19 May 2003

1. "Ocalan: Law on Peace and Democratic Participation", KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan drew attention that it was not possible for disarmament of the guerrilla and their participation in the democratic life to be brought by the repentance law, adding that it was only possible by a law on peace and democratic participation.

2. "Among Kurds, Impatience and Anger Is Growing", old and painful fault lines are beginning to open in the messy ethnic patchwork of Iraq's north.

3. "Kurd rebel group in Iraq says will work with U.S.", a Kurdish guerrilla group based in northern Iraq said on Saturday it was ready to work peacefully alongside the United States to help build a democratic Iraq. The Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PCDK), closely linked to the Kurdish rebels neighbouring Turkey has fought for decades, said it was abandoning the armed struggle.

4. "Kurds' Influence in Kirkuk Rises Along With Discord", ethnic Power Struggle Plays Out Under U.S. Control

5. "Armenian Genocide Lesson", the U.S. government is rightly calling for the prosecution of Iraqis who committed human rights abuses and war crimes. Unfortunately, that same U.S. government downplayed Genocide Awareness Day on April 24, which marked the 88th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. In that horror in 1915-17, Turkey killed an estimated 1.4 million Armenians. It's time to stop playing politics with mass murder.

6. "Turkey emerges stronger for not bowing to US", Turkey's seeming fall from grace with the US may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. The Iraq war and the tortured diplomacy that led up to it may help resolve Turkey's conflict between its ``strategic alliance'' with America and its drive to join the European Union.

1. - Kurdish Observer - "Ocalan: Law on Peace and Democratic Participation":

KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan drew attention that it was not possible for disarmament of the guerrilla and their participation in the democratic life to be brought by the repentance law, adding that it was only possible by a law on peace and democratic participation.

MHA/FRANKFURT / 18 May 2003

KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan made important statements on the "Repentance Law" and democratic unity. Ocalan pointed out that a new law that would allow the forces to participate in democratic life was necessary. "There must a law passed on peace and democratic participation. I call the law to be passed as such. The guerrilla forces, now making war practice, will participate in peace and democracy. DEHAP must make contact with AKP on the matter and meet with CHP representatives as well. Disarmament of the guerrilla can be managed only through a just peace and their free participation in democratic political life," said the President.

Ocalan continued with words to the effect: "What is important is to manage to mingle the disarmament with a true and real democracy. If the law is delayed, there may be conflicts. If USA enforces, People's Defence Force can withdrow to north. It is not right for the US Embassy to make false distinctions like KADEK is one thing and the Kurdish question is another. USA knows very well the close relation between KADEK and the Kurdish question. US's opinion that even if KADEK abandons its weapons we shall force them do so is to try to seize control without taking steps towards the resolution of the Kurdish question. Our main collocutor is Turkey on the matter. We are in a process to solve the question with Turkey. If US play a role, it must help to solve it. It should not cause to draw Turkey into a war by forcing forces of legitimate defence. We have declared cease-fire in reply to my kidnapping by USA and its effective collaboration in the struggle against us. We have no such problem to wage war with USA. But if we are made fed up with up to our neck, the forces will withdraw to mountains. American soldiers can not climb these mountains. It is not a right policy to make KADEK and Turkey confront eacp other. Saying that Kurds are one thing and KADEK is another is to close eyes to realities. Everybody knows that we represent the Kurdish people. We are waging a struggle for democracy. I find US's role in overthrow dictators. We do not make a strict anti-Americanism. We meet with its representatives and there can be a democratic cooperation. If they do not make any negativeness and sincerely want the democratic unity of Kurds and Turks, such an approach will have effects on democratization of all the countries in the region. They should not confuse us with terrorist organizations. We have never see seperatism as the main method. Our slogan is democratic integrity and it is our principle. But if they say no matter what that 'I will crush them,' ours will know how to defend themselves."

"Democratic unity is for benefit of both Turks and Kurds"

The President also had this to say: "Democratic unity is for benefit of both Turks and Kurds. I think that all solutions other than democratic unity and brotherhood in the region will bring sufferings and massacres. My all struggles are to avoid such consequences. If Turkey does not change its denial mentality and bring democratic solutions to the problems, thousands of guerrillas will enter to Turkey and a new period of war will start. A number of forces and states will become a part of it. Turkey must realize this. We will not surrender and fight with others' weapons."

