20 October 2005

1. "Turkish backing for honour crimes", a survey by a university in Turkey has shown almost 40% support for the practice of "honour killing".

2. "We Own These Bodies...", BIA² organized its third seminar on "Women's Rights and Women's Rights Reporting" in Eskisehir. Educators and media employees from the provinces of Eskisehir, Bilecik and Kirsehir attended the seminar.

3. "Kurdish PKK prisoners in Erzurum isolated again", Kurdish political prisoners in the Erzurum H- and E-type Closed Prisons are being punished with isolation again, their lawyers reported to the Kurdish news agency DIHA.

4. "Merkel contradicts Schröder over Turkey", Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor-in-waiting, again shrugged aside recent comments by outgoing chancellor Gerhard Schröder and signalled that she may pursue the option of a "privileged partnership" for Turkey despite the opening of European Union membership talks with Ankara this month.

5. "Iranian Regime Sentences Editor Of Kurdish-Language Weekly To 18 Months In Prison", Reporters Without Borders today condemned the 18-month prison sentence that was passed on Mohammad Sedigh Kabovand, the editor of Payam-e mardom-e Kurdestan, a weekly published in Kurdish and Farsi, for “upsetting public opinion and spreading separatist ideas.” The sentence has only now come to light although handed down on 18 August.

6. "Kurds are the winners", the new Iraqi constitution consecrates gains made since the 1991 Gulf war, says Mideast specialist DAVID HIRST.

1. - BBC - "Turkish backing for honour crimes":

ISTANBUL / 19 October 2005 / by Sarah Rainsford

A survey by a university in Turkey has shown almost 40% support for the practice of "honour killing".

The results come days after a court in Istanbul gave a life sentence for the murder of a girl by her brothers for giving birth to a child out of wedlock.

Turkish law, which used to be lenient on "honour crimes", was heavily revised as part of the country's preparation for EU accession proceedings.

Turkey has started talks with the EU but is not expected to join for years.

The survey was conducted in the conservative south-eastern city of Diyarbakir.

Disfigured

It questioned 430 people, most of them men. When asked the appropriate punishment for a woman who has committed adultery, 37% replied she should be killed.

Twenty-five percent said that she deserved divorce, and 21% that her nose or ears should be cut off.

The survey group was small but the results are a reminder that "honour killing" - a practice where women are murdered for allegedly bringing shame on their family - still has significant support in parts of Turkey.

There are no reliable statistics on how many women die this way, but Turkey has made major strides fighting such violence.

Research panel

Since the penal code was reformed last summer a man can no longer claim he was provoked as his defence. That used to lead to light sentences.

But last Friday a court in Istanbul sent a man to prison for life for murdering his sister in her hospital bed.

He shot her for giving birth to a child outside marriage.

And there is evidence the authorities here are committed to taking the reforms further.

A commission has just been established in parliament to research the whole issue for the first time. Its 12 members are expected to report back in December.

2. - Bianet - "We Own These Bodies...":

BIA² organized its third seminar on "Women's Rights and Women's Rights Reporting" in Eskisehir. Educators and media employees from the provinces of Eskisehir, Bilecik and Kirsehir attended the seminar.

ESKISEHIR / 17 October 2005 / by Neval Gundogan

BIA² "Media Freedom and Independent Journalism Monitoring and News Network" organized its third seminar on "Women's Rights reporting" in Eskisehir.

Seventeen participants, including employees from local newspapers and radio channels in Bilecik, Kirsehir and Eskisehir, and educators from the Anadolu University, attended the seminar. Participants discussed reporting on women's rights, the Civil Code, the new Turkish Penal Code and international agreements.

BIA² project advisor Nadire Mater spoke about the project during her keynote speech. Associate-Professor Doctor Hulya Tanriover from the Communications Department of the Galatasaray University, lawyer Filiz Kerestecioglu, Beyhan Demir, the general manager of the "Pazartesi" (Monday) magazine, Selen Dogan, the general coordinator of the "Ucan Supurge" (Flying Broom) women's organization, and reporter Ipek Calislar attended the seminar as trainers.

