29 May 2006

1. "Turkish soldier killed by Kurd rebels in SE Turkey", a Turkish soldier was killed and four other members of the security forces injured during a clash with Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey's troubled southeast, officials said on Monday.

2. "Talking Turkey: Sovereign meltdown on the Bosphorus?", Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who was castigated by the Kemalist establishment because he dared to question the historical whitewash of the Armenian genocide, wrote a beautiful novel, Snow, about the passions and ideological hatreds in a provincial Anatolian town.

3. "Turkey, Iran act to rein in Kurds", both countries send message to U.S.-backed Iraqis: clamp down on Kurdish guerrillas or they will.

4. "US in talks with Iraq over Turkish Kurdish rebels", the United States has started talks with the new Baghdad government on "effective action" against Turkish Kurdish rebels holed up in northern Iraq, the US ambassador said here Friday.

5. "Pledges to Trace Back "Gladio" Unconvincing", Saglar: "To open the Susurluk file means challenging the system. Neither Erdogan nor Baykal have such a concern". Birdal: "Agar and the National Security Council should be put on the agenda. Without Susurluk and its continuation unveiled, no democracy."

6. "4 DTP Executives Face 15 Years Jail", four DTP Officials who were arrested for alleged involvement in the Diyarbakir incidents where 11 people including 5 children died, have been charged with assisting the PKK and committing offences on behalf of the organization.

1. - Reuters - "Turkish soldier killed by Kurd rebels in SE Turkey":

DIYARBAKIR / 29 May 2006

A Turkish soldier was killed and four other members of the security forces injured during a clash with Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey's troubled southeast, officials said on Monday.

The incident occurred on Sunday evening in a rural area north of Diyarbakir, the biggest city of the mainly Kurdish region.

Members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) opened fire on the security forces when ordered to put down their weapons, the officials told Reuters.

A sergeant was killed and three village guards and one member of the gendarmerie -- a paramilitary force responsible for security in rural areas -- were hurt and taken to a military hospital in Diyarbakir.

"The operation against the PKK is continuing in the Hazro district," an official said.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an independent Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.

Violent clashes between rebels and security forces have increased since the PKK called off a unilateral ceasefire in 2004. The PKK or groups linked to it have also carried out attacks on civilian targets across Turkey.

2. - Khaleej Times - "Talking Turkey: Sovereign meltdown on the Bosphorus?":

28 May 2006 / by Matein Khalid*

Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who was castigated by the Kemalist establishment because he dared to question the historical whitewash of the Armenian genocide, wrote a beautiful novel, Snow, about the passions and ideological hatreds in a provincial Anatolian town. In Snow, an Islamist assassinates the principal of a Turkish college because he enforced the secular state’s ban against girls wearing headscarves. Istanbul lawyer Alparslan Arslan might well have read Pamuk’s Snow. Last week, Arslan walked into Turkey’s highest courtroom and shot five judges, declaring he was a "soldier of Allah" who sought to punish the judges who ruled against a woman teacher who wore a headscarf in violation of laws dating back to the establishment of the secular Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Pasha in 1924.

The killings in the Istanbul courtroom awakened the demons of the post-Kemalist past, triggering demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan and a public spat with General Hilmi, the Army chief. The military’s rebuke is ominous because the armed forces are passionate guardians of the state’s secular Kemalist legacy. After all, a Turkish military court sentenced Prime Minister Adnan Menderes to death in 1957 (ignoring a plea for the doomed leader’s life from a young Pakistani diplomat named Z A Bhutto, himself destined to face his own tryst with destiny and a Praetorian dictator’s vengeance twenty years later) and removed Islamist Prime Minister Nuruddin Erbakan from office in the 1990’s. A confrontation between the Army and a non-secular civilian government in Turkey can have only one endgame. A military coup d’etat.

Political risk is rising dangerously fast in Turkey. Three years ago, Erdogan was hailed as a hero in the Middle East for his moderate religious agenda, for refusing to join Blair and Bush in the invasion of Iraq, for accelerating the EU accession agenda, for epic banking reforms, agreements with the IMF, for the plunge in inflation and interest rates, the resurrection of the lira from the 2001 currency meltdown, for defusing the geopolitical time bombs in Cyprus and Kurdistan, for triggering a spectacular bull market on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

Yet Prime Minister Erdogan now faces a grim summer of discontent. Despite his parliamentary majority, his Justice and Development Party (AKP) is assailed by corruption scandals, the outbreak of secessionist Kurdish violence in Anatolia and a global emerging markets panic that eviscerated 25 per cent from the market capitalisation of the ISE. Ankara’s relationship with Washington never really recovered from Erdogan’s refusal to send Turkish troops into Iraq and his policy to engage Syria and Iran was derailed by the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the looming nuclear crisis with Teheran.

