Untitled Document

17 May 2006

1. "Kurds See Tide Turning Back Toward Repression", when the Turkish government lifted its ban on the letter "W," it seemed like a breakthrough. After decades of repression of Kurdish ethnic identity and a deadly war with Kurdish rebels, the Islamist-led government made moves toward democratic reform in recent years, part of Turkey's bid to improve its chances of joining the European Union.

2. "Kurdish insurgent killed in clashes in northeastern Turkey", a Kurdish insurgent was killed on Tuesday in clashes between the Turkish security forces and Kurdish insurgents in northeastern Turkey.

3. "Missteps hobble Turkey-EU waltz", a French proposal to ban any suggestion that Armenians did not suffer genocide is just one of the sour notes.

4. "Turkey genocide claim", Geelong Province MP John Eren yesterday declined to comment on a colleague who accused Turkish people of ignoring acts of genocide early last century. Parliamentary secretary for justice, Jenny Mikakos, who is of Greek heritage, told the Upper House that more than 300,000 Pontic Greeks died in Turkey early last century as a result of genocide.

5. "Talabani Slams Iran, Turkey Interference", Iraqi President Jalal Talabani lashed out at neighbors Iran and Turkey for interfering in Iraq's domestic affairs, warning Baghdad could reciprocate.

6. "As The Bombs Fall, Iraq's Kurds Have 'No Friends But The Mountains'", shell craters and dead branches torn off the trees by explosions mark the places in the mountains of northern Iraq targeted by Iranian artillery firing across the border in a serious escalation of the confrontation between Iran and the US.

1. - Los Angeles Times - "Kurds See Tide Turning Back Toward Repression":

DIYARBAKIR / 15 May 2006

When the Turkish government lifted its ban on the letter "W," it seemed like a breakthrough.
After decades of repression of Kurdish ethnic identity and a deadly war with Kurdish rebels, the Islamist-led government made moves toward democratic reform in recent years, part of Turkey's bid to improve its chances of joining the European Union.

Letters that appear in the Kurdish alphabet but not the Turkish one were no longer banned from print. Emergency military rule was lifted. The death penalty was abolished. Arrests and reports of torture declined.

But the tide began to turn, many Kurds argue, even before violent clashes between police and Kurdish protesters in late March left 13 civilians dead in the region's worst violence in more than a decade.

"Being Kurdish means you are a terrorist. That is how Turks see us," said Cemal Ceylan, 24, an unemployed Kurd with a third-grade education. He spoke between small glasses of tea at a coffeehouse in this rough city in southeast Turkey, his bitterness echoed by the young men around him.

Few of the men had jobs, they said as they slammed domino-like tiles against a metal table, absorbed in a game that whiles away their empty afternoons. Most live in cramped, tiny apartments in the slums that ring Diyarbakir.

The city has seen its population more than double in 15 years with the influx of rural Kurds, driven from their homes by the government's war with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), or military reprisals. Youths have been reared on stories of the flight, memories of burning villages, and decades of abuse and repression.

"There is a high percentage who have always felt themselves to be harassed and isolated. No money, no land, no luck," said Reyhan Yalcindag, an official with the local Human Rights Association. "People are reliving the trauma of the '90s and wondering now if it will be the same."

Their anger exploded in the March protests. The resulting violence, along with a renewed campaign by separatist guerrillas, is testing the Turkish government's commitment to reform.

A moderate Islamic nation, U.S. ally and member of NATO, Turkey has pledged greater democracy and respect for human rights to meet EU standards. But a rising tide of Turkish nationalism and the growing influence in government of Islamic conservatives have jeopardized the reforms and the EU bid.

The Kurdish question is widely seen as an important barometer for Turkey's performance. Eight months ago, Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to this city and gave a landmark speech, acknowledging past "mistakes" committed by Turkish authorities against Turkey's Kurdish minority.

But after the March clashes, which left an elderly man and four children dead, Erdogan vowed to crush Kurdish protests, warning darkly that Turkish security forces "will intervene against the pawns of terrorism, no matter if they are children or women."

By most accounts, there was provocation on all sides, with plenty of blame to go around. What is clear is the sense that the region has lost ground and hurtled backward.