"Women are losing their identity"

Filiz Kerestecioglu, one of the founders of the Mor Cati (Purple Roof) Shelter Foundation and the Istanbul Bar Association Women's Rights Implementation Center, gave participants information on the amendments to the Civil and the Penal Codes.

Because of certain articles of the old Civil Code, which state that the wife should manage the house and help and advise her husband, women were legally forced to come under the authority and domination men in their marriage, argued Kerestecioglu. Women were made to lose their identity, she added.

"The head of marriage used to be men," said Kerestecioglu. "Men used to represent the marriage to third parties. The father used to have the last word in case of disagreements over custody.

"The woman's last name would be directly replaced by man's. The husband's residence would automatically become the wife's residence. Under the old Civil Code, the woman was economically dependant on her husband and was under his authority and dominance.

"The woman's identity was dissolved within the marriage and in a way, she lost her identity."

"Woman's body no longer belongs to the society"

Kerestecioglu argued that a social identity under the domination of men is imposed on women. She said that the old Penal Code also caused women lose their identity. "Women's bodies were almost regarded as commodities belonging to the society. Any attack against women was seen as an attack against the society instead of an individual," said Kerestecioglu.

To explain her point, Kerestecioglu said rape, under the old Penal Code, was included in "crimes against the general ethics and traditions." Rape was regarded as a crime that damages the general ethics and social order, said
Kerestecioglu.

"The traumas and shocks were regarded as impacting not a single individual, but the society. The fact that men hold in their hands property, domination and capital, leads to seeing attacks against women as attacks toward the society. This reflects the attitude of generally the law toward women."

According to Kerestecioglu, under the new Penal Code, woman's body no longer is regarded as a commodity belonging to the society. She said rape is now under the title, "crimes against individuals" and subtitle, "crimes against sexual immunity."

"An individual who violates, through sexual acts, the body immunity of a person, may be sentenced to 2-7 years in prison," said Kerestecioglu. "If the act is committed through a body part or an object, the offender may be sentenced to 7-12 years in prison. Under the old Penal Code, the law would focus on whether the woman's virginity was damaged. Now the crimes which used to be regarded as against the society are regarded as crimes against women's body."

"Equality is reflected in the legal language"

The new Civil Code No: 4721 ends men's dominance in a marriage or family, said Keresteciglu. With the new Civil Code, marriage and family are seen as a partnership based on the equality of the man and the woman. "This attitude is reflected in the legal language," said Kerestecioglu.

"The words, 'husband and wife,' are replaced with the word 'couples.' The husband is no longer the head of the family. Couples, as equal partners are carrying out the marriage with equal decision-making rights. They have equal rights to representation."

According to Kerestecioglu, there are some very important amendments to the Civil Code. Among these are: in-house labor being seen as a real value and participation in jointly-acquired properties. She said millions of women became victims because the Civil Code went into effect on January 1, 2002.

"Where are the shelters?"

Kerestecioglu said that opening shelters is very important for providing security for women. She added that the municipalities law requires a shelter for every 50,000 people.

"The journalists have to ask where these shelters are. We don't have enough of them even in Istanbul. They need to ask where the mayors are; where the government is."

She added that the laws are new and interpretation is very important:

"We are students all over again. This is actually an opportunity for all of us. The first interpretation becomes a statute for the Supreme Court of Appeals. That's why interpretation is very important. A big responsibility falls upon journalists."

"You are not born a woman, you become a woman..."

Associate-Professor Doctor Huya Tanriover, who spoke about women's representation and women's rights violations in the media, said women's representation in the media gains legitimacy through news. She gave information about such representations.

"Women are either subjects of the news on the third page, or are the 'back page beauties,'" said Tanriover. She said women are either portrayed as good wives, devoted mothers, or victims of unfaithfulness, rape, or as sexual objects. She defined such representations as being 'sexist' and 'racist.'

"Women's image in newspapers, televisions, paparazzi programs and soap operas is important, argued Tanriover. "However, a more important problem is the lack of representation of women. In other words, women are symbolically being destroyed."