Nato, the EU, IMF, the PKK, the Turkish general staff, London and Washington are formidable adversaries for any Turkish Prime Minister to have to confront. In fact, Erdogan’s insistence on an executive from a Sharia compliant finance house to succeed the incumbent governor of the Central Bank outraged the offshore money managers who own Turkish shares and Eurobonds, triggering a panic sell-off on the ISE even worse than India’s Sensex trauma. When the Turkish President, a secular stalwart, vetoed Erdogan’s central bank nominee, a constitutional crisis ensued. Moreover, AKP mayors amplified the crisis by enforcing alcohol free red zones even in the cosmopolitan, tourist dependent Istanbul and the sun-drenched playgrounds of the Aegean coast.

Erdogan is no Khoemini, even if his enemies portray him as a backward foe of the Kemalist ethos. He is merely trying to mobilise his constituency in rural Turkey to win the 2007 election in a landslide, to succeed Ahmed Nezer as President and preempt a military coup against an Islamist head of state. His effort to promote his Islamist agenda backfired because it coincided with an embryonic political economic and financial crisis in Turkey reminiscent of the Mexican meltdown in 1994. Wall Street was horrified by the tequila crisis in the Latin American financial markets twelve years ago. Is history setting the stage for the next global emerging market blow up — the baklava crisis on the Bosphorus?

It is such a pity that a moderate Islamist government in Turkey could well fall victim to global financial hurricanes, a leveraged daisy chain of hedge fund hot money that once crippled Southeast Asia in 1998. Erdogan’s election ended a generation of unstable coalition governments, a cold war with Greece over Cyprus, a secessionist war in Eastern Anatolia waged by "mountain Turks" (Kemalist doublespeak for Kurds), hyperinflation and capital markets chaos. Yet with its current account deficit and colossal Eurobond borrowing programme, Turkey is hostage to the ebb and flow of hot capital that literally moves across the world’s financial markets at the speed of light.

Turkey offered the perfect synthesis between a moderate Islamist ethos and the democratic ideal. It could so easily have morphed into a Muslim version of Catholic Ireland or Chile, a parliamentary democracy where religion and freedom could coexist. If Erdogan falls, it would mean the loss of the West’s natural strategic ally in the Islamic world at a time when Iraq has degenerated into civil war and Tomahawk cruise missiles and Stealth bombers could soon streak across the skies of Iran. A world on the brink of Armageddon cannot afford yet another sanguinary "clash of civilisations".

* Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker

3. - AP - "Turkey, Iran act to rein in Kurds":

Both countries send message to U.S.-backed Iraqis: clamp down on Kurdish guerrillas or they will.

ANKARA / 28 May 2006 / by Louis Meixler

Hundreds of Kurds had to flee their homes in the mountain village of Razqa, Iraq, when artillery shells came whistling down from Iran early this month, blowing apart their homes and livestock.

In Turkey, meanwhile, armored personnel carriers and tanks rumble along its remote border with Iraq's Kurdish zone. Turkey has sent tens of thousands of fresh soldiers in the last few weeks to beef up an already formidable force there.

The Kurdish provinces of northern Iraq are the country's most stable and prosperous area. But to neighboring Iran and Turkey, both with large Kurdish minorities, they are something else: an inspiration and a support base for the Kurdish militants in their own countries.

So Iran and Turkey are sending troops, tanks and artillery to the frontier to seal off the borders and send a message: If the U.S.-backed Iraqi government doesn't clamp down on Kurdish guerrillas who use Iraq as a base, they could do it themselves.

That has left the United States in a quandary. If U.S. forces take action, they risk alienating Iraqi Kurds, the most pro-American group in the region. And if they don't, they risk increased tensions — and possibly worse — with two powerful rivals.

Just listen to Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

"We would not hesitate to take every kind of measures when our security is at stake," Gul said when asked whether Turkish troops might cross into Iraq. "The United States best understands Turkey's position. Everybody knows what they can do when they feel their security is threatened."

Iran's artillery barrages could be warning shots, a crackdown on Kurdish guerrillas now as a factor in the wrangling with the United States over Tehran's nuclear program.

Kurds, who make up 14 percent of Iran's population, have long complained of discrimination in Iran. Iraq's Kurds backed the U.S. invasion of their country. Would the Kurds of Iran take the American side if tensions escalated there?

"The Iranians are clearly very concerned over the mobilization of their own Kurdish minority," said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary College, University of London.

And Tehran may also be flexing its muscles to remind the United States that it shares a long border with Iraq and could cause serious problems there for the United States.

The Iranians' policy is to warn that "we have the potential to run you out of Iraq if you don't give us some slack over the nuclear issue," Dodge said.

The traditional Kurdish region spans Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and the guerrillas are based in a mountain range of northern Iraq that stretches into Turkey and Iran. They seem determined to keep up their decades-long struggle.