Erdogan now refuses to talk to politicians from legally recognized Kurdish parties, and his government plans to toughen a terrorism law in ways some fear will impinge on civil liberties.

In early April, a veteran researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, in southeast Turkey to investigate claims of police abuse against Kurds, was detained by police and deported. Authorities contended that the researcher, a British national, did not have the proper visa, even though it was the same type of document he had used in 20 years of human rights work in Turkey.

Days later, a Turkish prosecutor probing the role of the military in fomenting unrest in Kurdish areas was fired after he issued an indictment implicating one of the army's top commanders.

"In the end, those who do not want calm in the region, who want conflict, they have been successful," said Diyarbakir's Kurdish mayor, Osman Baydemir. "The target was the Kurds, but also the EU reform process, the government democratization, the return to civilian life."

Baydemir said he was deeply disillusioned by the reversals and saw a powder keg of discontent in the city he governed, primed to explode again - or to swell the ranks of the guerrillas.

Angry, dejected young men vary on whether they want an independent Kurdish state - a subversive goal, as far as Ankara is concerned - or simply more recognition of their heritage. To Ankara's horror, some see the Kurds in neighboring Iraq, who enjoy relative autonomy, as a model and future partner.

An estimated 14 million Kurds live in Turkey, roughly 20 percent of its population. Successive Turkish governments have stamped down any expression of ethnic pride for generations as a way to curb separatist aspirations.

A critical turning point came in 1999, with the capture of Abdullah Ocalan, the top commander of PKK separatists. From his jail cell, Ocalan ordered his followers to stop fighting. The PKK declared a cease-fire in a war that had claimed 30,000 lives since 1984, and most guerrillas retreated across the border into northern Iraq.

Peace prevailed, Kurdish-dominated cities were allowed to elect their own mayors, and in 2002 the government lifted a state of emergency that had been in place for 15 years. With an eye on joining the EU, Turkey finally allowed limited public use of the Kurdish language, including brief television broadcasts.

"I can finally use the 'W,'" Kurdish newspaper publisher Arif Aslan said. He continues to publish his newspaper, in the nearby city of Batman, in the Turkish language, because he would lose advertisers if he published in Kurdish, he says, and few Kurds read Kurdish. But he now freely prints the odd Kurdish-language headline.

But benefits have been slow to trickle down to ordinary Kurds. And some reforms have been so restricted as to raise questions about the sincerity of Turkish authorities in granting them.

After amending the Turkish constitution, Kurdish-language teaching finally was admitted but only in private schools that were financially out of reach to most Kurds.

2. - KUNA - "Kurdish insurgent killed in clashes in northeastern Turkey":

ISTANBUL / 17 May 2006

A Kurdish insurgent was killed on Tuesday in clashes between the Turkish security forces and Kurdish insurgents in northeastern Turkey.

A government press release said clashes erupted when the Turkish forces opened fire on a group of Kurdistan Workers Party members who refused to obey orders, noting that the Turkish Army is still executing operations in the area.

The Turkish government blames the Kurdish party for the death of 30,000 people since the beginning of Kurdish armed campaigns in 1984 to establish an independent region in southwestern Turkey.

During the past few months, a score of Turkish soldiers and Kurdish insurgents were killed in clashes, while Kurdish gunmen planted bombs in Istanbul that claimed a score of lives.

3. - Christian Sience Monitor - "Missteps hobble Turkey-EU waltz":

A French proposal to ban any suggestion that Armenians did not suffer genocide is just one of the sour notes.

PARIS / ISTANBUL / 17 May 2006 / by Peter Ford and Yigal Schleifer

Barely six months after the European Union ended years of indecision by starting talks aimed at allowing Turkey to join the club, doubts about the wisdom of that move are coming to the fore on both sides of the table.
A series of well-publicized court cases, including one Tuesday, against Turkish writers has made Europeans wonder anew whether Ankara really shares their understanding of freedom of speech. Many Turks, meanwhile, see a double standard over head scarf bans and a proposed French law that would ban any suggestion that the Armenians did not suffer genocide in 1915.

The dubious mood clouding the "talks about talks" that Turkish and EU officials have been holding since the beginning of the year indicates just how long and bumpy the process of turning Turkey into a full-fledged European nation will be, say observers on both sides of the Bosphorus.

