12 September 2006

1. "Turkey's main Kurdish party calls for rebels to declare ceasefire", Turkey's main Kurdish party on Monday asked Kurdish rebels fighting the government to call a ceasefire amid mounting bloodshed in the country's southeast, the Anatolia news agency reported.

2. "The real challenge to secular Turkey", Turks remain stoical in the face of bomb attacks by Kurdish rebels — but extreme Islamism may be a bigger threat to their republic.

3. "E.C.H.R. Listens To Views Of Turkish Gvt And Dehap Regarding Electoral Threshold", the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) listened to views of Turkish government and the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP) regarding the 10 percent electoral threshold.

4. "Investigate into Killing of Kurdish Girl", 9-year-old Mizgin Ozbek and two others were sprayed with bullets in a car in southeast Batman while officials maintain child was caught in cross-fire. Human rights NGOs and local Bar Association set up fact-finding delegation.

5. "Sarkozy calls for suspension of EU talks with Turkey", French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy has called for the suspension of EU membership talks with Turkey unless Ankara changes its stance on Cyprus.

6. "Saddam genocide trial resumes", ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein returned to the dock with the resumption of his trial on charges of genocide against the Kurds during the so-called Anfal campaign of the late 1980s.

1. - AFP - "Turkey's main Kurdish party calls for rebels to declare ceasefire":

ANKARA / 11 September 2006

Turkey's main Kurdish party on Monday asked Kurdish rebels fighting the government to call a ceasefire amid mounting bloodshed in the country's southeast, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The Democratic Society Party (DTP)'s message was addressed to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been stepping up attacks since a five-year unilateral ceasefire ended in 2004.

"We hope the PKK will not ignore our call and will give a positive response," DTP Chairman Ahmet Turk told a news conference in Ankara, Anatolia said.

"We have been closely following the developments and taking into consideration the public's demands. We believe there is a need for such a process," Turk added.

There has been a significant increase in violence in the mainly Kurdish-populated southeast of Turkey, especially this year.

Earlier this month, eight soldiers died in a weekend of fighting with the rebels, triggering angry accusations that the government was failing to ensure security in the country.

Several ministers attending the funerals of the slain soldiers were booed.

In August, the PKK's number two, Murat Karayilan, offered to declare a conditional ceasefire as of September 1, but the government in Ankara ignored the proposition, saying it would not negotiate with what it describes as a "terrorist group".

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

2. - The Economist - "The real challenge to secular Turkey":

Turks remain stoical in the face of bomb attacks by Kurdish rebels — but extreme Islamism may be a bigger threat to their republic

DIYARBAKIR / 1 September 2006

DESPITE all the progress Turkey has made in modernising its economy and political system, the festering Kurdish problem is unresolved. That was the grim message implied by the bomb attacks that killed three Turks and wounded scores of others in tourist areas across the country this week.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, seen in Turkey as an arm of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has waged a armed campaign against the Turkish state since 1984, swiftly claimed responsibility for the blasts in Marmaris, Antalya and Istanbul. Ten British visitors to Marmaris were hurt when a remotely-controlled device tore through their minibus. Hours later the Falcons declared on their website that all Turkey would become a “hell” and that tourists should stay away or risk death.

Turkey's political leaders, anxious to limit the effect of the bombs on the country's image, financial rating and tourist business, offered little public comment. Many ordinary folk were equally tight-lipped. Within hours of the blasts, shopkeepers in Antalya resumed business, replacing shattered glass and broken furniture and festooning windows with huge Turkish flags. Markets remained unrattled, with the lira holding firm, and there were few reports of holiday cancellations.

If there was an official response to the attacks, it came from the armed forces. Turkey's new army chief, General Yasar Buyukanit, said during his inaugural speech that the battle against the rebels would be intensified, without elaborating how. The general earned his hawkish reputation when serving in Diyarbakir, capital of the country's mainly Kurdish south-east, during a PKK insurgency in the 1990s.

If the general returned there today, he would scent a new enemy. He would need only to go to Dag Kapi, the city's main square. Over the past week a new Islamist group called Mustazaflar—“the downtrodden”—has erected two giant tents, decked with grotesque photographs of Lebanese children allegedly killed in Israeli air raids.

Throngs of visitors record their outrage in a diary. One entry reads: “Let us all taste the sherbet of martyrdom.” A painting to raise money for “the cause” shows a skull emblazoned with the Star of David, blood dripping from its fangs onto the Muslims' holiest shrine in Mecca.

