief Shaoul Mofaz to Turkey in October 2000. The Turkish foreign ministry considered the use of weapons in the holy lands as a humiliation for the Feelings of Muslims in the world and in Turkey. And the Turkish dailies launched a campaign of criticism against Israel's brutality. The report added that also among these steps are.

C - The Turkish's army leadership canceling of two important visits to Israel that were due to be held by the commander of the Turkish naval forces and the commander of the Turkish air force in November and December, 2000, in compliance with prevailing atmospheres in which the recent Islamic summit was held in Doha and the continued acts of killing and repression committed by the Israeli occupation army against the Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories.

D - He Turkish naval forces decided to postpone the training military maneuvers " the bride of the sea" which were due December 2000 with the Participation of the USA and Israel.

The report also warned against the fact that the " coolness" in the Israeli- Turkish relations, the Turkish option to maintain an alliance with Israel will be valid and requires from the Arab side carefulness especially Turkey has suspending problems with certain Arab states especially over " the borders, the Waters and the Kurds.

However, the Arab foreign ministers discussed this issue in previous session and expressed their great concern over the continued Turkish- Israeli military co-operation and called on Turkey to re-consider this co-operation which constitutes a grave threat against Arab national security and the region as a whole.

On the other hand, Another report for the Arab League on the problem of the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates and warned against the development of this co-operation between Turkey and Israel in the field of waters.

The report which was prepared by the Arab League to be debated on the Arab foreign ministers to this effect said that this co-operation constitutes a grave danger on Arab water security as Turkey had given 6 projects in the field of irrigation and agriculture in " al-Ghab" projects to Israeli companies at a cost of USD 1000 million without declaring any bids. A matter which indicates that this co-operation in the area of waters inflects damages in the interests of Syria and Iraq to the waters.

The report viewed the measures taken by the Turkish side in implementing its projects in al-Ghab project without prior consultation with the coast- sharing states, namely Syria and Iraq as illegal.