Tanriover said that social sexuality is different from the birth sexuality, and added that women are represented under this framework. "When babies of two different sexes are born, there is no difference between them other than anatomic differences," she said. "Difference begins when the boy is dressed in blue and the girl in pink... As Simone de Beauvoir says: "You are not born a woman, you become a woman.'"

According to Tanriover, media acts sexist when choosing cases of women's rights violations to cover. She said an abuse or rape news story should seek to raise awareness and fairness. She added it is important to have different
ways of covering the story.

"We are on the side of women"

Beyhan Demir, the general manager of the Pazartesi magazine said their magazine served as a platform for those who are oppressed and discriminated against.

"In this patriarchal system, we prepare our news or commentaries, keeping in mind that phenomena that are generally accepted and that have become myths, are in fact not myths that are a result of a natural process."

Demir emphasized that they are on the side of women. "We are not objective. There is no such thing as objective any way. We are on the side of women." Demir said they have a policy of telling the truth and showing women ways of dealing with it."

"We try to tell them that things are not their fate and that they can be changed. We show them what to do about their problems and try to help them."

"Women in our country have the opportunity to improve themselves," said Professor Doctor Engin Atac, the rector of Anadolu University. "30 percent of the managers in our university are women. A country's development begins with women."

Deputy Associate-Professor Doctor Emine Demiray from the Communications Department of the Anadolu University, said they have a class on "Media and the Social Sexuality." She said in that class, they focus on the point of view the mass communication vehicles have toward women and added this was a very important topic for those who plan to work in the communications industry. The "Media and the Social Sexuality" class at the Anadolu University is a first in Turkey.

Participants talked about their opinions about the program at the end of the seminar.

3. - DozaMe.org - "Kurdish PKK prisoners in Erzurum isolated again":

18 October 2005

Kurdish political prisoners in the Erzurum H- and E-type Closed Prisons are being punished with isolation again, their lawyers reported to the Kurdish news agency DIHA.

One of the lawyers of the political prisoners, Fahrettin Kaya from the Kars Bar, reports that their clients are being punished with isolation for protesting the prison conditions in the two closed prisons in Erzurum.

"According to the information given to me by my clients, visiting prohibition has been put on the political prisoners. The punished prisoners are not allowed to read or get magazines and newspapers. They are also prohibited from doing sport activities. Their few visits are monitored by several prison guards", Lawyer Kaya told the news agency DIHA.

Arbitrary punishments of Kurdish political PKK prisoners in Turkey are common and DozaMe.org has earlier reported of the isolation of prisoners in the Erzurum H-type prison.

Related link:

PKK prisoners in Erzurum Prison punished with isolation
http://www.dozame.org/article.php/20050719154154274

4. - Financial Times - "Merkel contradicts Schröder over Turkey":

BERLIN / 20 October 2005 / by Hugh Williamson

Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor-in-waiting, again shrugged aside recent comments by outgoing chancellor Gerhard Schröder and signalled that she may pursue the option of a "privileged partnership" for Turkey despite the opening of European Union membership talks with Ankara this month.

It emerged yesterday that Ms Merkel on Monday evening criticised Mr Schröder for telling Ankara recently that the privileged partnership proposal was no longer an option in negotiations between Ankara and the EU.

Ms Merkel, who campaigned against Turkey's EU membership, contradicted the chancellor during a cross-party meeting, after he said that his pledge to Turkey - made during a visit to Istanbul on October 12, nearly a month after the chancellor-in-waiting had defeated him - "reflected the [political] reality".

She told the chancellor that his comments "had gone too far", especially as he would not be part of the grand coalition government.

The CDU said this week its position on Turkey was unchanged but it respected the EU's decision on October 3 to begin full membership talks with Turkey.

The exchange revealed strains between Ms Merkel and Mr Schröder over the latter's role in shaping German foreign policy before Ms Merkel's election as chancellor, expected in mid-November.

Mr Schröder is due next week to attend an informal EU summit at Hampton Court near London, and in November will hold talks in Berlin with Hu Jintao, Chinese premier. Ms Merkel is also due to meet Mr Hu.

Ms Merkel asked the chancellor on Monday to consult her government before taking decisions that influenced German policy.