Nowadays anti-Israeli and anti-American passions run high across Turkey. But in the Kurdish regions, where the 20th century saw a series of ethnic rebellions with religious undertones, such displays of Muslim zeal look especially menacing to the masters of Turkey's secular republic.

This very point was made by the outgoing army chief, General Hilmi Ozkok, who said political Islam had surpassed the PKK (whose ideological roots are in nationalism and Marxism) as the big peril in the south-east. Until recently rallies backing the rebels were the biggest crowd-pullers in places like Diyarbakir. Nowadays demonstrations to protest against Danish caricatures of Muhammad, or public celebrations of the Prophet's birth, are more likely to draw Kurds onto the streets.

In Diyarbakir prayer rooms have popped up in once secular social clubs. Around 60 new Islamically-minded groups have formed in recent years, offering scholarships, financial aid and “moral guidance” to the poor. Although such groups disavow violence, their members claim that as many as 500 local youths have gone to Lebanon in the past month to “help” their Muslim comrades. Enrolment at a local summer course in Koranic studies nearly doubled this year, to 20,000.

Diyarbakir's governor, Efkan Ala, is a pious Muslim intellectual, whose liberal approach is widely appreciated. He agrees that global jihadism has had a spillover effect in the conservative, Kurdish provinces of Turkey that border Iran, Iraq and Syria. Yet Mr Ala insists that radical Islam can pose a threat only if “certain forces” decide to make it one.

Mr Ala was alluding to rogue members of the security forces who secretly armed fighters of the “Kurdish Hizbullah” movement throughout the separatist war of the 1990s. Kurdish Hizbullah—which has no links to its Lebanese namesake—was once considered useful to Turkey's authorities because it fought the PKK.

When the PKK called off its insurgency after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999, security forces raided Hizbullah cells across the country and killed the group's leader in an Istanbul shootout. The rebels ended their truce in 2004, citing the government's refusal to grant an amnesty that would cover PKK fighters and all their leaders, including Mr Ocalan. Mr Ala says the real reason the PKK resumed attacks was to reassert its waning influence in the face of reforms encouraged by the European Union. Thanks to these reforms, Kurds can now publish and broadcast in their own tongue.

So far the resurgence of PKK violence has not prompted a complete reverse of the government's efforts to give Kurds a better deal. The government is ploughing ahead with a repatriation scheme for hundreds of thousands of Kurds who were evicted from villages during the army's scorched-earth campaign of the 1990s.

In Tunceli, one of the provinces worst hit by the conflict, the governor, Mustafa Erkal, says 14 villages have been rebuilt since 2002. Songul Erol Abdil, the town's first female mayor and an activist in a large pro-Kurdish movement, the Democratic Society Party, acknowledges that Mr Erkal has played a constructive role. She says the governor helped restrain the security forces after the PKK killed two policemen in a bomb attack near Tunceli on August 13th. “In the old days they would have fired on civilians for revenge,” she says.

Kurdish eyes are now trained on a case filed by two Kurdish politicians with the European Court of Human Rights. Resul Sadak and Mehmet Yumak won a combined total of 46% of the vote in Sirnak province in the 2002 parliamentary polls. But like 51 other contestants, they were unable to win seats because their now defunct party failed to get the minimum 10% of the national vote that is needed for representation in parliament.

The Kurds say the law breaks European norms of democracy. A hearing is scheduled for September 5th. Should the court rule in their favour, some Kurds dream of the national threshold being reduced before the parliamentary elections that must take place by November 2007.

But with each PKK attack, official attitudes, and those of many Turkish voters, harden. So does the widespread Turkish nationalist feeling which has dented the government's zeal for EU-inspired reforms.

The mild Islamists who came to power in 2002, vowing to lead the country into Europe, barely mention the EU these days. Human-rights groups say a recently amended anti-terror law has rolled back many improvements to civil liberties. For example, suspects no longer have access to lawyers for the first 24 hours of their detention—a change which gives free rein to torturers, according to Tahir Elci, a human-rights advocate in Diyarbakir.

The EU's moral power to oppose such measures is waning; polls suggest that support for EU entry has dipped to half the electorate from three-quarters only a year ago. Meanwhile, squeezed between PKK violence and Turkish nationalism, a growing number of Kurds are turning to radical forms of Islam.

3. - Turkish Press - "E.C.H.R. Listens To Views Of Turkish Gvt And Dehap Regarding Electoral Threshold":

STRASBOURG / 11 September 2006

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) listened to views of Turkish government and the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP) regarding the 10 percent electoral threshold.

