11 February 2005

1. "Kurdish Issue in Turkey Unresolved", following a trip to Turkey, an international delegation has deemed the country unfit to join the EU. With regard to the Kurdish issue, it concluded that the improvements were merely theoretical.

2. "After Years of Silence, News of Treatment Of Turkey’s Kurds Begins to Emerge", for many years, Turkey’s generals and politicians claimed that some “30,000 people” had been killed by the country’s Kurdish rebels in their campaign of violence, aimed at establishing a separate Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. Of course, few who lived there or who had ever visited the region believed such a claim, for most knew that a large percentage of that “30,000” had been killed not by the rebels, but by the Turkish army, police, gendarmerie and the various sinister death squads that operated with them, known collectively as the “Special Teams.”

3. "Reference to genocide to be added", Germany's eastern state of Brandenburg has withdrawn its decision to remove a passage in a history lesson that refers to the killings of more than 1 million Armenians by the Turks in the early 20th century.

4. "Turkey Unable to Recieve EU Grants", CFCU says Turkey used 20 percent of EU grants. Vulnerable project productivity of PIs is the scapegoat of the failure. Former undersecretary Yasamis asserts structural problems is the real source of problem.

5. "Kurds use Iraq vote to press fight for independence", In the aftermath of national elections held under U.S. occupation, Iraqi Kurds—an oppressed nation that faced brutal assaults on its rights under the Baathist party government of Saddam Hussein—have continued to press their fight for greater autonomy in northern Iraq.

6. "Kurds appear to win ethnically tense city", unofficial results from Kirkuk suggest that Kurdish parties have won a big majority in elections for the local government there, leaving Iraq's Kurds in a powerful position to press their claim to the disputed oil-rich city.

1. - DW - "Kurdish Issue in Turkey Unresolved":

Deutsche Welle / 11 February 2005

Following a trip to Turkey, an international delegation has deemed the country unfit to join the EU. With regard to the Kurdish issue, it concluded that the improvements were merely theoretical.

A report by the delegation of international lawyers claims that the official representation of problems such as the Kurdish issue are "largely euphemistic, if not totally false". The report, to which DW-WORLD has access, said that while Turkey has made many attempts towards becoming a democratic state, there is still a long way to go in putting reformed laws into practice.

Turkish human rights activists stressed to the delegation that "there has been no fundamental change in the mentality and thinking in the Turkish government and state apparatus." They said the Turkish government has to develop a far-reaching program for the political, socio-economic and cultural equality for the Kurdish people.

"And as long as they are not willing to do so, there can be no recommendation that they join the EU," the report said. They called for the establishment of a commission comprising NGOs from both Turkey and EU nations to oversee reforms relating to human rights in Turkey.

Continued suppression

The six-person delegation, comprising of high-ranking German and South African lawyers, traveled to Istanbul and Ankara in the middle of January where they conducted numerous conversations with human rights activists, representatives of Turkey's ruling AKP party and members of parliament.

The lawyers stated that neither the government, the military or other political parties show a fundamental shift in thinking on the Kurdish issue, and concluded that the official policy is still a long way off recognising the Kurds as equals with the same rights and freedoms.

Despite certain legal changes, the Kurdish language is still widely repressed. There are no Kurdish radio or TV stations and the two weekly half-hour programs on state television, which are repeatedly cited as progress on the Kurdish issue, amount to nothing more than propaganda which has been translated into Kurdish. "Nobody watches them," one of the lawyers said. In addition, there is still a law in effect which bans political parties from using any language other than Turkish.

The lawyers have called on the EU to make the Kurdish issue a central element of their negotiations. The influence of the EU in accession talks is the most effective factor for a peaceful and politically correct solution to the issue.

Öclan in solitary confinement

During their trip, the lawyers also sought to gain an impression of the conditions in which former chairman of the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, Abdullah Öclan, is being held captive on the island of Imrali. In a ruling in March 2003, the European Court of Justice for Human Rights deemed the trial against Öclan unfair. The Turkish government, however, launched an appeal, and a decision on the issue is expected this spring.

In the eyes of the human rights activists, there has been no change in Öclan's prison conditions. The lawyers are involved as international observers in the Öclan appeal case and were dissatisfied with the Turkish Justice Minister's refusal to accept a visit from the delegation for "reasons of security".

