9
May 2003
2. "The Honeymoon Is Over for Turkish Government", the optimism following a novice Islamist party's election fades after Iraq and Cyprus issues strain foreign relations, and as economy still sputters.
3. "Turkish PM says confidence-building measures will help Cyprus solution", Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that measures aimed at building confidence between the Turkish and Greek sides of Cyprus would help efforts to end the island's 29-year division.
4. "In Turkey, childhoods vanish in weary harvests", a desire to join Europe could spur Turkey's efforts to reduce the ranks of its 1.6 million child laborers.
5. "World War I and the Future of Iraq", the year was 1993. Turgut Ozal, then Turkey’s president, wrote an urgent letter to his prime minister, Suleyman Demirel. Since then, not much has changed. On the contrary, standstill and ignorance are still being cherished - sometimes termed as red lines, sometimes as sensitivities.
6. "EU concerned at lack of religious freedom in Turkey", EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said Thursday he had discussed the problems posed by EU candidate Turkey's lack of religious freedom in talks with a senior Vatican official.
1. - The Kurdish Observer - "Ocalan’s visiting times further restricted":
08 May 2003
KADEK President met with his lawyers and his brother but the visiting time was shortened. He saw his lawyers for 45 minutes and his brother for 15. The lawyers Aysel Tugluk, Irfan Dundar and Mehmet Sakar first went to Gemlik Gendarme Command in the morning. Then they left for Imrali together with Mehmet Ocalan.
Ocalan met with his lawyers for 45 minutes and with his brother 15 minutes as at the last week. The lawyers said that although the allocated time was limited the President consented to meet with him bearing his responsibility in his mind, and that the meetings would continue till their petitions would be replied.
M. Sezgin Tanrikulu, Chairman of Diyarbakir Bar Association, stated that the time limitation of the meetings of KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan was in violation of laws. "If the regulation did not change, if the duration of the meetings was 45 minutes, why had he previously been allowed to see his lawyers for an hour? If it was an hour, why did the last meeting last 45 minutes. These questions must be answered," said Tanrikulu.
Tanrikulu talked to our newspaper, reminding that there were no time limitations in the regulation as far as the meetings of convicts with their lawyers. “A client can be a convict, a detainee or under detention – there is no time limitation on the meetings. The only measure is sufficient time. And it is determined by convicts and their lawyers themselves.”
The Chairman of Diyarbakir Bar Association pointed out that if lawyers needed to see more than one convict, then there could be a time limitations. Tanrikulu continued to say the following: “But in Imrali Prison there is only one convict, so other convicts do not wait for lawyers to finish their meeting with their clients. Reducing the duration of meetings is unlawful.”
Lawyer Tanrikulu gave the following information: „There are
legal paths. For example Institution of Enforcement of Sentences.
Convicts and lawyers can submit petititions to it as far as problems
in prisons are concerned. A judge investigates matter in question
and makes a decision. The second path is the Enforcement Council in
Prisons. The third path; they can submit petitions to public prosecution
office if officials in charge mistreat them or misuse their authority.
And if the domestic path are exhausted, they can always take their
case to the European Court Of Human Rights.”
2. - The Los Angeles Times - "The Honeymoon Is Over for Turkish Government":
The optimism following a novice Islamist party's election fades after Iraq and Cyprus issues strain foreign relations, and as economy still sputters.
ISTANBUL, Turkey / May 8, 2003
by Amberin Zaman
Six months ago, voters angered by decades of corruption and mismanagement swept the novice Justice and Development Party into office, hoping that this nation's first single-party government in 15 years could end a recession that had left 2 million people jobless.
Despite qualms over the party's Islamist roots, Western-oriented business leaders welcomed the result. Financial markets soared, interest rates fell and this predominantly Muslim country of 67 million people seemed ready to rise to its economic potential.
But foreign policy setbacks and rising tensions between the new government and the nation's armed forces have eroded much of that optimism.
"Today there are few signs that they can fix the economy or that they have even devised a policy to do so," said Cuneyt Ulsever, a liberal economist and commentator for the newspaper Hurriyet.
Friction With the West
Gloom has spread across boardrooms here in the country's financial capital since parliament rejected a bill that would have enabled the United States to deploy combat troops in Turkey for the attack on Iraq.
Turks opposed to the war were delighted by the March 1 vote, but relations with the country's most powerful ally were badly damaged. So were Turkey's finances when the Bush administration withdrew $6 billion in conditional grants that would have helped cushion the effects of the war next door.