Munci Ozmen, lawyer of Turkish government, argued that "electoral threshold is necessary for political stability", while DEHAP's lawyers claimed that "this barrage causes representation and legitimacy problem in a pluralist democracy".

Noting that Turkish Constitutional Court approved the electoral threshold, Ozmen asked the ECHR not to intervene in this decision of the Turkish court. He stated that DEHAP is not sole political party that could not enter the parliament due to the electoral threshold, and argued that this system is accepted by other political parties in Turkey as well.

"If DEHAP members had wanted, they could have run independently, or entered the parliament by establishing coalition with other parties. Also, there is no threshold in local elections in Turkey; thus the members of this party may very well run in mayoral elections," he added.

On the other hand, DEHAP's lawyer Tahir Elci claimed that "people of the Southeastern Anatolia are not represented politically in the parliament due to the electoral threshold", and said that there is no 10 percent electoral threshold in any EU-member country.

ECHR will make public its ruling at a later date.

DEHAP members Resul Sadak and Mehmet Yumak argue that the 10-percent electoral threshold constitutes an obstacle before their right to be elected freely, according to Art.3 of the Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Sadak and Yumak applied to the ECHR in 2003 after the general elections held in November 3rd, 2002, saying that they were not elected although their party won 45.95 percent of the votes in the cities they ran.

The ECHR decided on March 26th, 2006 to deal with the matter.

4. - Bianet - "Investigate into Killing of Kurdish Girl":

9-year-old Mizgin Ozbek and two others were sprayed with bullets in a car in southeast Batman while officials maintain child was caught in cross-fire. Human rights NGOs and local Bar Association set up fact-finding delegation.

BATMAN / 7 September 2006 / by Kemal Ozmen

A nine year old child named Mizgin Ozbek was killed by gunfire in the southeast province of Batman on September 5, Tuesday.

In a statement on the incident, the Batman Governor's Office said she was caught up in a cross-fire between security forces and terrorists. Her mother, Samiye Ozbek says their vehicle was sprayed with bullets. Wounded in the same attack, she is under treatment in hospital.

Two of Turkey's most leading human rights organizations, the Human Rights Association (IHD) and the Association for Human Rights and Solidarity with the Oppressed (MAZLUMDER) have joined forces with the Bar Association and set up a fact-find mission to investigate the incident.

Batman IHD chairman Saadet Becerikli has told bianet they regard the case as a violation of the right to life for three individuals while raising concern that the country's controversial new Anti-Terror Law may be leading to extrajudicial killings. He said the fact-finding delegation would investigate the scene of incident and interview witnesses before sharing its findings with the public in the coming days.

Contrasting Statements

According to the statement issued by the Batman Governor's Office, a clash took place in a rural zone of the Taslidere village of Batman's Kozluk district when two suspects opened fire on security forces patrolling the road with long range weapons.

During the clash, the statement said, Mizgin Ozbek who was in a car was killed and her other Samiye was wounded and later taken to the Batman State Hospital. The two "terrorists" meanwhile, were killed and their weapons alongside 2 kilogram of C-4 explosives were confiscated.

But Becerikli, who visited mother Samiye Ozbek in hospital the same day, quoted her saying: "I was ill. Together with my son Hadi and daughter Mizgin we were going to the hospital in Batman. On the way, two teenagers hitchhiked. We picked them up. As we were carrying on on our way, suddenly bullets started to rain on us. Our car was sprayed with bullets."

GUNDEM COCUK: No Justification

A statement made by the GUNDEM COCUK (Child) Association to bianet stressed that the most important aspect of this incident was that a child had lost her life in a conflict where she could not have taken sides.

"It should not be forgotten that however this incident may have happened, the violation of right to life for Mizgin is an issue. And this death cannot be declared as just or justified", the statement said.

The Association called for a thorough investigation into the incident and for those who may have through negligence or their responsibility caused the death of Mizgin Mizgin Ozbek to be identified and the public be informed of the findings.

Brother released

IHD's Becerikli said that the car's driver and Mizgin Ozbek's brother Hadi Ozbek who previously appeared at the Prosecutor's Office under heavy security measures was brought before court on Wednesday and released.

5. - Financial Mirror - "Sarkozy calls for suspension of EU talks with Turkey":

11 September 2006

French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy has called for the suspension of EU membership talks with Turkey unless Ankara changes its stance on Cyprus.