"My principle is free life"

The KADEK President added the statement "There can be no life without freedom" to his message "My principle is either free life or death". Ocalan underscored the following: "If they impose disarmament, the right to legitimate defence will be enjoyed. Our forces are the guarantee for democracy and freedom. Their raison d'etre is only this. They are not attack forces but ones to defend themselves. Their entrance to Turkey can only be an attempt for a new peace and democracy drive. Its aim will not be to seperate Turkey. Like it or not they will extend from Dersim to Serhat, to Toros. If American armed forces attack on them with all their might and technical advantage, they will be resisted by these forces that will form the Democratic Front of Iraq. Everybody knows how I have struggled for the freedom of Kurdistan. I did not give up my struggle."

Ocalan continued his statement by saying the following: "Talebani speaks the truth when he says Hasan Cemal that Apo has listened to me. But there is something missing. He has tried to attract us and the Kurdish movement to the American line. If I went to them in 93 they would give everything to me. They could give even Stinger missiles. But how could I wage a war against Turkey with these weapons. It did not fit to my ideology and the notion democratic unity of peoples. The alliance and relations between Kurds and Turks goes to a thousand years ago. It begins with the entrance to Anatolia. This dialogue is of vital importance. It continues until 1920s."

"Democratic Unity of the Middle East is an attainable goal"

The President, giving examples of the European Union and United States of America, said that the Democratic Unity of the Middle East in also an attainable goal. "The Middle East unity can be established through strategic alliance between Turks and Kurds. The democracy can be brought to the Middle East thorough their democratic unity. Now the Middle East is beginning to be democratized."

"Democracy will be brought about by peoples"

Ocalan said that democracy would be brought by the peoples in the Middle East and the Turkish-Kurdish alliance, not US-England alliance. "It will not be brought about by the alliance between US and England. They will form the Middle East according to their interests. Arabs can not bring it either. They are waging a war against Israel. Can Iran bring it? No. Its mentality is not suitable. In Turkey there is a tendency towards and tradition of democratization. So is in Kurdistan. I have wanted to improve it through PKK but could not succeed completely. Therefore I say continuously: Develop Coordination for a Democratic Society."

"No bad legacy to peoples"

The KADEK President emphasized that it was dangerous not to approach positively to the Kurdish question and PKK and had this to say: "KADEK will enter to the parliament in the South. They will give heavy artillery too. Council members will find a place there. If US finds it in its interest it helps to establish a state. Afterwards it might leave it in the lurch. Consequently a bad legacy might be left to peoples. Therefore the key to all problems in Turkey is a matter of reconciliation. If a law is to be passed, it should be Law on Peace and Democratic Participation, not the repentance law. It is not passed, it will mean to push KADEK to the arms of USA and primitive nationalistic policies. The democratization process in Turkey can be possible only through peace with Kurds. Weapons are abandoned. It is not a big matter. But if peace is not secured, Turkey will be divided. I warn everybody. Do not let yourselves be deceived. And for it democratic integrity of Turkey must be considered the key item on the agenda. We do not accept seperatism even if it is imposed on us by others. I have opened both ways. These must be explained very carefully and everybody must understand it."

Ocalan stressed that AKP had tried to do their best with the adjustment laws: "Do they have the willpower as far as democratization and the Kurdish question are concerned? We will find it in a short while. I am not opposed AKP totally. But I do not approve their relations with religious sects while I support their steps towards democratization. There are subtle plans of some foreign forces as far as disarmament is concerned. We want to disturb such a ploy. If AKP has a willpower, it will act accordingly. We have loving relations with the Turkish people, not relations of war."