"There is a sense that the political will in Ankara is not as strong as it was, if there's any left at all, to invest in this process with Europe," says one EU diplomat in the Turkish capital, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue. "The commitment ... that they are still professing is less convincing because it is not being reflected by their actions on the ground."

Especially worrying to the Europeans is the way prosecutors have used a controversial article of Turkey's revised penal code against writers accused of insulting state institutions or Turkish identity. A number of these cases, such as the one against author Orhan Pamuk, have been dropped after sharp EU criticism. But Tuesday, the trial began of an Armenian-Turkish newspaper editor who is charged with "attempting to influence the judiciary" against the penal code. The editor, Hrant Dink, was met with shouts of "traitor" as he entered the courtroom.

Rights activists also fear that a planned anti-terror bill, which would allow the imprisonment of journalists found guilty of "propagating terrorism," might be used against anyone expressing support for Kurdish separatists. A recent upsurge in violence in the majority-Kurdish southeast of Turkey, meanwhile, could lead the military to reassert itself in domestic affairs.

The EU last month urged the Turkish authorities "to make sure that the security forces show the necessary restraint" in the wake of street clashes that left 16 people dead and 36 children in jail, some facing 24 years in prison.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has brushed aside charges of "reform fatigue," insisting recently that "our reform efforts aimed at raising standards and practices in all areas of life to the highest contemporary standards will resolutely continue."

But the approach of elections next year, coupled with a drop in public support for EU membership to 50 percent from 80 percent two years ago, means that leaders of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) "don't want to take risks," says Mensur Akgun with the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, a think tank in Istanbul.

The government "is focusing on elections and on the mood in the country, and that mood is very inward-looking," says the European diplomat. "Instead of showing the way and leadership, the government is listening much more to these ghosts that have been haunting Turkey for decades."

"There is a rising nationalism in the country," adds Mr. Akgun, and the AKP "has a constituency that is rather conservative in a nationalist sense, and they have to reciprocate to their feelings."

That nationalism has been fed by two rebuffs from the EU.

Ankara is galled that the Turkish-populated half of the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus remains under economic embargo even though Turkish Cypriots accepted a UN plan to reunite the two sides.

Late last year, religious Turks were upset when a European Court of Human Rights ruling upheld Turkey's head scarf ban in public universities.

Turks have also been angered by a vote next Thursday in the French Parliament on a bill that would criminalize any statement casting doubt on the Armenians' claim that they suffered genocide at Turkish hands in 1915. The bill would impose jail sentences and a fine on historians, journalists, or others who challenge Armenians' version of events, in the same way French law punished revisionists who deny the Holocaust.

The bill is unlikely to pass, but it reflects longstanding mistrust of Turkey in Europe. That mistrust is fed by freedom-of-expression cases being brought against writers, says Joost Lagendijk, who heads the European Parliament delegation to the joint EU-Turkey parliamentary committee.

"The mood in Europe is that nothing has happened in Turkey since October except setbacks," warns Mr. Lagendijk.

Quietly, Turkish and EU civil servants have been reviewing the 35 "chapters" of Turkish legislation that will have to be brought into line with EU law, and have agreed on negotiating points for 19 of them, officials say. Substantive negotiations on education and science are due to begin next month.

Nobody expects Turkey to join the EU until 2015, even if things go well. That, says Lagendijk, is a good thing, since EU citizens are displaying doubts about the union's future and purpose.

"We have some time ourselves to solve our own problems before we have to deal with Turkey," he says. "In the meantime, the negotiations will continue behind the scenes."

4. - AAP - "Turkey genocide claim":

17 May 2006 / by Peter Begg

GEELONG Province MP John Eren yesterday declined to comment on a colleague who accused Turkish people of ignoring acts of genocide early last century.
Parliamentary secretary for justice, Jenny Mikakos, who is of Greek heritage, told the Upper House that more than 300,000 Pontic Greeks died in Turkey early last century as a result of genocide.

Mr Eren, who is from Turkey, and another MP with a Turkish background, Adem Somyurek, reportedly interjected during the speech, but failed to stop Ms Mikakos.

