5 October 2005

1. "Kurdish demonstrator killed by Turkish police in Istanbul", a Kurdish protester was killed and three others were wounded on October 2 when Turkish police opened fire on a group of pro-Ocalan demonstrators in the Maslak street of the Göztepe district in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul.

2. "New Ankara Bar group to fight torture", Ankara Bar head Cosar says first rule of a civilized society is avoidance of torture and maltreatment.

3. "Opened with a flourish, Turkey's Kurdish-language schools fold", the EU-prodded reform allowed private classes. But public-school instruction is still banned.

4. "No quick EU entry seen for Turkey", European politicians and analysts have warned that Turkey's decades-long road to European Union membership will be arduous and uncertain of success.

5. "Cyprus slams Turkish "Anatolian bazaar" tactics", Cyprus lambasted Turkey's negotiating tactics to win the right to start EU entry talks, accusing Ankara today of staging an Anatolian bazaar.

6. "Protest Over Stateless Kurds", on Wednesday Syrian opposition parties, human rights organisations and Kurdish groups will hold a protest for the anniversary of the 1962 census, which striped 120,000 Kurds of their citizenship.

1. - DozaMe.org - "Kurdish demonstrator killed by Turkish police in Istanbul":

4 October 2005

A Kurdish protester was killed and three others were wounded on October 2 when Turkish police opened fire on a group of pro-Ocalan demonstrators in the Maslak street of the Göztepe district in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul.

The 19-year-old protester Atilla Geçmis was hit in the chest and the stomach and was killed instantly.

The group was protesting for the release of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. Another group of young Kurds in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul burned down two buses belonging to the Istanbul Metropolitan Transport Authorities (IEET) in reaction to the killing of Geçmis. Pro-Ocalan youth in cities all over Turkey and Kurdistan (southeastern Turkey) took to the streets to protest the killing of Geçmis.

2. - The New Anatolien - "New Ankara Bar group to fight torture":

ANKARA / 5 October 2005

Ankara Bar head Cosar says first rule of a civilized society is avoidance of torture and maltreatment

The Torture Prevention Group, a new association of 40 volunteer attorneys established under the jurisdiction of the Ankara Bar, yesterday laid out its purpose and goals at an Ankara press conference.

At the press conference at the Ankara Bar's Education Center, bar head Vedat Ahsen Cosar and Bar Human Rights Center Chairman Erdal Merdol introduced the new group and described its practices.

Cosar emphasized that the right to live free from inhumane and destructive attitudes is a necessary component of a civilized society and a state of law.

He said that the center was established after examining national and international regulations, and added that the next step was to found a group here in Turkey.

Merdol, taking over the meeting from Cosar, said that the group was launched this year right after it met its personnel and infrastructural needs.

Policies and practices concerning torture and maltreatment will be scrutinized judicially, Merdol said, and added that legal counseling will be provided for victims. He also said that the center will cooperate with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in its work.

3. - The Christian Sience Monitor - "Opened with a flourish, Turkey's Kurdish-language schools fold":

The EU-prodded reform allowed private classes. But public-school instruction is still banned.

BATMAN / 5 October 2005 / by Yigal Schleifer

For years, Kurdish language instructor Aydin Unesi had to teach clandestinely throughout this city in Turkey's southeast region, home to the majority of the country's 14 million Kurds. But on April 1, 2004, he found himself presiding over the much-heralded opening of the first official private Kurdish language school here.
"We felt this was the moment, after 80 years of being prohibited, for this language to be permitted," Mr. Unesi says.

The euphoria did not last long. Although the school had a capacity of 480 students for each of its 10-week sessions, it enrolled only a fraction of that number. And earlier this month, it closed with little fanfare, along with seven other Kurdish courses in Istanbul and southeast Turkey.

For the government, which allowed the schools to open as part of a wave of European Union-prodded reforms instituted to strengthen the country's candidacy for membership - under discussion this week in Brussels - the closings are proof that Turkey's Kurds are not really interested in learning their language.

Kurdish language activists counter that the desire to learn Kurdish is there, but it must be taught in public schools - a practice that's still banned.

It's a debate that dramatizes Turkey's struggle to defuse tensions with the Kurdish community.

Beyond the now-closed private courses, there is still precious little space in Turkish public life for Kurdish. There are currently no private television or radio stations that are allowed to broadcast in the language, and Turkey's national television has programming in Kurdish for just 30 minutes each week. The language, meanwhile, is still banned for official uses.

"If you learn a second language, like French, it should lead to some benefit, but there's nothing like that with Kurdish," says Suleyman Yilmaz, director of the language school in Diyarbakir, another city in the southeast, where a four-story building painted pink and beige was rented out and renovated in anticipation of a flood of students that never came.

Still, in Diyarbakir and other places in the region, there is strong evidence of a thirst for Kurdish culture and language. In the Asanlar music shop in Diyarbakir, the racks are stocked floor-to-ceiling with Kurdish-language tapes and CDs, banned only a few years ago. Mustafa Orhanciftci, the store's owner, says 70 percent of the music he sells is in Kurdish. He also doing brisk business selling Kurdish-language movies, most of them low-budget productions recently made by local amateurs. "People want these movies in their language," he says.

Unesi says Kurds simply couldn't afford the money or time needed to take private instruction. "It would be better to teach Kurdish in schools." he says. "It's better to study when you're a child."

A coalition of Kurdish grass-roots organizations has already begun a campaign called "I want to be taught in my mother tongue," aimed at pressuring the Turkish government to institute Kurdish language education in public schools. The campaign's organizers say they have already collected more than 300,000 signatures.