His reply, according to one of his aides, was an indirect snub to the chancellor-in-waiting: he said he would consult primarily with his ally Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the designated SPD foreign minister.

Such strains were likely to be repeated within the grand coalition government, insiders said yesterday. The SPD is keen to retain its high profile on foreign affairs and will seek to shape policy positions on Turkey and other issues independently of the chancellery.

Mr Schröder yesterday continued to espouse his own agenda. Writing in Die Zeit weekly newspaper, he argued against steps to reduce significantly the role of the state in European societies. He wrote that "people are willing to take their own initiatives but they do not want a complete withdrawal of the state".

He also warned against an "overstretching of European competences" by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice that in turn "raise doubts" about the sovereignty of the EU member states. "Nothing annoys people as much as the suspicion of the gradual loss of national sovereignty," he wrote.

5. - noticias.info - "Iranian Regime Sentences Editor Of Kurdish-Language Weekly To 18 Months In Prison":

19 October 2005

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the 18-month prison sentence that was passed on Mohammad Sedigh Kabovand, the editor of Payam-e mardom-e Kurdestan, a weekly published in Kurdish and Farsi, for “upsetting public opinion and spreading separatist ideas.” The sentence has only now come to light although handed down on 18 August.

“The fact that it has taken us two months to learn of Kabovand’s sentence is a good illustration of the complete lack of transparency with which the Iranian authorities act, especially in the Kurdish part of the country, and the difficulty of getting information from a population that is reluctant to talk for fear of reprisals,” the press freedom organisation said.

The sentence was handed down by a court in Sanandaj, in the western part of Iran’s Kurdish region, which also imposed a five-year ban on Kabovand working as a journalist. The trial took place in the absence of his lawyer, Abdolfattah Soltani, himself arrested on 30 July on the orders of Tehran state prosecutor Said Mortazavi.

A court in Sanandaj ordered the closure of Payam-e mardom-e Kurdestan on 27 June 2004 for “disseminating separatist ideas and publishing false reports.”

6. - Globe and Mail - "Kurds are the winners":

The new Iraqi constitution consecrates gains made since the 1991 Gulf war, says Mideast specialist DAVID HIRST

20 October 2005 / by David Hirst*

In the great settlement that followed the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, one of the Middle East's largest ethnic groups, the Kurds, were the main losers. They had been promised a state of their own, but, thanks to Kemal Atatürk's nationalist rebellion and abandonment of the project by the Western powers, they ended up as repressed minorities in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

The Kurds are set to become the greatest beneficiary of whatever new order emerges from the current Western intervention in the region's affairs. This hasn't reached the scale of the earlier one, being mainly confined, in its radical form at least, to Iraq, but, in its expanding -- and unplanned -- ramifications, it could well be on the way. After all, its chief architects, the Bush administration's pro-Israeli, neo-conservative hawks, with their grandiose ideas of "creative chaos" and "regime change" everywhere, always saw Iraq as the springboard of an enterprise that, to succeed, had to be region-wide or not at all. In this respect, they are in unison with the Middle East's inhabitants, for whom it is axiomatic that what happens in Iraq affects everyone else.

At all stages in the Iraqi drama, Arab pundits and politicians have dwelt apprehensively on these wider implications. And so they are doing now with the new Iraqi constitution. It is the latest and possibly the most fateful of them, enshrining as it does a whole new concept of statehood and identity.

The Sykes-Picot agreement, the secret 1916 Anglo-French understanding that shaped the postwar settlement, drew arbitrary colonial-style frontiers across pre-existing ethnic, sectarian, tribal and commercial links and grossly affronted the Sunni-dominated pan-Arab nationalism and aspiration to unity that came with liberation from Ottoman rule. Ninety years on, Iraq now portends yet another layer of divisions that will either supplement the old ones or erase them altogether.

In this constitution, Iraqi Kurds don't get the independent state that, according to a recent referendum, 98 per cent of them want, but they do get gains -- vast legislative powers, control of their own militia, and authority over new discoveries of oil -- that effectively consecrate the quasi-independence they've enjoyed since Western "humanitarian" intervention on their behalf in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and that they themselves regard as a way station toward the real thing. The Iraqi republic is to be "independent, sovereign, federal, democratic and parliamentary," but one thing -- "Arab" -- it explicitly no longer is. For that, its Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, explained, would be to deny the right of its Kurdish citizens to look to membership of a greater Kurdish nation, just as its Arab citizens look to the greater Arab one.