Any hope that the loss would be offset by financial help from European nations that also opposed the war dimmed when the government refused in March to sign off on a United Nations plan to reunite the island of Cyprus. The island is divided between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot governments. European leaders saw Turkey's rebuff as an obstacle to its bid to join the European Union, which has accepted Cyprus' Greek government as a member.
Turkey's isolation over Iraq and Cyprus has "limited the room for maneuver on the economy," said a senior Western diplomat in Ankara, the Turkish capital. "This has sharply reduced their capacity to deliver much this year and next."
"We were counting on the [U.S.] cash to roll over our debt," said Reha Denemec, a Justice and Development lawmaker and advisor to the government on economic policy. "Losing it was a big blow."
Turkey's total debt stands at $200 billion. With $93.4 billion worth of debt repayments due this year, "the chief worry is whether the government can continue to repay its debt by successfully lowering interest rates," said Atif Cezairli, the Istanbul-based head of research for the Dutch bank ING.
That, in turn, hinges on whether the government can rebuild confidence in the markets.
"The upside of the crisis with America is that it's forcing the government to learn to stand on its own feet," said Mustafa Koc, chairman of Turkey's largest industrial conglomerate, Koc Holdings.
Strapped for Cash
The government has felt obliged to abandon some populist campaign promises. By agreeing to raise taxes and slash public spending, it convinced the International Monetary Fund late last month to disburse a long-delayed $703-million loan that is part of a three-year bailout package worth $16 billion.
And despite the chill in ties, the Bush administration has invited Turkey to bid for contracts to rebuild Iraq and has secured congressional approval for a $1-billion grant to shore up the Turkish economy. The funds can be used to leverage loans totaling $8 billion.
"The Turks didn't ask for the money; we offered it," a U.S. official said. "We simply can't afford to let Turkey sink at this time."
The relatively quick end of the war has boosted expectations that tens of thousands of Western tourists who had canceled bookings for vacations in Turkey will come after all, bringing needed foreign currency.
"Those who predicted disaster have been proven wrong," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said recently, following news that annual interest rates had fallen back to a postelection low of around 50%.
He may have spoken too soon. Latent tension between the ruling party and the armed forces, self-appointed guardians of Turkey's secularist traditions, is rising to the surface, threatening the kind of political instability that has plagued the country in the past.
Senior military commanders failed to show up at a recent ceremony after learning that the parliament speaker's wife would be there in a traditional Muslim head scarf, in defiance of a ban on such religious wear at public functions.
The armed forces have seized power directly three times in the last four decades and helped force Turkey's first Islamist-led government to resign in 1997 on the thinly supported charge that it was seeking to impose religious rule.
Military commanders are unswayed by Erdogan's more recent disavowal of his previously outspoken Islamist beliefs. They are alarmed by the recent appointment of scores of his allegedly Islamist cronies to key government posts, including the presidency of Turkey's largest state-run bank.
"Another standoff between the army and the politicians may not
bring down the government," a European diplomat said, "but
it will certainly kill any remaining hopes of economic recovery in
the near term."
3.
- AFP - "Turkish PM says confidence-building measures will
help Cyprus solution":
ANKARA / May 9, 2003
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that measures
aimed at building confidence between the Turkish and Greek sides of
Cyprus would help efforts to end the island's 29-year division.
In remarks to reporters before embarking on a visit to the self-styled
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), Erdogan hailed a decision
by Turkish Cypriot authorities last month to allow free crossings
between the two Cypriot sides.
"It is important to establish an atmosphere of confidence between
the two sides. We believe that this will also prepare the ground for
reaching a comprehensive solution based on the realities in the island,"
Erdogan said.
"Turkey is in favor of a just and durable solution to the Cyprus
question on the basis of the realities in the island. We intend to
maintain our efforts in this direction," he said.
Erdogan said Ankara supported the good-will offices of United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose plan to reunify the island failed
in March.
Though both Cypriot parties raised objections to some arrangements
in the plan, the UN said the hardline nationalist Turkish Cypriot
leader Rauf Denktash was primarily to blame.
The international community is pressing the Cypriots to reach a solution
before May 2004, when the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot
government is set to join the European Union.
The Greek Cypriots signed the EU accession treaty in Athens last month,
and will enter the bloc alone if a settlement is not reached in time.