Kurdish guerrillas of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, or PEJAK, have called on Kurds in western Iran to begin a campaign of civil disobedience. In clashes with Iranian security forces last year, dozens of PEJAK fighters and about a dozen Iranian soldiers were killed, according to official Iranian reports.

This year, more than a dozen members of Turkish security forces in southern Turkey have been killed fighting Kurdish guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which is closely allied with PEJAK.

After Iran shelled a village used by Kurdish guerrillas, the PKK warned that it was "capable of responding to these attacks with more strength then ever."

The attacks, which heat up in the spring when snow-covered mountain passes clear, have led to the military buildups along the borders. Turkey and Iran have both rushed tens of thousands of troops to the area.
Iran has twice shelled Iraqi Kurdish villages believed to be harboring PKK militants.

As the Iranians bombarded Razqa on May 1, hundreds of people fled. The shelling killed some farm animals but there were no reports of human casualties. Several homes could be seen severely damaged and holes from shells cratered the streets.

Olla Hamad, a villager, said most of the guerrillas are hiding in the mountains.

"PKK militants do not care about the bombings," he said, pointing toward the heights near the village. "They hide in safe rocky places in the mountains."

Turkish officials have hinted to the United States that they are considering a large-scale military operation across the border.

In a visit to Turkey in late April, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned against any major strike.
"We want anything we do to contribute to stability in Iraq and not to threaten that stability or to make a difficult situation worse," Rice said at a news conference with Gul.

Some analysts say that besides sealing off their borders to the guerrillas, both Iran and Turkey may be trying to intimidate Iraqi Kurds. The Iranians and Turks fear Kurdish success in creating an autonomous region in northern Iraq, and that the prosperity of their enclave could encourage their own Kurdish minorities.

"The Iranians and the Turks do not want a free Kurdistan there," said Nazmi Gur, vice president of Turkey's pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party. "They are saying to the Kurds, 'We are here.' "

4. - AFP - "US in talks with Iraq over Turkish Kurdish rebels":

DIYARBAKIR / 26 May 2006

The United States has started talks with the new Baghdad government on "effective action" against Turkish Kurdish rebels holed up in northern Iraq, the US ambassador said here Friday.

Ankara has long been frustrated by US and Iraqi reluctance to clamp down on bases of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the mountains of northern Iraq, from where the rebels infiltrate neighboring Turkey to engage in anti-government violence.

"We now have a new, stronger government in Baghdad. We believe that this can provide a good basis to work more effectively together," Ambassador Ross Wilson said during a visit to Diyarbakir, the main city of the predominantly Kurdish southeast.

"We have already been discussing with Iraqi authorities our strong concerns about the PKK and the need for effective action to deal with its presence in northern Iraq," he said.

Wilson reiterated Washington's commitment to support Ankara's struggle against the group.

The issue has become of increasing importance for Ankara in recent months as clashes have escalated between the PKK and the army and a series of bomb attacks in urban centers has been blamed on the group.

Thousands of armed PKK militants have found refuge in northern Iraq since 1999, when the group declared a unilateral ceasefire after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The truce was called off in June 2004.

Turkey has massed troops along the border with Iraq to stop what it says is increasing infiltration by the rebels since the arrival of spring.

During a visit to Ankara last month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Ankara against cross-border operations and called for renewed trilateral meetings between Washington, Baghdad and Ankara to discuss measures against the PKK after the new Iraqi government took office.

The Kurdish conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives since the PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast in 1984.

5. - Bianet - "Pledges to Trace Back "Gladio" Unconvincing":

Saglar: "To open the Susurluk file means challenging the system. Neither Erdogan nor Baykal have such a concern". Birdal: "Agar and the National Security Council should be put on the agenda. Without Susurluk and its continuation unveiled, no democracy."

ANKARA / 26 May 2006 / by Tolga Korkut

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's pledge that the government "will open all shelved files even if it is the Susurluk one" after the recent attack on Turkey's Council of State has been challenged by former Parliament Susurluk Investigation Commission member Fikri Saglar who told Bianet in an exclusive interview that "if he does this, he will go into history. But he doesn't have the strength to do it".

Bianet also interviewed former Human Rights Association chairman Akin Birdal who said that without Susurluk and organisations that are its continuation unveiled, there could be no democratization in the society.

Both Saglar and Birdal were active in their respective roles during the aftermath of what has come to be known as the "Susurluk Scandal" sparked off by a road accident near the northwest Turkish town of Susurluk in 1996 that revealed an intricate and illegal relationship between the government, politicians, security forces and organised crime.