Accoording to AFP, Sarkozy, a front-runner ahead of next year's French presidential election, specifically called for a break in accession talks while Turkey persists with its embargo against Cypriot ships and aircraft using its ports and airports.

Turkey signed in July 2005 a protocol extending its customs accord with the EU to the 10 new states that joined in 2004, including the island of Cyprus which Ankara refuses to recognise.

But its parliament has yet to ratify the document and Ankara continues to block the access of Cypriot ships.

Turkey is the only country in the world to recognise the breakaway state in Cyprus' northern part occupied by Turkish troops since 1974.

UN Security Council resolution 541 of 1983 branded ''legally invalid'' the unilateral declaration of independence in the occupied areas on 15 November 1983 and called upon all states ''not to recognise any Cypriot state other than the Republic of Cyprus'' and ''to respect the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and non-alignment of the Republic of Cyprus.''

''I call for the suspension of opening new adhesion chapters with Turkey while it has not ratified and clearly has not implemented the Ankara protocol (customs agreement),'' Sarkozy said Friday in a speech in Brussels.

The French minister earlier insisted that there was no place for Turkey in the 25-nation bloc.

He called instead for a ''privileged partnership'', saying links with Turkey should be enhanced but without full membership. Germany and Austria also support that position, the AFP reported.

''The geographical and political map of the EU'' should be fixed, with the bloc open to states which are ''clearly part of the continent of Europe,'' he said, citing Switzerland, Norway and the Balkan states.

6. - AFP - "Saddam genocide trial resumes":

11 September 2006

Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein returned to the dock with the resumption of his trial on charges of genocide against the Kurds during the so-called Anfal campaign of the late 1980s.

Saddam and six co-defendants stand accused of slaughtering 182,000 Kurds by gassing them and bombing their villages in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq in 1987 and 1988.

The trial resumed after a three-week recess, on the day the United States marks the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that left close to 3,000 people dead.

On Friday a US senate report concluded that Saddam had no links with Al-Qaeda prior to the September 11 attacks, as US President George W. Bush's administration had repeatedly charged.

And Saddam's presence in court may spark renewed debate over whether the United States was right to go to war on Iraq in March 2003, since when more than 2,600 US troops have been killed.

Saddam, who is also awaiting a verdict in a trial over the killing of Shiite villagers after an attempt on his life in 1982, is charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the Anfal campaign.

Six other defendants, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali" over his alleged role in gas attacks, also stand accused over the massacres of Iraq's minority Kurds.

The genocide trial began on August 21, and the first three days saw Kurdish villagers testify that their villages had been gassed, their fields destroyed and their families exterminated in brutal death camps run by Saddam's forces.

The court is expected to meet in three sessions this week, with at least six more witnesses testifying against the accused. So far, six Kurds -- four women and two men -- have testified.

In the previous trial, in which Saddam was charged with the mass murder of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail, witnesses were concealed behind screens, fearing reprisals from Sunni insurgents loyal to the former leader.

While the Dujail trial was a noisy show of political theatre -- with Saddam and his former aides blustering angrily in the dock and staging walk-outs and hunger strikes -- the Anfal case has seen the accused looking more subdued.

The witnesses, however, have not held back their fury.

"May God blind them all," cried 45-year-old Adiba Owla Bayez, one of the witnesses at the last hearing on August 23.

Bayez told the court how she and her family were temporarily blinded by gas during an air raid by Iraqi jets on her village of Belisand on April 16, 1987.

"It was a judgment day," she told the court.

Saddam remained largely quiet during the first three days of the trial, except when a prosecutor accused his forces of raping Kurdish women.

Threatening prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, Saddam thundered: "If he says that an Iraqi woman was raped in my era and if he does not prove it, I will hunt him for the rest of my life."

The US government was reluctant to criticise Saddam during the Anfal campaign, preferring the Iraqi dictator to his clerical foes in neighbouring Iran as the lesser of two evils.

Washington's tone hardened after the September 11 attacks on the United States, and he was accused of links to the Al-Qaeda plane hijackers. For many Americans, this strengthened the case for the US-led invasion of Iraq.

On Friday, however, a US Senate report confirmed that there was never any reliable intelligence data to link Saddam with Al-Qaeda.

"Saddam Hussein was distrustful of Al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support," said the report.

The Senate Intelligence Select Committee also dismissed administration claims that Saddam had links with Al-Qaeda's chief operative in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US air strike on June 7.