Such an initiative has little chance of success, at least without strong pressure from the EU, says Etyen Mahcupyan, director of the Democratization Project at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), an Istanbul-based think tank.

Modern Turkey, built on the remains of the polyglot and multicultural Ottoman Empire, has long looked at the Turkish language as one of the keys to unifying the nation. "I don't think the officials will take it seriously. It is too political," he says.

For now, the issue of Kurdish language education seems to be back at square one, with neither private nor public courses offered.

"We fell for the government's trick," says Mr. Yilmaz, director of the closed Diyarbakir school. "As the director of this school, I'm telling you that this language will never survive only on courses like this."

4. - Al Jazzera - "No quick EU entry seen for Turkey":

European politicians and analysts have warned that Turkey's decades-long road to European Union membership will be arduous and uncertain of success.

5 October 2005

French and British leaders cautioned that Turkey faced at least 10 years of changes if it was to meet EU criteria in 35 policy areas that included minority rights and legislation.

In Paris, French President Jacques Chirac said the Muslim-majority country must undergo a "major cultural revolution" to fulfil EU membership conditions. "Will it succeed? I cannot say," he said.

And UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who holds the EU presidency, said on Wednesday that negotiations would take a long time and would mean a "very big change" for Europe and Turkey.

"It will be an issue of controversy for years to come," he told reporters in London.

Entry talks could force Turkey next year to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot ships and passenger jets.

This may be a first step towards recognising the EU member that Turkey invaded and occupied in 1974 after a short-lived coup by supporters of union with Greece.

Turkey has refused to recognise Cyprus, which has been separated into a Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north, where a breakaway state is only recognised by Ankara.

Turkish views

Turkey formally began membership negotiations with the EU on Tuesday, after the 25-nation bloc's members held two days of arduous talks to overcome objections by Austria.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Tuesday that reforms "in particular will try us and there will be a great struggle to fully implement the harmonisation laws".

Nevertheless, the daily newspaper Milliyet, one of the country's largest, headlined that Turkey now had a "new life with the EU".

"Nothing will be the same from now on. We will experience changes in our lives," it said in a front page commentary.

Media view

The daily Cumhuriyet splashed "era of conditions begin" across its front page, and wrote that "with the decision to start negotiations, Turkey is entering a difficult process. During the negotiations, foreign policy, the environment and agriculture sector issues will be especially arduous".

But former ambassador and foreign policy analyst Gunduz Aktan questioned if the beginning of talks was "salvation or inquisition".

"Accession talks constitute the most effective process the EU uses to effect change in the candidate country," he wrote in the Turkish Daily News.

"In that case the demands made and the pressure exerted on such a country to change itself could go to extremes, acquiring an irrational, tortuous nature.

"The 3 October experience has shown that Turkey cannot tolerate such a thing."

5. - Reuters - "Cyprus slams Turkish "Anatolian bazaar" tactics":

NICOSIA / 5 October 2005

Cyprus lambasted Turkey's negotiating tactics to win the right to start EU entry talks, accusing Ankara today of staging an Anatolian bazaar.
Monday's ceremony was delayed by nearly two days of fierce wrangling over Turkey and Austria's objections to the EU's proposed negotiating mandate.

Turkey was concerned its ability to keep Cyprus out of NATO would be weakened. The mandate contained a call that Ankara stop blocking other EU members from joining international organisations.

The debate caused some bemusement in Cyprus, run by leftists who regularly indulge in NATO-bashing and blame it for scheming the island's partition in 1974. Cyprus has never expressed a desire to join the alliance.

''The debate was a complete red herring, a public relations stunt at the expense of the Turkish people,'' Cypriot Foreign Minister George Iacovou said.

''I said that if they did not accept things as they were, I would pull out of this Anatolian bazaar and go home.'' ''It was a disgrace that 25 foreign ministers and a prime minister, the Croatian one, had to sit around in corridors waiting for Mr (Abdullah) Gul to put on his performance for Turkish media,'' Iacovou said, referring to his Turkish counterpart.

Iacovou's outburst on public radio reflected deep tensions with Turkey and a foretaste of the bickering the EU can expect during Ankara's entry talks.

Turkey has no diplomatic relations with Cyprus, which is represented in the EU by its Greek Cypriots. Ankara supports a breakaway state in northern Cyprus run by Turkish Cypriots.

Concerns were eventually smoothed over with U.S.

intervention by Turkey being given assurances that the rules for joining the European Union would not oblige it to drop its objection to Cypriot NATO membership.

The contentious paragraph, however, remained in the mandate and Nicosia says it is still binding on Ankara.

6. - AKI - "Protest Over Stateless Kurds":

DAMASCUS / 4 October 2005

On Wednesday Syrian opposition parties, human rights organisations and Kurdish groups will hold a protest for the anniversary of the 1962 census, which striped 120,000 Kurds of their citizenship.The aim of the protest is to ask the government to change its treatment of the Kurdish minority, which has a right to citizenship. During a television appearance six months ago president Bashar al-Assad had promises that he would naturalise some Kurds living in Syria.

In 2004 Kurdish anger erupted in Syria' northeastern governorate of Hasake, where riots, reportedly resulting from a brawl between Arab and Kurdish supporters of rival soccer teams, killing 30 people.

In a reconciliation move, which activists hoped would be followed by wider reforms, Assad later pardoned and released 312 Syrian Kurds linked to the riots.

Around 300,000 Kurds are deprived of a nation, claim Kurdish sources. The Syrian authorities say only 120-150,000 people are involved.

Besides from counting the Syrian population, the 1962 census also aimed at identifying 'alien infiltrators', who allegedly crossed the border from Turkey. To retain their Syrian nationality Kurds had to prove they had lived in Syria since 1945.