Although a subsequent investigation and trial led to several convictions, it is widely accepted that the more controversial links of Susurluk were never properly investigated

"If the Prime Minister believes in his own words," Birdal told Bianet, "and if he wants to end the debate and get results from a possible early/extraordinary election, he should do what he says. This needs courage and determination. Because extrajudicial organisations in Turkey are institutionalised".

Saglar: Investigating Susurluk is changing the system

Saglar, who was one of the key members of a special commission in the Parliament tasked to investigate the Susurluk incident and relevant links says that to re-open the file comes to the same meaning as changing the regime in Turkey.

"The file known as the Susurluk file is related to the system. Because of this Erdogan does not have the strength. The only thing he has his mind set on is changing the secular democratic republic to moderate Islam. As for Deniz Baykal, when he remembered that the soldiers are also in the Susurluk file, he said nonsense. Much too distant from what the opposition should be doing. They have no concern in changing the system" Saglar said.

He added that in order to get any conclusive result on the Susurluk file, "it must be accepted that the Turkish Republic is a State of Law... Because it will mean a struggle against the system".

As for the system or regime, Saglar described it as "a system that has gone outside of the law, that is intent on shelving democracy, that believes sovereignty belongs not to the people but to the military structure".

Birdal: Agar and NSC should be taken on the agenda

Possible connections between the armed attack on Turkey's State Council during which one judge was killed and four others were wounded surfaced after relations were uncovered linking one of the suspects, retired officer Muzaffer Tekin, to retired general Veli Kucuk who was named in the Susurluk File.

Kucuk, who was a Brigadier General during the period where the Susurluk relations flourished, had refused to testify before the Parliament Investigation Commission on Susurluk.

But there are two other links in the Susurluk folder that have so far, in the last connection with the State Council attack, not been mentioned.

Mehmet Agar, politician-turned-policeman who not only chairs the True Path Party in the following years but serves directly in all operations as Turkey's National Police Chief in the Susurluk buildup. And the highest level security organ in the Turkish system: The National Security Council (NCS) which journalist Ismet Berkan identified as the supreme structure "that authorised the irregular war gang that was revealed with Susurluk".

On Kuuk and Agar, Saglar said "Both of them were in the operations. One of them from JITEM (Gendarme Intelligence) and the other as the Police General Director" and argued that Agar's becoming chairman of the True Path Party (DYP) "does not erase from history what he has done."

"They were both in the system and in the file. What should really be asked is why they [Kucuk and Agar] were not captured. If you are going to get a result on Susurluk they should be brought on the agenda".

Birdal, on the other hand, argued that "No one is immune" and said the Susurluk incident was bound to be discussed. "What happened was developments that almost rewarded those who participated in extrajudicial organisations rather than punishing them." He said that so long as there was no punishment, those involved in such acts were finding courage.

Everyone has a responsibility

Saglar says that with the Susurluk file now on the agenda again "the real duty falls on the people".

"In practice the duty is with the legislative organ, the justice. But it is essential the people own up to this. Otherwise the judges will be scared, so will the legislative."

Birdal adds that, "everyone who has had no relationship with such structures has a duty. Because the judiciary, the executive organs, the security forces, everyone should look into Susurluk and this should be unveiled."

Birdal believes the relations that have been revealed with regard to the State Council attack are not dissimilar to those related to Susurluk.

"What we have here is extrajudicial organisation, attacking, terrorising democratic institutions" he says. "The dysfunctional state of democratic institutions is feeding other institutions... Both the organisation and what they want to achieve is the same. The only thing that changes is the actors."

6. - Bianet - "4 DTP Executives Face 15 Years Jail":

Four DTP Officials who were arrested for alleged involvement in the Diyarbakir incidents where 11 people including 5 children died, have been charged with assisting the PKK and committing offences on behalf of the organization.

DIYARBAKIR / 26 May 2006

Four executives of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) who were arrested for involvement in the wave of incidents that swept through the city between March 28 and April 1 this year have been formally charged and face up to 15 years imprisonment if found guilty for assisting and carrying out offences on behalf of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Diyarbakir's Republic Chief Prosecutor's office completed its indictment against DTP Diyarbakir provincial deputy chairman Musa Farisoglu, provincial executive Necdet Atalay, Central District chairman Muhlis Altun and Central District executive board member Nusret Akin.

The four are charged with "assisting the PKK and committing offences on behalf of the organisation" under Turkish Penal Code (TCK) article 314 which carries a prison sentence of 10 to 15 years for each defendant. Defence sources said the trial is expected to start in the coming days.

TCK article 314 paragraph 1 relates to those who set up or direct an armed organisation for terror offences and carries a prison sentence of 10-15 years for those found guilty of such conduct. Its second paragraph related to members of the terrorist organisation with 5 to 10 years imprisonment.

A total of 11 people including five children were killed in the Diyarbakir incidents during which hundreds of suspects were detained.