The female MP claimed more than a million Pontic Greeks were forced into exile early last century, and in the preceding years, 1.5 million Armenians and 750,000 Assyrians in various parts of Turkey also perished.

Mr Eren was born in Turkey and immigrated to Australia with his family when he was six years old.

Earlier yesterday Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said the MP's parliamentary speech was a sign of free speech at work.

In a short speech to the Victorian Upper House during the last session of parliament, Ms Mikakos reportedly said: ``On May 19, the Pontian community in Victoria and around the world will commemorate the 87th anniversary of the Pontian genocide that occurred in present- day Turkey.

``Between 1916 and 1923, over 353,000 Pontic Greeks living in Asia Minor and in Pontus, which is near the Black Sea, died as a result of the 20th century's first but less-known genocide,'' Fairfax reported her as saying.

``Over a million Pontic Greeks were forced into exile. In the preceding years, 1.5 million Armenians and 750,000 Assyrians in various parts of Turkey also perished.''

Two Labor MPs of Turkish descent, Mr Somyurek and Mr Eren, interjected but Ms Mikakos continued speaking.

``The Turkish government must begin the reconciliation process by acknowledging these crimes against humanity. The suffering of the victims of the Pontian genocide cannot and will not be forgotten,'' she said.

The comments, made under a system of 90-second free statements for MPs established by the Bracks Government, have outraged Turkish and Jewish groups.

But Mr Bracks yesterday said Ms Mikakos, one of two members for the safe Jika Jika province in Melbourne's north, was free to make the speech.

5. - UPI - "Talabani Slams Iran, Turkey Interference":

BEIRUT / 16 May 2006

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani lashed out at neighbors Iran and Turkey for interfering in Iraq's domestic affairs, warning Baghdad could reciprocate.

Talabani was quoted as saying Tuesday in Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat that "Iraq is not a weak country. The neighbors can create problems for us and we also are capable of causing problems for them."

He said, "if Iran allows itself to interfere in Karbala because it is a Shiite city and Turkey feels it can interfere in Kirkuk, that will open the way for very dangerous consequences."

"In that case," he added, "Iraq will also have the right to interfere in Khozestan in Iran on the grounds that it has an Arab population and the same applies to Alexandrite in Turkey which has an Arab population."

Talabani stressed, however, that Iraq and Iran have had historic relations which were both positive and negative "but there is always room for agreement and also between Iraq and Turkey agreement is possible."

He acknowledged that the two countries have plausible reasons to interfere in Iraq since the Kurdistan Labor Party attacks Turkey from Iraq's Kurdish north; a Kurdish group in Iran has done the same, taking refuge in Kurdistan (northern Iraq).

"Nevertheless, we need to find a solution in order to eliminate all the pretexts used by Iran and Turkey to hit Iraqi territories," he added.

Talabani said that excluding the Kurds or opposing their appointment to certain posts demonstrates prejudice and has no place in a united Iraq, in reference to the opposition in some Sunni circles to the appointment of a Kurd to head Iraq’s foreign ministry.

Asked about the regional threats currently facing Iraq, the president said, “Give me a government of national unity and a delegation from this government to visit Tehran and Ankara and solve the problems. If I fail to solve them, I shall go to Sulaimani and hand in my resignation.”

6. - The Independent - "As The Bombs Fall, Iraq's Kurds Have 'No Friends But The Mountains'":

KANDIL / 16 May 2006 / by Patrick Cockburn

Shell craters and dead branches torn off the trees by explosions mark the places in the mountains of northern Iraq targeted by Iranian artillery firing across the border in a serious escalation of the confrontation between Iran and the US.
Frightened villagers, whose farms cling to the sides of the deep valleys below Kandil mountain, ran for their lives as Iran opened fire on Iraqi territory for the first time since the US invasion in 2003. Local officials said about 2,000 shells were fired in four hours.

"I was woken up by the sound of the shelling in the middle of the night and I saw there was fire everywhere," said Meri Hamza Farqa, an elderly Kurdish woman from Shinawa village.

"The children and I ran out of the house and scattered in different directions. A shell blew up near me and I was hit by mud and stones. Later I saw blood coming from my arm."