"I dedicate it to the memory of Kemal Pir and Haki"

The President pointed out that both sides had mistakes and sent the following message: "Both sides must express their mistakes. The rest is peace and it is important. Who can lose from brotherhood? Who can lose from integrity? CHP must understand it, they must support our approach. Eighty years were lost. Now fifty years are tried to be lost. My deliverance to Turkey is the continuation of the same ploy. But it can be avoided through peace and democratic participation. I warn as a democratic citizen. I do not issue orders. And my legal position is a hindrance for it. What said Mustafa Kemal in his Bursa speech, they must be read. He has said to youth, 'We have established the Republic, you must claim it.' Deniz Gezmis and his friends have claimed it. I have dedicated my last meeting to Deniz and his friends. And this week I dedicated the meeting to the memory of Kemal Pir and Haki (Karer), valuable children of the Turkish people."

2. - The New York Times - "Among Kurds, Impatience and Anger Is Growing":

KIRKUK /17 May 2003 / by Sabrina Tavernise

Old and painful fault lines are beginning to open in the messy ethnic patchwork of Iraq's north.

Since the end of the war, Kurds in the area have been making the trek from the towns to which they were banished by Saddam Hussein during brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns of the 1970's and 1980's back to the places where they grew up.

But the homecomings can be awkward affairs. In many instances, returning Kurds confront Arabs who were brought in to replace them as part of the government's strategy of establishing a firm hold over the rich oil resources of the north.

Now Kurdish leaders want them out but the Americans want to move deliberately in order to protect legitimate property rights. In an interview this week, Sami Abdul Rahman, one of the highest-ranking members of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, criticized the American approach as too slow.

"We can compromise on everything but Arabization," Mr. Rahman said. "The Arabs are leaving the land they stole, but Americans are bringing them back. This is the biggest insult to the Kurdish people. Those who delay decisions will have to face popular anger."

The American authorities say they do not have the manpower or the system to sort out property claims. Their objective is to temporarily freeze living arrangements in their prewar condition, intervening on occasion when a weapon is involved. In some cases, American forces have asked returning Kurds to stay away from vacant villages. Kamal Kerkuki, 49, a Kurd from this city whose land was taken away in the 1960's during the first sweep of the area by the Baath Party, said some of the more aggressive Kurds have even been jailed for short stretches.

Sorting out the truth can be difficult. Stories are exaggerated and emotions often run high. The problems in the city proper peaked a few weeks ago, said Col. William Mayville of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. But the provinces are still tense. Just today, Colonel Mayville agreed on a split of the harvest between the Arabs who planted it and the Kurds who own the land.

The Kurds "are the victims," Colonel Mayville said. "But part of what they are asking to redress could cause more victims."

While the debate goes on, many Arabs who fear retribution are simply abandoning the farms and villages they occupied decades ago. A drive through the foothills here is a surreal tour through a land of empty villages, some slowly being resettled by Kurds. Here in Kirkuk, the heart of the Kurdish enclave, Arabs have even been beaten, taken hostage and threatened with guns.

But cool-headed Kurds are working with American forces to defuse a potentially explosive situation. Mr. Kerkuki spent this afternoon persuading a Kurdish family to protect an Arab husband and wife who had fled in fear.

Mr. Kerkuki, the Kurdish representative to the American forces here, has worked 18-hour days on ethnic conflicts in Kirkuk since the war began, resettling both Kurds and Arabs. He also speaks his mind.

"Americans have one policy: everything should wait until a solution can be found through law," he said in his car between interventions. "But I told them, `If you went home now and saw someone in your house who kicked you out 12 years ago, you wouldn't want to wait around.' "

Consider Muhsen Zanganah, a father of five who has been living in a camp about 60 miles from here since losing his home in the late 1980's. Two weeks ago, he packed up his family and brought them here, to his old neighborhood. Finding his house gone, he occupied the first empty one he found.

Today, American soldiers told him he had two weeks to leave.

"I have lived for years in a tent," he said angrily, sitting on the porch of the house. "If I have to leave, where will I go? The Americans are protecting the Arabs. Kurds are very angry about Americans in Kirkuk."

The Arab who made the complaint "was a senior member of the Baath Party," Mr. Zanganah said. "If he comes back to force my family to leave, I will kill him."

Arabs are afraid. In Qadesiya, "For Sale" signs hang on the walls of courtyards. In interviews today, three families said they felt threatened; two said they planned to leave. One Arab woman, a teacher, said Kurdish militias were coming into neighborhoods at night and firing guns to scare people away.