Yet, more shocking to Sunni Arabs everywhere than this ethnic separatism is the new, intra-Arab, sectarian one. Not merely, for the first time in centuries, have Shiites established political ascendancy in a single Arab country -- and pivotal one at that -- they are doing so, like the Kurds, in the context of a constitutionally prescribed autonomy that, if Shia leaders such as Abdul Aziz Hakim mean what they say, will incorporate central and southern Iraq, more than half the country's population and, with its huge oil reserves and access to the sea, the bulk of its natural assets.

The adoption of a federal formula is seen by the Arab world not as a remedy for Iraq's inherent divisiveness but, in conditions of rising intercommunal tensions and violence, as a further stimulus to it. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the veteran Saudi foreign minister and quintessential voice of the Sunni Arab establishment, told Americans that it is "part of a dynamic pushing the Iraqi people away from each other. If you allow for this -- for a civil war to happen between Shiites and Sunnis -- Iraq is finished forever. It will be dismembered." What makes it all the more alarming is that, unlike the Kurds, Iraqi Shiites enjoy the strong support of a very powerful neighbour. Now, under its new president, Iran is clearly accumulating all the Shia-based geopolitical assets it can, from Iraq to southern Lebanon, in preparation for the grand showdown with the United States.

Arabs have long warned of the Lebanonization of Iraq, mindful, in doing so, of the fact that virtually every Western-created state in the eastern Arab world contains the latent ethnic or sectarian tensions that produced that archetype of Arab civil war.

But whereas, in concert with the U.S., they finally put out the Lebanese "fire" before it spread to themselves, their prospects of achieving the same with an Iraq at such violent loggerheads with itself would be slight, indeed. The inter-Arab state system -- and its chief institution, the Arab League -- has long been incapable of any concerted action against what, like Iraq, are perceived as threats to the basic integrity of the Arab "nation." Now the system itself is increasingly threatened by the growth of non-state activities that encompass the "nation," the cross-border traffic in extreme Islamist ideology -- along with the jihadists and suicide bombers who act on it -- or ethnic and sectarian solidarities of the kind that threaten to tear apart Iraq.

Syria, once the contentious nub of the Sykes-Picot deal, is again in the front line, alone among Arab states to be exposed to the Iraqi contagion in both its Kurdish and Shia dimensions. Thanks to the self-inflicted weakness of Iraqi Baathist rule, it was Iraqi Kurds who, in 1991, achieved the first contemporary breakthrough in the struggle of the Kurdish "nation" for self-determination. Syrian Kurds now sense similar weakness in their own, deeply troubled Baathist regime. If it collapses amid generalized chaos, many will push for secession and amalgamation with their brethren in northern Iraq.

On the Shia front, if sectarian identity is now, Iraqi-fashion, to become the organizing principle of Arab polities, then Syria is the most vulnerable to the intercommunal convulsions that will erupt. A small minority, the Alawites, has effectively run Syria for more than 40 years.

In a predominantly Sunni society, that represents an even greater anomaly than the Sunni minority rule, also in Baathist guise, that the majority Shiites and Kurds dispensed with in Iraq. A Sunni majority restoration will become especially unstoppable if, with the eventual breakup of Iraq, its disempowered Sunnis turn to Syria, of which, but for Sykes-Picot, a great many would long have been citizens anyway.

In the next most vulnerable region, the Persian Gulf, historically persecuted Shia minorities (or majority in Bahrain), inspired by the triumph of their co-religionists in Iraq, will press their claims for equality with new vigour. But nervous Sunni regimes will be loath to cede too much, not least in Saudi Arabia, where, like their terrorist alter ego in Iraq, al-Qaeda boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the more hidebound of the powerful Wahhabi religious hierarchy still regard Shiites as no better than heretics.

* David Hirst, who reported from the Middle East for The Guardian from 1963 to 2001, is based in Beirut.