The old saying of the Kurds that they "have no friends but the mountains" is truest here among the towering peaks along on the frontier with Iran. For the first time in their tragic history the Kurds believe they are close to being recognised as a nation within Iraq but they fear that their powerful neighbours - Iran, Syria and Turkey - will snatch away their victory at the last moment.

A natural fortress without paved roads, the Kandil region can only be entered by moving along rough tracks cut into the sides of ravines, and by using fords to cross rivers where the water is two feet deep. For several years the area has been controlled by heavily armed Kurdish guerrillas from the Turkish Kurd PKK movement, which conducts operations across the border in Iran.

The Kurdish farmers, herding their sheep and cattle and living in almost total isolation, find it unfair that they should be among the first victims of Iranian-American rivalry.

Asked why the shelling had taken place, Saida Sirt, the commander of the PKK guerrillas in Kandil, said: "The Iranians wanted to send a warning to the Americans, the Kurdish parties and ourselves."

Scattered in their mountain bases, the guerrillas are almost immune to artillery fire and Katyusha rockets. But after the latest bombardment - on 1 May - the villagers had no alternative except to run away. "As soon as the shelling was over we decided to leave," said Meri Hamzaa, a 50-year-old woman with a black headscarf. "When we got back, all my hens and two of my goats had died of hunger."

On the other side of the valley in the village of Razgay Saju, local people had also been asleep in their flat- roofed houses when the shelling started. "Everybody looked for a place to hide," said Base Pirot Ibrahim. "The children started to shout and cry and tried to shelter in the house but we thought it might be targeted so we took them outside. I've never been so frightened in my life."

It is not as if the people of the Kandil are not used to war. One of Meri Hamza's sons was killed in a civil war between two Kurdish parties in the 1990s. Base Pirot said she had had to flee her village three times under Saddam Hussein when its people were ordered out at gunpoint and the houses destroyed.

The attitude of the Iraqi Kurds to the Turkish Kurd guerrillas of the PKK is ambivalent. After their defeat in Turkey, the PKK declared a ceasefire in 1999 and 5,000 of them fled into Iraqi Kurdistan, where they took refuge in easily defended mountain regions such as Kandil. Villagers objected to them cutting down oak trees for firewood in winter, and now they use kerosene for heating and cooking. They also levy a "tax" of one sheep or goat from each family every year. The farmers do not like this, but agree that the loss of a single animal is not much of a burden.

The local guerrillas are elusive. "When you see one, there are another 15 or 20 hidden near by," said Azad Wisu Hassan, the mayor of Sangaser village, close to Kandil. But in the middle of a grassy plain surrounded by mountains, the PKK fighters have built an elaborate and beautiful military cemetery, with a soaring white pillar in the middle.

There is a fountain, red and white rose bushes covered in flowers, decorative trees and the marble tombs of dead guerrillas, mostly young men. It is an extraordinary monument to find in this lonely place. Most of the walls are white but others are painted in the red and yellow colours of the PKK. At one side of the cemetery is a gateway with a sign reading: "The garden of flowers for martyrs." At the other end is a hall of remembrance with a picture of the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is imprisoned in Turkey.

We met Saida Sirt, a dapper man of 35 in Kurdish military uniform carrying a bamboo swagger stick, at the cemetery. He said that he considered all of Kurdistan his home whether he was living among the Kurds of Turkey, Iraq, Syria or Iran. Currently he was leading the Iranian section of the PKK, and in response to the bombardment he would send more fighters into Iran.

Commander Sirt saw the shelling of Kandil, probably rightly, as part of the complicated game being played between the US, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and the Kurds. He was not sure if there would be another attack by Iran or anyone else, but whatever happened he said he would defend his mountain fortress to the last.

"I was woken up by the sound of the shelling in the middle of the night and I saw there was fire everywhere," said Meri Hamza Farqa, an elderly Kurdish woman from Shinawa village.

"The children and I ran out of the house and scattered in different directions. A shell blew up near me and I was hit by mud and stones. Later I saw blood coming from my arm."

The Kurdish farmers, herding their sheep and cattle and living in almost total isolation, find it unfair that they should be among the first victims of Iranian-American rivalry.

Asked why the shelling had taken place, Saida Sirt, the commander of the PKK guerrillas in Kandil, said: "The Iranians wanted to send a warning to the Americans, the Kurdish parties and ourselves."