"They are correcting a mistake with a mistake," said the woman, who moved to Kirkuk in 1980. "On TV, Kurds are saying Kirkuk is only for the Kurds. They say only `original Arabs' can remain here. What are we, fake?"

Kurds have been using hard language. The regional parliament, located in the city of Erbil, drew up a law during its Monday session that will set up some ground rules for "cleaning the traces of the Arabization process" from the region.

People continue to wait to return to their hometowns. About 50 Kurdish families are living in the Iraqi Army's Emergency Reserve barracks on the edge of town. More families are living in a sports stadium nearby. Thousands still reside in tent cities.

"They will have to wait, but they are not willing to wait for a long time," Mr. Kerkuki said. "We cannot control them. America cannot control them."

3. - Reuters - "Kurd rebel group in Iraq says will work with U.S.":

TUNCELI / 17 May 2003

A Kurdish guerrilla group based in northern Iraq said on Saturday it was ready to work peacefully alongside the United States to help build a democratic Iraq. The Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PCDK), closely linked to the Kurdish rebels neighbouring Turkey has fought for decades, said it was abandoning the armed struggle.

''(We) will work jointly with the United States and democratic forces,'' it said in a statement.
The news will be welcome in Washington as it seeks to rebuild Iraq's political and physical infrastructure after the war to topple former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

But the group's close links to the Kurdish rebels both Turkey and the United States class as ''terrorist'' will likely complicate any cooperation the group may seek with U.S. forces.
Kurdish sources say the PCDK was formed last year as an offshoot of the rebel group Turkey fights, known as the PKK or KADEK, and has perhaps 2,000 lightly armed fighters in northern Iraq who have sometimes clashed with other local Kurdish factions.

Turkey keeps its own troops in northern Iraq to crack down on the rebels it has fought in a conflict that has killed more than 30,000 people since 1984.

Ankara is under pressure from Washington and Iraqi Kurds to withdraw its forces but is unlikely to welcome any indications that the United States is negotiating with rebels Turkey has vowed to wipe out.

4. - Washington Post - "Kurds' Influence in Kirkuk Rises Along With Discord":

Ethnic Power Struggle Plays Out Under U.S. Control

KIRKUK / 19 May 2003 / by Scott Wilson

In cooperation with U.S. occupation forces, two armed Kurdish organizations have moved swiftly in recent weeks to gain a political hold on Kirkuk, a city in the northern Iraqi oil fields that the groups have long coveted as a Kurdish economic and cultural center.

Since moving into Kirkuk on April 10 behind fleeing Iraqi soldiers, U.S. forces have struggled to build a viable local administration in a region where Kurds are the majority among several often hostile ethnic groups. For help, U.S. officers have turned to eager leaders from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), who have administered sectors of a largely autonomous U.S.-protected portion of northern Iraq since shortly after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The two groups, each with strong militias, have sent in more than 400 police officers and a variety of city administrators from the Kurdish enclave that begins 25 miles east of this city. This has formalized their political reach outside that area for the first time. Many of those police officers are former pesh merga guerrillas, who have spent decades fighting efforts by the government of former president Saddam Hussein to bring the independence-minded Kurds to heel.

U.S. officers have also reached out to local Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmen, ethnic groups that each make up a significant minority of greater Kirkuk's 1 million residents. But Kurds, with a long history of working with the U.S. military, have emerged with more influence in the police force and the interim city council. As a result, the council has already been boycotted by a Turkmen group to protest perceived U.S. favoritism toward Kurds.

The Kurdish parties, among the few well-organized political organizations on Iraq's new landscape, are increasing their visibility here after years of operating as clandestine cells hiding from Hussein's security forces. The PUK has moved part of its interior ministry from the autonomous zone to Kirkuk and has taken over the city's only television station, all with at least tacit U.S. permission.

Party officials have also been buying property from Kirkuk's Arabs, often at inflated prices, in hopes of increasing the number of Kurdish residents before a U.S.-sponsored mayoral and city council election scheduled this week for this city 150 miles north of Baghdad.

"The only real opposition groups in this region were Kurdish, the only ones to stand up to the regime," said Mohammed Kamal Salah, the KDP's deputy director in Kirkuk. "The truth is that this is a Kurdish city, so we have come to represent it."