They claim that Öclan is in solitary confinement, and that his relatives and lawyers are prevented from visiting him. Isolation, they said, is white torture and capable of breaking the personalities and wills of political prisoners.

The report, which is due for publication later this month, says that Öclan's case is a "indicator for the credibility of the development of human rights in Turkey". It concluded that Öclan's prison conditions have to become a central point in EU accession talks.

2. - WRMEA - "After Years of Silence, News of Treatment Of Turkey’s Kurds Begins to Emerge":

Washington Report, January/February 2005, pages 34-35 / by Jon Gorvett*

FOR MANY YEARS, Turkey’s generals and politicians claimed that some “30,000 people” had been killed by the country’s Kurdish rebels in their campaign of violence, aimed at establishing a separate Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. Of course, few who lived there or who had ever visited the region believed such a claim, for most knew that a large percentage of that “30,000” had been killed not by the rebels, but by the Turkish army, police, gendarmerie and the various sinister death squads that operated with them, known collectively as the “Special Teams.”

Yet, as with many such conflicts, what was taken almost as a given in the region itself was unpublishable and unrepeatable in the rest of the country. Now, however, via one appalling tragedy in nearly two decades of appalling tragedies, that unhappy censorship finally may be on its way out.

On Nov. 21, in response to a tip-off that a military convoy passing through the village of Kiziltepe, near Mardin in southeastern Turkey, would be ambushed by Kurdish rebels, Turkish police and Special Forces units launched an operation to secure the settlement. What happened after that is still unclear, but what the security forces described as a “firefight” left two people dead: 30-year-old Ahmet Kaymaz, a truck driver, and Ugur Kaymaz, his son. Ugur was 12 years old.

According to Ugur’s mother—in a statement backed up by the boy’s schoolteacher—she last saw her son pinned to the ground by a policeman and still alive. Nine bullet holes from shots fired at a distance of only some 18 inches were later found in the boy’s back.

“There is serious evidence suggesting that the murder of Ahmet Kaymaz and Ugur Kaymaz is an extrajudicial killing,” claims Tahir Elci, one of 20 lawyers who have now filed charges against the security forces over the Kiziltepe operation.

And, a few days after the killings, Mardin deputy police chief Kemal Donmez and three members of the Special Forces were suspended from duty pending the outcome of an investigation into the deaths. The investigation was to be conducted by Interior Ministry officials and police, with Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan himself commenting that Mardin Governor Temel Kocaklar’s initial description of both Ahmet and Ugur Kaymaz as “terrorists” was “unfortunate.”

Yet for many, the Kiziltepe incident was nothing particularly unusual. Ahmet was a member of the pro-Kurdish Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP) and had turned down an offer some years before to become a Village Guard—the pro-government Kurdish militia hired by Ankara to patrol settlements in the region. He may have had no connection to the armed Kurdish militants of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), or to its more recent incarnation as Kongra-Gel—or to one of its multiplying factions. Yet he would almost certainly have been on the list of “suspect” locals down at the local police post.

DEHAP supporters and human rights advocates claim that hundreds of similar incidents have occurred over the last two decades in southeastern Turkey.

As a case in point, in mid-November, a mass grave was discovered at Alacakoy, near the regional capital of Diyarbakir. It contained the bodies of 11 local villagers who had “disappeared” after being marched off by Turkish soldiers back in 1993. This case had gone to the European Court of Human Rights in 2001, resulting in a ruling against the Turkish authorities. Yet the location of the bodies had never been revealed.

Now, however, the grave has been found.

“We were confronted by a shocking sight,” Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) worker Mihdi Perincek said. “There were human beings and clothes. When we took a part of a shirt which was still perceptible under the soil, one of the people from the families who were with us said that her husband had been wearing this shirt when he was taken into custody.”

With this story breaking in the Turkish media in November 2004 and the Kiziltepe story making national front pages in early December, it seems the secrecy behind the dirty war in the southeast finally may be becoming unmasked to a Turkish audience.

Central in this process is one Turkish newspaper—Birgun—which broke both the Alacakoy mass grave and Kiziltepe stories to Turks. A leftist paper, it is hard to imagine it would still be in business had it made such revelations even only a year ago.

But much has now changed. The death of 12-year-old Ugur has become something of a symbol of the whole wretchedness of the conflict, provoking a response up to the highest level of the Turkish government. That it came at a time when Turkey also was attempting to present itself in as spotless a fashion as possible to European Union leaders—ahead of December’s crucial meeting on EU accession—was also an example of the kind of dilemma in which the country’s authorities now find themselves. Greater press freedom—along with freedom of expression for Kurds—inevitably will mean more articulation of the more gruesome side of the war against the PKK.

Yet of all Turkish governments since that war began back in the 1980s, the current one is in the best position of all to make a clean breast of those dark times. Unlike the secular conservative parties, such as the True Path (DYP) and Motherland Party (ANAP), the Erdogan administration is largely uncompromised by involvement with the “Special Teams”—plus they are known as unpopular with the army, which ran the southeast largely as its own fiefdom during the long years of emergency rule. Couple this with the desire to democratize and meet EU criteria, and Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) stands a good chance of overseeing a greater openness about exactly what happened down south.

At the same time, though, its position as an outsider in the corridors of power—particularly when it comes to those running through the southeast—will make this job extra difficult. While Emergency Rule has been suspended for a number of years now in the region, it is clear that, in many respects, the local army commanders and police remain the true powers in the land. They have much to lose from an end to conflict—and from any revelations over the disappeared. Also threatened are some of the Kurdish militants, who see their authority slipping away as pressure from among their own supporters for a political rather than a military solution increases.

At the same time, while revelations about the conflict may show Turkey in a bad light, they also help to demonstrate the degree to which it has reformed. While the EU spotlight is glaring on Ankara, papers like Birgun can take advantage of this extra illumination to raise their heads a little above the parapet. The rest of the Turkish press has been quick to back them up, and even leading commentators and columnists known for their conservatism in challenging accepted wisdom have remarked on the recent tragedies.

There is still a long way to go, however—and plenty of unsolved disappearances and murders still to investigate. The judicial system also needs to be tested by this—and how it will behave is still a big question. Human rights groups are used to seeing police and military personnel walk free despite a mountain of evidence and even the odd free confession. Whatever the case, though, expect a lot more of the darker side to creep out in the months to come.

* Jon Gorvett is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.

3. - F.A.Z. Weekly - "Reference to genocide to be added":

State retracts decision to eliminate notation

11 February 2005

Germany's eastern state of Brandenburg has withdrawn its decision to remove a passage in a history lesson that refers to the killings of more than 1 million Armenians by the Turks in the early 20th century.

The state's premier, Matthias Platzeck, made the announcement on Tuesday after he met with Armenian representatives in the state capital of Potsdam. Beginning next school year, the history lesson for the ninth and 10th grade will once again include a reference to the killings, but it will also contain other examples of genocide. Previously, the killings of the Armenians were listed as the only example.

In explaining the latest decision, Platzeck said it would be wrong to list just one example of genocide. The view was shared by the state's education minister, Holger Rupprecht. In a newspaper last week, Rupprecht defended the decision. ”The reference was removed because I and the premier consider it to be a mistake to list Armenia as the sole example of such a controversial subject.”

The issue is an extremely sensitive one between Armenians and Turks. Armenians say 1.5 million people were killed between 1915 and 1923 as part of the Ottoman Empire's campaign to push them from eastern Turkey. Turkey maintains the Armenians were killed as the empire fought civil unrest.

As a result, the Social Democrat Platzeck faced pressure from both the Armenian and the Turkish representatives. The first change was announced in late January two weeks after Turkish General Counsel Aydin Durusay raised the issue.

The decision set off a wave of criticism from parties in the state, including at least one member of the Social Democrats, who demanded that Platzeck reverse the decision. Sven Petke, the general secretary of the Christian Democrats in Brandenburg, said the removal of the passage had hurt the state's reputation. ”It was not the reference to the genocide on the Armenians that communicated a wrong image. It was the unjustified removal,” Petke said.

Armenians joined the criticism as well. This protest resulted in Tuesday's meeting, which was attended by the Armenian Ambassador Karine Kazinian. Kazinian expressed her satisfaction with the change. ”The key issue is that that genocide and everything associated with the things that happened then will be discussed clearly,” she said.

Platzeck denied previous reports that he had bowed to Turkish pressure and noted that discussions with the Education Ministry had been conducted months ago.
Brandenburg is the first of Germany's 16 states to use a textbook that discusses the subject of genocide in the 20th century.

4. - Bianet - "Turkey Unable to Recieve EU Grants":

CFCU says Turkey used 20 percent of EU grants. Vulnerable project productivity of PIs is the scapegoat of the failure. Former undersecretary Yasamis asserts structural problems is the real source of problem.

9 February 2004 / by C. Onur ANT

Head of Foreign Ministry Central Finance and Contract Unit (CFCU) Ercan Tortop asserts Turkey needs to produce a greater number of projects to receive the 1.1 billion Euros grant from the EU, a news in daily Zaman (Time) shows.

Lack of Expert Staff is no Excuse

Abdullah Caliskan, Supervisor from the CFCU informs bianet that Turkey has received 20% of the foreseen 1.1 bn grant. "Lack of experts cannot be an excuse" Caliskan criticizes the low productivity of public corporations. He says public institutions (PI) are provided with Project Making Aids, an opportunity to hire specialized people.

Projects should be in line with Turkey's catching up agenda with the EU and to ensure its compliance with the acquis to get a grant. They also have to be non-profit.

ISKUR at the Top

Among others, Employment Agency (ISKUR) manages to transfer the greatest amount of aid to the project managers with the 32 million Euros it granted to 190 projects out of 1500. The projects aim at increasing the possibility to be employed for those who are unemployed, unskilled or women by providing them with education.

Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SME) can also be granted by the EU as long as they produce "infrastructural projects to increase their competitiveness", Caliskan puts it.

PIs can hardly produce projects

However "structural drawbacks prevent PIs produce project" Asc. Prof. Firuz Yasamis, former undersecretary of the Ministry of Environment, elucidates the reasons of low productivity to bianet.

Yasamis emphasizes that it is the Consultancy Firms who should produce projects. "Whether the project is a non-profit one is not so important. The point is to hire expert staff with the possible minimum wage"he criticizes the "non-profit criterion" for the grants.

"I cannot see any noteworthy development despite all the good intentions and grants" Yasamis expresses his disappointment and claims that principal goal must be using the grants as efficient as possible. For him the amount received is not of importance.

5. - The Militant - "Kurds use Iraq vote to press fight for independence":

Vol. 69/No. / 21 February 2005 / by Sam Manuel

In the aftermath of national elections held under U.S. occupation, Iraqi Kurds—an oppressed nation that faced brutal assaults on its rights under the Baathist party government of Saddam Hussein—have continued to press their fight for greater autonomy in northern Iraq. The increased confidence among Kurds to advance their national demands is one of the uncontrolled forces set in motion by the imperialist invasion and occupation.
At the same time, the elections have further highlighted the greater political isolation of the Baathist-led insurgency in Iraq. These forces failed to make good on their promise to disrupt the elections. As a result, some political figures and groups in the Sunni Arab minority that had earlier participated in the call for a boycott of the elections have since begun to take a conciliatory stance toward the newly elected government.

The Kurdish population inhabits a territory that spans across northern Iraq, southern Turkey, and sections of Iran and Syria. The 20 million Kurds that live in the region have been fighting for decades for an independent state. Their struggle has faced brutal repression at the hands of the local capitalist regimes and the imperialist powers that back them.

Based on partial results from 13 of Iraq’s 18 provinces, a slate headed by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two main Kurdish parties, received 1.1 million votes. This was the second-largest bloc of votes in part because of the boycott called by the largest parties based in the Sunni Arab minority. With 4.6 million votes counted, the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance had captured the largest vote total with just over 50 percent, while the Kurdish bloc had 25 percent, the February 8 New York Times reported.

While the KDP and PUK are on record for a united and federated Iraq, there is widespread support for independence among Iraqi Kurds, who comprise 20 percent of the country’s population. During the election, in tents set up outside polling places, the Kurdish Referendum Movement held an unofficial vote on independence for Iraqi Kurdistan. Nearly 2 million Kurds—almost 99 percent of those who participated—backed independence, reported Agence France-Presse February 7. Only 1 percent voted to remain a part of Iraq. Shamal Huaizi, one of the organizers of the referendum, said it was conducted with the agreement of the Kurdish regional government.

The Iraqi flag can hardly be found in the region except on a few government buildings. The Kurds do not allow Arab units of the U.S.-trained Iraqi military into the northeastern provinces they control, nor do they allow Baghdad ministries to open offices there. Border posts in Iraqi Kurdistan fly the Kurdish, not the Iraqi flag.

Baghdad also acceded to a demand to allow thousands of Kurds to register and vote in the province that includes the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. They had been forcibly removed from the region by the Hussein regime in the 1980s.

None of the governments in the region, nor Washington and London, are happy with the referendum or the Kurdish push for control of Kirkuk.

Last December the referendum organizers handed the chief United Nations envoy for the elections in Iraq a petition calling for a referendum on independence signed by more than 1.7 million Kurds, almost half the Kurdish population in northern Iraq.

In a column printed in the February 1 New York Times, former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith reported that when organizers of the Kurdish Referendum Movement asked to meet with Paul Bremer, then Washington’s overseer of Iraq, to show him their petition before presenting it to the UN, neither Bremer nor any of his deputies would see them.

In the wake of the elections, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice made a stop in Ankara to assure the Turkish government that Washington opposes an independent Kurdistan. “I’m here really in part to say to the Turks that we are fully committed, fully committed, to a unified Iraq,” Rice said, according to the BBC.

Rice also said Washington was “very determined” to make certain that Kurdish rebels from Turkey would not be allowed to organize attacks on Turkish military forces from mountain bases in northeastern Iraq. Since 1984 some 37,000 people have been killed in Ankara’s brutal war against guerillas organized by the Maoist-inspired Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Sunni groups make conciliatory moves

The insurgents “made fools of us,” Mahmoud Ghassoub, a Sunni businessman in Baiji, a town north of Baghdad, told the Washington Post. “They voted to disrupt the elections but failed. Now we have lost both tracks. We did not vote, nor did they disrupt the elections.”

The elections and their aftermath have highlighted the fact that the insurgency, while it has continued to mount deadly attacks—which have increasingly targeted Iraqi security forces and civilians—has never been a movement capable of advancing a struggle for national liberation against the imperialist occupiers. A wealthy section of the Sunni Arab minority in Iraq was the social base of the party-police state run by Hussein. Defense of the privileges lost by that thin social layer has been at the heart of the guerilla campaign led by former military units of the Hussein regime.

Calling themselves the “Party of Return,” these forces have pressed for a one-point program: the restoration of the Hussein regime through the same brutal and unpopular methods that it used to hold on to power. Their attacks in the lead-up to the election were directed against Shiites—who comprise 60 percent of Iraq’s population—and their unfulfilled promises to “wash the streets with the blood of voters” on election day only served to further their political isolation.

As a result, some of the Sunni Arab groups that called for a boycott of the elections are now hedging their bets and signaling a desire to work with the new government.

“We are taking a conciliatory line because we are frightened that things may develop into a civil war,” Wamidh Nadhmi, the leader of the Arab Nationalist Trend and a spokesman for a coalition of Sunni and Shiite groups that boycotted the elections, told the Washington Post.

A group of 13 Sunni parties have agreed to take part in drafting the constitution, according to the February 6 Post. The most prominent forces in the group are the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Islamic Party. While they supported the boycott, neither of these groups has historical ties to the Baathists, which did not base themselves primarily in the Muslim clergy. The Sunni clerics’ association was formed within a few days after the U.S. invasion. The Iraqi Islamic Party was suppressed by the Baath regime and was part of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council under the U.S. occupation regime headed by Bremer.

The slate headed by Iyad Allawi, prime minister of the U.S.-backed interim government, has come in a distant third with 13 percent of the votes counted. Allawi, a former Baathist who worked abroad for Baghdad’s intelligence agency before running afoul of Hussein, has a thuggish reputation and is not a popular figure in Iraq.

6. - Chicago Tribune - "Kurds appear to win ethnically tense city":

Turkmens allege extensive fraud

BAGHDAD / 11 February 2005 / by Liz Sly

Unofficial results from Kirkuk suggest that Kurdish parties have won a big majority in elections for the local government there, leaving Iraq's Kurds in a powerful position to press their claim to the disputed oil-rich city.

Kurdish officials and media say that an electoral alliance of the two main Kurdish parties has won at least 59 percent in the local election, a result that would further bolster Kurdish claims that the northern city of Kirkuk is Kurdish.

The result could inflame tensions between Kurds and Kirkuk's Arab and Turkmen residents, who believe they outnumber the Kurds in the already tense city.

Politicians from Iraq's Turkmen community charge that only extensive fraud could have produced such a result for the alliance of Kurdish parties, the Kirkuk Brotherhood, and they say they are challenging the result with Iraq's Election Commission.

"We are not satisfied with this result, though that doesn't mean we don't accept democracy," said Faruq Abdel Rahman, president of the Turkmen Front, which has close ties to Turkey. "If any political party wins and the other loses based on forgery, false figures and marginalization, this cannot be considered democratic."

Neighboring Turkey, alarmed at the prospect of Kirkuk falling under Kurdish control, also has complained about the election, hinting that Turkey may feel obliged to intervene if Kirkuk becomes part of Iraqi Kurdistan.

"It is a fact that some irregularities occurred in the elections," Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan said in Ankara. "As neighbors of Iraq we are the ones who feel all the heat of the fire there. It is our right to pay attention, and this has nothing to do with interference in internal affairs."

A final election result, originally expected Thursday, has been delayed several days while Iraq's Election Commission investigates complaints affecting 300 ballot boxes. Kirkuk is one of several places from which complaints have been received, said Farid Ayar, a spokesman for the commission.

Kurds have leverage

But already it is clear that the Kurds will emerge from the nationwide election with considerable leverage in the 275-member National Assembly that will form the new government and write the new constitution.

The Kurdish alliance, which groups the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, is set to win around 25 percent of the seats, placing it second to a coalition of Shiite parties, with slightly more than half. That will leave Kurds holding the balance of power in an assembly in which all key decisions will require a two-thirds majority.

Emboldened by their showing, Iraq's Kurds have been flexing their muscles. It appears likely that Iraq will have a Kurdish president, probably Jalal Talabani, the KDP leader, who threatened to pull out of the political process if his candidacy is rejected. Talabani's chances were boosted Thursday by the endorsement of Adnan Pachachi, a senior Sunni statesman.

Kurdish leaders have left little doubt that they intend to use their clout to press for the inclusion of Kirkuk in a federal Kurdish state, an issue that promises to be one of the most controversial confronting the authors of Iraq's new constitution.

"No power or state in the world can make me give up Kirkuk," KDP leader Massoud Barzani said earlier this week. "Moreover, these elections have shown Kirkuk's identity."

That is one of Turkey's worst nightmares. The incorporation of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields into Iraqi Kurdistan could give Iraq's Kurds the means to declare independence, almost certainly rekindling the desires of Turkey's own restive Kurds to secede.

"This could lead to an independent Kurdish state," Gen. Ilker Basbug, deputy head of the Turkish military, warned on the eve of the election. A Kurdish victory in Kirkuk would present an "important security problem for Turkey," he said. "There could be clashes. These clashes could trigger an internal war in Iraq."

Ousted Kurds flock home

His warning came after a decision by Iraq's Election Commission to grant the right to vote in Kirkuk to Kurds who had been driven out of their homes under Saddam Hussein's program to "Arabize" the region in the 1980s. Kurds have been returning in droves to reclaim their homes and their land, leaving the demographic balance in the city unknown and heightening ethnic tensions.

The Turkmen Front's Abdel Rahman alleged that numerous irregularities had further increased the Kurdish vote. On the day of the election, he said, thousands of Kurds traveled to Kirkuk from neighboring Kurdish provinces to cast ballots in violation of the nationwide ban on interprovincial travel.

In Rahim Awar, a Kurdish village outside Kirkuk with a total population of 20,000, 76,000 ballots were cast, he said. In the village of Shwan, which he said had no more than 50 houses, more than 9,800 people voted.

"Where did these 9,800 people come from? The moon?" he asked.

Kurdish officials deny there was fraud.

"As far as we are concerned, the Kurds who voted were the ones forced out by Saddam Hussein, and they came back to vote," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent member of the Kurdish Alliance.