Such a prospect is threatening to spark tensions between the EU and
Turkey, itself a candidate for EU membership.
Erdogan said he had chosen May 9, Europe Day, for his first visit
to the TRNC as prime minister in order to highlight the importance
that Turkey places on EU membership.
Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkish
troops seized the north in response to a Greek Cypriot coup in Nicosia
aimed at uniting the island with Greece.
The TRNC move to open the crossing points resulted in a flood of hundreds
of thousands of people pouring over the UN-manned Green Line, mainly
Greek Cypriots heading into the north, and new measures by the Greek
Cypriot government to aid Turkish Cypriots entering the south.
But the UN and the Greek Cypriot authorities have both said it is
no substitute for a settlement.
4. - The Christian Science Monitor - "In Turkey, childhoods vanish in weary harvests":
A desire to join Europe could spur Turkey's efforts to reduce the ranks of its 1.6 million child laborers.
REYHANLI, TURKEY / 08 May 2003
by Richard Mertens
Eleven-year-old Zara Cigay exudes weary determination as she works her way down a row of cotton plants on a hot morning in Turkey's Amuq Valley. Hands blackened from the plant oils, the pony-tailed girl pushes through the waist-high foliage, ripping white tufts from their husks and stuffing them into the cloth sack she trails behind her.
Two brothers, aged 6 and 7, work nearby. Around the field, other children, barely visible in the sea of green, toil alongside their parents.
Each year, migrant families pour into the Amuq Valley, in southern Turkey, to pick cotton. They pitch their canvas tents all over the wide, flat expanse and spend up to two months laboring from dawn to dusk. When the harvest is over, some go home, but many move on to other work, taking their children with them. "Wherever there is a job, we do it," says Huseyin Cigay, Zara's great-uncle, speaking for about 60 people from the same village who work together. "The children work with us everywhere."
The Turkish government says that 1.6 million children aged from 6 to 17 perform wage labor, two thirds of them in rural areas.
But Turkey's desire to become part of Europe could spur ongoing initiatives to move these children from workplaces to the classroom. Ankara's efforts to join the European Union - which has voiced concern about Turkey's human rights record - include a commitment to reduce child labor. (The EU could decide in December 2004 whether Turkey is ready to start membership negotiations.)
The children picking cotton in the Amuq are part of a vast problem afflicting mainly poor and developing countries. The International Labor Organization in Geneva estimates that 246 million children labor worldwide, 110 million of them younger than 12. Most work in agriculture. Although 132 countries, including Turkey, have signed an international convention to eliminate child labor, experts say the use of minor workers is increasing as international trade expands and countries compete to produce inexpensive products for global markets.
"It's very much related to the world economy and to the education and attitudes of parents," says Sule Caglar, a Turkish national who works for the ILO on child-labor issues. "Poverty is a major reason, but not the only reason. Another problem is a lack of educational facilities and quality teachers. In most of the world we don't have education facilities that attract and retain children.
Most of the cotton pickers in the Amuq Valley are Kurds and Arabs from poor mountain villages in eastern Turkey. They come out of desperation, they say, travelling hundreds of miles by bus and truck. "We have no other opportunity for earning money," says Mahmut Kurt, who came with seven members of his family.
Everyone works who can. Mothers carry infants into the fields on their backs, and children are expected to lend a hand by the time they are 6. Children like Kurt's 7-year-old son, Adalet, can pick only a fraction of what an adult can, but every little bit helps, his father says.
The pay is meager by Western standards. A typical adult picks about 220 pounds a day, filling a refrigerator-sized burlap bag and earning between $4.50 and $6.25. With everyone working, many families expect to leave the Amuq with about $600 - enough, they say, to pay the debts they have accumulated back home and to keep them coming back year after year. Many adults have been coming to the Amuq since they were children themselves.
Their work, and the work of others like them, is indispensable to the Turkish economy. Cheap labor enables Turkey's huge textile industry to sell clothing abroad at low prices. Landowners, too, need the migrants.
"The workers in the towns around here are not enough," says Esref Karaca, who grows cotton on 2,000 acres. The children worry him, however. "If there is an accident in the field, breaking legs or arms, I have to deal with that problem myself," he says.
Experts do not object to all child labor. The ILO's conventions allow children to work on family farms, for example. But experts say commercial agriculture harms children because it forces them to work long hours, exposes them to pesticides and dangerous machinery, and keeps them out of school.