Until now, U.S. forces have tried to keep the Kurdish parties at arm's length, even ordering the pesh merga out of Kirkuk in the days after the Hussein government's collapse. Turning to them now marks a shift by U.S. forces that has potentially far-reaching implications for stability in a region with restive Kurdish populations scattered across four countries.

While Kurdish party leaders meet in Baghdad to negotiate a role in a federated Iraq, their foot soldiers have worked on the ground to tip the political balance in their favor. The parties, whose pesh merga moved alongside U.S. forces throughout the northern campaign, appear to be riding that mutually useful alliance to greater political power. In endorsing the Kurdish role, however, the United States has become a player in the ethnic realignment that has swept Iraq since Hussein's fall by trying to create local institutions that it hopes will endure after U.S. forces withdraw.

During Hussein's three-decade rule, Iraqi forces put down Kurdish rebellions with massacres and poison gas attacks that killed what human rights groups estimate was more than 100,000 people. After the Gulf War, U.S. warplanes began protecting a 17,000-square-mile Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. Now the Kurds are trying to extend their reach into the two major northern cities outside that enclave: Kirkuk, which sits above huge oil reserves, and Mosul, an oil center where a similar power struggle between Kurdish, Arab and other ethnic groupings is playing out under the watch of U.S. forces.

Turkey, which did not allow U.S. forces to invade from its territory, has warned against allowing Kurdish groups to assume political or military power in Kirkuk or elsewhere in northern Iraq. Fearing that Kurdish control of the economically important city could encourage Turkey's separatist Kurds, Turkish officials threatened to dispatch troops to evict pesh merga militias after they defied U.S. orders not to enter Kirkuk. The pesh merga withdrew, but the United States has invited their political wing to return.

"It's a reward from the allied forces to allow the Kurds back in here," said Muner Qafi, political director of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the largest party representing ethnic Turkmen in Kirkuk. "If the Americans left right now, this city would be the start of a huge civil conflict, not only here but across the country."

In recent weeks, U.S. forces have tried to help establish a representative city government and police force. Because Hussein used settlement of Arabs to alter the demographics of this strategic region, census information remained secret. No one is sure of the size of each ethnic group, although most agree that the Kurds represent a majority.

And now the numbers are increasing as hundreds of Kurds -- displaced years ago by Hussein's "Arabization" campaign, which paid Arabs from the south to settle on Kurdish land -- have returned to reclaim their property. Many more intend to do so once school lets out in the Kurdish enclave in July. Violence is already on the rise. On Saturday, witnesses said Arab men from the nearby town of Hawijah arrived in several trucks and opened fire in town, killing at least five people.

Army Col. William Mayville, commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, has called on Kurdish leaders to condemn the forced evictions that have sent hundreds of Arabs southward. Until Saturday, he had been mostly successful in preventing deadly ethnic violence and he has asked Kurds to settle property disputes in neighborhood committees. The Kurdish support, however, could change once the Americans leave.

Mayville set up a city council of 24 members, six from each ethnic group. But rival ethnic leaders say the Kurdish influence extends beyond its council seats, given to the two major parties and the Kurdistan Communist Party. The two major Kurdish parties, once bitter political, economic and military enemies within their secessionist movement, have teamed up to consolidate Kurdish political power.

The Iraqi Turkmen Front received all six seats set aside for the ethnic group. But three smaller Turkmen parties complained, and U.S. forces took five seats away from the front to give to the others. Only the Turkmen Front, however, operated in Kirkuk during Hussein's rule. The other three Turkmen parties, Qafi said, were based in the Kurdish enclave and are sympathetic to the Kurdish cause. The Turkmen Front, once referred to as "brothers" by the same Kurdish leaders who now accuse it of being an extremist group with subversive ties to Turkey, will protest by refusing to occupy its seat.

The police force, now consisting of at least 500 officers, has also become dominated by Kurds. Although the precinct commands have been divided evenly, Kurdish officers outnumber those from other groups because they also make up the plainclothes secret police, according to Kirkuk residents and Kurdish rivals. The Assyrian Christians could not fill out the full contingent sought by the U.S. Army, so most of their positions were given to Kurds.

Trained in academies, the Kurdish police have been working for years in the enclave cities of Sulaymaniyah and Irbil. Kurdish officials say all of them are former pesh merga fighters, including Maohat Asad, whose family was driven from its home in Kirkuk by Arabs 16 years ago.

"I came back and found my family house totally flattened," said Asad, who wears a laminated badge issued by the 173rd Airborne Brigade. "Anyone we ever had in our house, even visiting family, we had to tell the Baath Party. They eventually kicked us out. But this will be resolved. Now we're working alongside the Americans."

5. - The Moscow Times - "Armenian Genocide Lesson":

19 May 2003 / by Michael Chapman*

The U.S. government is rightly calling for the prosecution of Iraqis who committed human rights abuses and war crimes. Unfortunately, that same U.S. government downplayed Genocide Awareness Day on April 24, which marked the 88th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. In that horror in 1915-17, Turkey killed an estimated 1.4 million Armenians. It's time to stop playing politics with mass murder.

As the Ottoman Empire fell apart, nationalist Turks staged a coup and gained control of Turkey in 1908. This "Young Turks" government was dictatorial and headed by three men. From their own words, letters, documents, diplomatic correspondence from Italy, America and Germany, news reports, eyewitness accounts, photographs and other documentation, it is clear that the triumvirate followed policies to exterminate the Armenian population by one means or another. The Young Turks used World War I as cover to commit their atrocities while most of the world was looking elsewhere.

Thus, starting on April 24, 1915, thousands of Armenians were arrested and imprisoned, charged with anti-government activity. Most were then executed. Hundreds of thousands of others were killed by starvation, dehydration, beatings, rape and execution. Others were worked or marched to death.

On May 19, 1916, government leader Enver Pasha said: "The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation." In July 1916, the German ambassador cabled to Germany, "In its attempt to carry out its purpose to resolve the Armenian question by the destruction of the Armenian race, the Turkish government has refused to be deterred by our representations, nor by those of the American Embassy." American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr. said in 1919: "When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact."

In 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan said, "Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it, ... the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten." In 1994, Israel's deputy foreign minister, Yossi Beilin, said: "It was not war. It was most certainly massacre and genocide, something the world must remember. ... We will always reject any attempt to erase its record."

Jemal Pasha, Turkey's interior minister, publicly admitted that "800,000 Armenian deportees were actually killed." Estimates by R.J. Rummel, a University of Hawaii political scientist and respected genocide scholar, place the number killed at around 1.4 million.

Today, the government of Turkey denies there was any "genocide" and argues that Armenians also killed Turks during the war. The latter point is true. However, many of those Turks were killed by Armenian irregulars fighting with the Russians during the war. Rummel estimates that those Armenians killed about 75,000 Turks.

For three years now the Armenian Assembly of America and the Armenian National Committee have tried to get President George W. Bush to recognize what happened in Turkey as "genocide." More than 168 members of Congress have also urged Bush to do this. Bush, in fact, had pledged to do so when he campaigned for president in 2000. But he has not kept that pledge. Every April 24 he fudges the language to not upset the Turkish government.

In this year's statement, Bush referred to the killing of the Armenians as a "tragedy" that just somehow happened.

No country wants genocide linked to its history. But facts are facts. And putting them all on the table can help set the record straight and provide people with information to help prevent genocide from happening again. Germany is forever stained because of the Holocaust. But no one blames today's Germans for what happened 60 years ago. And in Turkey's case, two postwar trials were held and the Young Turks' leaders were found guilty.

We can't pick and choose between crimes against humanity. We can't condemn Saddam Hussein and his regime and give other regimes a pass. Of course, we can't undo the past or raise the dead. But we can show leadership. We can recognize the Armenian genocide and talk about it truthfully. And we can teach our children about it. I think the Armenian children who died so many years ago would like that.

*Michael Chapman, editorial director at the Cato Institute, www.cato.org, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.

6. - The Bangok Post - "Turkey emerges stronger for not bowing to US":

19 May 2003 / by Haldun Gulalp*

Turkey's seeming fall from grace with the US may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. The Iraq war and the tortured diplomacy that led up to it may help resolve Turkey's conflict between its ``strategic alliance'' with America and its drive to join the European Union.