Turkish law requires children to attend school until they are 14. But many children picking cotton go to school only two months a year, usually in winter when there are no crops to plant or pick. Their principal education is in the back-breaking work of the fields.
Hanum Kuzu, a freckle-faced 9-year-old, is picking for her third season. "It's very hard work, and I am very small," she says shyly, a shock of hair falling across her sunburned face.
Seeing her pause, an older brother two rows away rebukes her, and she plunges back into her work. "When she doesn't work, I'm hitting her," explains her father, Hasan Kuzu, smiling genially. "I hit her just five minutes ago."
Turkey has had some success in reducing child labor simply by increasing the number of years of compulsory schooling. It also has worked with nongovernmental organizations on small projects aimed at getting urban children off the streets and into schools.
But rural children have been relatively neglected. Turkish law forbids children under 15 to work, but exempts agriculture. The Turkish Ministry of Labor has drafted a law that would forbid child labor on farms, but it is not clear when parliament will begin deliberations on it.
The government is considering raising again the number of years of compulsory education.
But no one expects legislation alone to solve the deeper problems, like poverty, that underlie child labor. "The causes of child labor are very difficult," says Erhan Batur, head of the Child Labor Unit in the Ministry of Labor and Social Services in Ankara. "We think it will take some time to find solutions to the problem."
The Labor Ministry and nongovernmental organizations plan to launch a joint project in the fall near Adana to reduce the number of migrant children working in that Mediterranean region by, among other things, offering mobile schools.
For many children, the Amuq is only one stop on a yearly round that can include digging sugar beets in central Turkey and picking hazelnuts at the Black Sea.
"I hate this work," says Ahmet Cigay, straightening and
squinting across the sun-drenched cotton field. His daughter Zara,
picking nearby, does not stop and says nothing.
5. - The Globalist - "World War I and the Future of Iraq":
by Tulin Daloglu / May 09, 2003
While great precision was the trademark of U.S. military operations in Iraq, there seems to be no equally precise road map for Iraq’s post-Saddam era. Can the Bush Administration rewrite the region’s future — without first settling the problems of its past? Tulin Daloglu goes back nearly 100 years to look at Iraq’s prickly history.
The year was 1993. Turgut Ozal, then Turkey’s President, wrote an urgent letter to his Prime Minister, Suleyman Demirel.
The more things change …
“The Turkish Republic is facing its gravest threat yet,” the letter stated. “A social earthquake could cut one part of Turkey from the rest, and we could all be buried beneath it.”
The letter, of course, was written only two years after the first Gulf War. The Northern “No Fly Zone” imposed by the United States above the 36th parallel to stop air attacks by Saddam Hussein’s regime against Kurds in Northern Iraq was opening the door for an autonomous Kurdistan.
In 2003, a decade later, not much has changed. The same concerns are repeated by today’s Turkish President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer.
He says that “Turkey’s territorial integrity might be threatened by the movements of the Kurdish groups in Northern Iraq” and that “Turkey will not allow Mosul and Kirkuk to be referred to as Kurdish towns.”
Red lines
For Turkey, such seeming details matter a great deal. They are often referred to as “red lines” — meaning that ownership for these two towns can not be claimed by any single ethnic or religious group but the Iraqi people.
Turks believe that anything else will be a direct threat to Iraq’s territorial integrity. The top Turkish General, Hilmi Ozkok says, “The Turkish army will do what is necessary if the red lines are to be crossed.”
This whole issue goes back to the era immediately following World War I. It was back then that Britain and France (but mostly Britain) started to redraw the map of the Middle East by divvying up the defeated Ottoman Empire — and establishing new states.
During that war, Lawrence of Arabia persuaded the Arabs to rebel against the Ottoman rule and seek their independence.
Wolfowitz of Arabia
“We have to get past the past” says U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz these days. But due to his great influence in shaping Iraq after the recent second Gulf War, he may not be able to pass up the title of the “Wolfowitz of Arabia.”
The Bush Administration, for its part, is clearly hoping to open a new page in history for post-Saddam Iraq.
But while Washington is solely focused on the future of the Middle East, the people in the region seem to be turning back the page to the time of World War I.
A historical mindset
It seems as if that war — which ended in 1918 — has not yet been concluded in the Middle East.
So, when it comes to explaining the strength and dynamic of the Shiite resistance today, their passion to rule the new Iraq goes back well beyond the repressive rule of Saddam Hussein. To many Shiites, the acts of World War I have never been settled to their satisfaction.
Roots of passion
The same source of passion is what drives the Kurds. They may just seek a federal body hoping to have their independent state eventually. But their passion is hidden in those post-World War I years.
Those years host the roots of today’s conflicts in the region. Anyone who still remembers how today’s Iraq was built — and who appreciates the immensely long time lines in which Middle-Easterners think — cannot be shocked.
Instead, everything unfolds as it would according to the unfinished historical sequence.
Writing a new history
The Bush administration, on the contrary, wants to write a new history. The problem with that approach — laudable as it is — is that it does not match the realities of the region. The new history, if it seeks a peaceful and stable Middle East, can only be written by making peace with the past.
The obvious problem for the Bush Administration then is how to balance the past with the present.
Concessions will have to be made on all sides, but hopefully the concessions will put an end to the past conflicts once and for all.
Then, but only then, anything and everything is possible. Hopefully, we will all reach the peace for which we have been longing for a long time.
The aftermath
But there are some troublesome developments that cause more worry. The military side of the Iraqi operation seems to have worked with great precision. Yet, very little work seems to have been done in advance for the much more crucial aftermath.
Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (IKDP) leader Massoud Barzani said, “the Kurdish nation has the right to self-determination and to establish its own state. However, this issue is not on our agenda right now.”
Begging questions
That sounds good — and like a step in the right direction. But it also begs important questions: When will it be on the agenda? Will Iraq’s territorial integrity be kept?
The First Gulf War yielded an autonomous Kurdistan. Will the next twelve years offer an independent Kurdistan? Do the Kurdish people have a right to an independent state?
Do they have right to claim land that falls under other independent countries? If the United States wants to hand over Iraq to its people and Kurds seek their own nation, while the Shiites want to join Iran, what will the United States do?
Will the Kurds be treated differently than the Shiites? Does Kurdistan seem to undermine U.S. national interests in the region?
Where’s the map?
All of these questions lead to a bigger one. Why don’t we have the road map to answer these questions? It is as if there is an interest on the part of some people to create another conflict similar to the Arab-Israeli one in the region.
Evidently, Turks and Kurds have equally strong distrust as far as their respective rights to self-determination and territorial integrity are concerned.
Pre-emptive conflict resolution
When Mr. Wolfowitz — the new Lawrence of Arabia — was recently asked how the United States will balance the contradictory interests of its two allies, he said they will be dealing with them fairly and openly and transparently.
One can only hope so. But one thing is for sure. The region’s politics are laden with history. Running away from it will not provide any lasting solutions.
Now is the time for the United States to take action and be frank with the Turks and Kurds about what exactly their future forecast for the region is.
Silence does only fuel conspiracy and fear in the region — and
leads all involved to question the true intent of the United States.
Isn’t it also a time to start preemptive conflict resolution
talks?
6. - AFP - "EU concerned at lack of religious freedom in Turkey":
ROME, Italy / May 8, 2003
EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said Thursday he had
discussed the problems posed by EU candidate Turkey's lack of religious
freedom in talks with a senior Vatican official.
"Turkey was one of the reasons for the visit to the Vatican,"
Verheugen told journalists in Rome after a meeting with atican's Foreign
Minister Jean-Louis Tauran.
Turkey, a secular state which is mainly Muslim and has small Christian
and Jewish communities, obtained candidate status in 1999, and Verheugen
welcomed Ankara's moves toward opening full negotiations with Brussels.
"But among the problems to resolve is the one of fundamental
rights, notably religious freedom, which will be one of the most difficult,"
he said.
"The Catholic Church has no rights in Turkey," he said.
"I discussed means of resolving this very very old problem with
the Vatican," he added, but gave no details.
Islam ceased to be Turkey's official religion in 1928 and the Turkish
constitution guarantees freedom of religion.
Verheugen also discussed Italy's forthcoming presidency of the EU
during separate meetings in Rome with Italy's Foreign Minister Franco
Frattini and the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Pier Ferdinando
Casini.
The commissioner poured cold water on the idea of Russia and Israel
joining an enlarged European Union at some future date, supported
by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"It is neither realistic nor desirable," he said. "How
would Italian farmers be able to support the price of Russia's membership?"
Priority must be given to the membership of the current 10 candidate
countries as well as the candidatures of Bulgaria and Romania, which
are expected to join in 2007.