The elections last November that brought the Justice and Development party (AKP) to power were preceded by a dispute between the members of the then-ruling coalition over enacting the reforms demanded by the EU. Some liberal elements of that ``secular'' coalition resigned from the government and joined with the Islamists to push the reforms through parliament.

After coming to power, the AKP's leaders, former Islamists who had reinvented themselves as ``conservative democrats'', energetically engaged with the United States, the EU and the United Nations on issues ranging from Cyprus to Iraq, from Kurdish language rights to other human rights issues within Turkey.

Having suffered the oppressive practices of Turkey's ``secular'' state and recognising that human rights must be protected across the board, the AKP emerged as a credible interlocutor with the West. The US, preoccupied with the supposed spectre of a ``clash of civilisations'' between Islam and the West, saw the AKP's modern, Westernised face as an opportunity and urged the EU to admit Turkey.

Today, both ``conservative democrats'' and liberals advocate passing all the reforms needed to gain accession to the EU, while opponents include extreme nationalists, of both left and right, as well as some elements of the ``secular'' establishment. The Europeans could have tipped the balance decisively in favour of the reformers by finally rewarding the efforts of the pro-EU Turks at last December's summit of EU leaders. Instead, the EU kept Turkey waiting yet again, putting off formal negotiations that, in any case, may take years to complete.

Europe's persistent reluctance puts the Turks in a quandary. The Americans want full EU membership for Turkey _ a longstanding Nato member and close American ally _ while Europeans complain about the Turkish military's domestic political role. The paradox is that, by maintaining a political distance and thus limiting Turkey's options, Europe may end up reinforcing Turkey's status as a military outpost of the US.

At least, that was how things were shaping up prior to the war in Iraq. Then, despite massive US pressure, Turkey's parliament unexpectedly rejected the government's proposal to allow US troops in Turkey to launch an invasion from Turkish territory. Turkey's refusal to grant the Americans access to military bases on its territory effectively ruled out a northern front in the war. The Turkish government even attempted a regional initiative for a peaceful solution to the crisis, an effort no current EU member could have contemplated.

Parliament's rejection of US troops powerfully refutes suggestions that Turkey was primarily concerned about the size of the American aid package on offer as an inducement to cooperate. Suggestions that characterised the vote as revealing the government's true ``Islamic'' character ignore the fact that the only opposition party in parliament, the Republican People's party _ founded by Ataturk and still fully ``secularist'' _ voted against the plan. Likewise, other elements of Turkey's secular establishment, including the president and the military leadership, either opposed or were lukewarm, at best, to the idea of war in Iraq.

Turkey's military initially remained silent on the issue, uncharacteristically watching the civilian political process unfold. By contrast, the military had earlier publicly criticised AKP initiatives on Cyprus.

Their silence on Iraq reflected their apprehension about unwanted alternatives: either support the US plan and risk encouraging Kurdish moves towards an independent state, or oppose the Americans and jeopardise a critical strategic relationship. They chose to defer to the civilian leadership and to parliament which, in voting down the US plan, reflected overwhelming public sentiment against the war. Only after the vote did the chief of staff publicly endorse the original proposal to bring in American troops.

In fact, the allegedly Islamic party had skilfully managed to negotiate with an unrelenting US, consult with the Turkish military and president, and share all information with the public and parliament. Walking a fine line in what was essentially a lose-lose situation, the party leadership laid out the stakes clearly and judiciously left the final decision to parliament. The outcome was a victory for Turkish democracy and was recognised as such internationally.

After the US military action in Iraq, the tables may be turning in surprising ways. As America establishes itself in Iraq, Turkey's geopolitical military significance may decline. Yet the declared American aim of building a Muslim democracy in Iraq will only enhance Turkey's symbolic importance as a role model.

This shift in Turkey's strategic role may also be reflected in a new domestic balance between the military and the forces pushing for reform. With careful management, Turkey may find itself drawing closer to Europe, while rebuilding its relationship with America.

* Haldun Gulalp is professor of sociology at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, and is currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC.