13 September 2006

1. "Diyarbakir Bomb Blast Kills 10, Injures 17", Ten people were killed and 17 others were injured on Tuesday evening in a bomb blast in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

2. "KONGRA-GEL: 'Counterguerilla Forces responsible for Bomb Attack'", The State being seriously pressed in many fields, including militarily, puts into practice its para military forces, shows they took vengeance from the people.

3. "Clashes with Kurds turn Turks against US", The mounting death toll is also a political headache. A poll this week showed 74 per cent of the public believed Turkey was losing its battle with domestic terrorism.

4. "Tripartite PKK talks may be hampered by Kurdish representation", Missing from the table are the Iraqi Kurds, who have so far have been reluctant to take any effective measures against the PKK presence in northern Iraq -- an area that lies under their control.

5. "Turkey faces slower economic growth",Turkey faces slower economic growth in the coming months as recent currency volatility and a big rise in interest rates take effect.

6. "Federalism Plan Dead, Says Iraqi Speaker", The speaker of the Iraqi parliament said Tuesday that a controversial plan to partition the country into three autonomous regions is politically dead.

1. - Cihan News Agency - "Diyarbakir Bomb Blast Kills 10, Injures 17":

13 September 2006

Ten people were killed and 17 others were injured on Tuesday evening in a bomb blast in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

An explosion occurred at a bus stop on a main street in the city near a park at around 9.15 p.m. yesterday evening. Six people, including five children, were killed at the scene and at least 17 others were wounded in the blast.

The injured were rushed to Diyarbakir State and Dicle University hospitals. Four of the injured, two of them children, later died from their injuries in hospital, bringing the death toll to 10.

Local police say that the explosion seems to have been caused by a bomb planted at the bus stop, which was detonated by a remote control.

Security officials in Diyarbakir said that 10 of the injured had been discharged from hospitals while five other injured were still being treated.

The police said that the explosion seems to have caused by a bomb planted at the bus stop, which was detonated by a remote control. The investigation into the incident is still continuing.

The blast has not been claimed by any groups so far, however, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) had carried out similar bombings in the southeastern Turkey in the past.

2. - kurdishinfo.com - "KONGRA-GEL: 'Counterguerilla Forces responsible for Bomb Attack'":

13 September 2006 / Statement of KONGRA-GEL

"As a result of a bomb attack in Baglar-Diyarbakir, at a bus stop, last night 11 of our innocent people were killed and over 10 were wounded. We like to state firstly that we vehemently condemn this attack on our people. We give our condolences to their families and to all our people and hope for a quick recovery to the wounded.

The place and timing of the attack is thought provoking. The attack in Diyarbakir was instigated on the 26th Anniversary of the 12 September 1980 Military Coup. The targeted place being Diyarbakir, targeted mass being the civil society gives the message of threat and revenge. This atrocity shows that the 12 September mentality desires to prosper and shows that it continues in Kurdistan. The State being seriously pressed in many fields, including militarily, puts into practice its para military forces, shows they took vengeance from the people. The incident is totally a continuum of the Semdinli bomb attack and the “good boys” –Yasar Buyukanit (mow the General Staff of Turkish Military) stated this remark about Ali Kaya when he was arrested for the attacks - are at work.

On the other hand these attacks also took place while lately in Turkey many civil society organisations, intellectuals and peacelovers from a broad sprectum called for peace and political solution. For this reason it is an effort to sabotage and provocate the peace efforts. An attack such as this especially in a period where we made an announcement titled, “Declaration for a Peaceful and Democratic Solution”, for the democratic solution of the Kurdish question shows that it is the work of those Turkish Para Military forces system, which is affraid of democratic solution, dialogue and desires to sabotage such a process.

This attack also corresponds to a period when the Kurdish question was being discussed internationally and there were important developments on this matter. It is not a coincidence and thought provoking that these attacks took place during the EU (European Union) progress report preparations, debates in the European Parliament, especially when the USA appointed Josef Ralstone for the PKK Coordinator and when he was in Ankara, and the Kurdish question was put into the agenda and discussed internationally.

With this mean we call upon peace and democratic forces to work to enlighten this incident, and the democratic public opinion and our people to be sentive and aware.

KONGRA-GEL (People’s Congress of Kurdistan) Presidency"

3. - Financial Times - "Clashes with Kurds turn Turks against US":

13 Septerber 2006 / by Vincent Boland and Guy Dinmore

Funerals for soldiers killed fighting Kurdish separatists have become a frequent sight on Turkish television in recent weeks.

The foreign ministry says 91 soldiers died in clashes with PKK rebels in the south-east in an upsurge of fighting in the first seven months of 2006.

Their funerals are not only public events for martyrs, as the dead soldiers are known, they are becoming thefocus of growing anti-USsentiment.

Turkish politicians and generals claim the PKK are using bases in northern Iraq to launch attacks on Turkey. They accuse the Iraqi and US authorities of doing nothing to stop them. It is a view with widespread public support.

The first step in addressing the dispute will be taken in Ankara today, when General Joseph Ralston, a retired US Air Force officer and Nato commander, meets Turkish political and military officials to discuss the PKK threat.

Gen Ralston was appointed last month by the US State Department to co-ordinate US efforts with Turkey and Iraq "to eliminate the terrorist threat of the PKK and other terrorist groups operating in northern Iraq and across the Turkey/Iraq border".

Gen Ralston's appointment is an attempt to placate Turkey's anger about the PKK and to lessen the threat of a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq to bomb PKK strongholds.

His role, a western diplomat says, is "to make sure that Turkey, Iraq and the US are on the same page" in acting against the PKK, which Ankara wants eliminated inside Iraq.

Hayati Guven, director general for security affairs at the Turkish foreign ministry, said on Sunday: "The PKK camps must be closed down and its leaders must be arrested and extradited to Turkey." Turkey and the US brand the PKK a terrorist organisation.

Can Gen Ralston deliver? Iraq's Kurds are allies of the US. Some analysts say the US must be convinced that it is in its interest to co-operate with Turkey in fighting the PKK. Zeyno Baran, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank, says it is not clear that the US, already overstretched in Iraq, is prepared to take military action against the PKK. Nor has it yet convinced the Iraqi military that there is a need to act.

"On the ground, they [US officials] say, 'why should we open a new theatre of conflict?' in Iraq" by targeting the PKK, Ms Baran says.

This argument gets short shrift in Turkey, which is home to some 12m Kurds, a small number of whom support the PKK.

Many Turks blame the US invasion of Iraq, which they strongly opposed, for rekindling Kurdish separatistsentiment.

This had begun to wane after the inconclusive Turkish/Kurdish conflicts of the 1980s and 1990s, which killed 35,000 people.

Suat Kiniklioglu, director of the Ankara office of the German Marshall Fund of the US, says the invasion of Iraq badly damaged a tentative Turkish/Kurdish rapprochement inside Turkey and that its consequences are an important reason the PKK and other Kurdish terrorist groups have renewed their armed campaign against Turkey.

"If it wasn't for Iraq, we probably would not have this level of violence right now," he says.

Countering the resurgent PKK is a big challenge for Yasar Buyukanit, the new, hardline chief of Turkey's general staff.

The mounting death toll is also a political headache. A poll this week showed 74 per cent of the public believed Turkey was losing its battle with domestic terrorism.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is proving less than astute in his response.

Challenged recently by a member of the public about losses in the south-east, he said: "The military is not a holiday camp." With more funerals of soldiers a virtual certainty, the remark could hardly have been more inappropriate.

4. - Turkish Daily News - "Tripartite PKK talks may be hampered by Kurdish representation":

WASHINGTON / 13 September 2006 / by Ümit Enginsoy

Joseph Ralston, the United States' newly appointed special envoy for countering the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), arrived in Ankara yesterday and will be meeting with Turkish officials at the Foreign Ministry, the General Staff and the Police Directorate-General to begin discussion on how to deal with the terrorist group.

The next phase in the process will be a fresh meeting involving U.S., Turkish and Iraqi officials within a trilateral mechanism created earlier this year for cooperation against the PKK presence inside Iraq.

However, there is a potential problem of "recognition" that could jeopardize the whole trilateral mechanism. The official sides to the trilateral mechanism are the Turkish, U.S., and Iraqi governments. The latter is the central Iraqi government in Baghdad. Missing from the table are the Iraqi Kurds, who have so far have been reluctant to take any effective measures against the PKK presence in northern Iraq -- an area that lies under their control. They must somehow be incorporated into the trilateral security mechanism if the process is to have the slightest chance of success.

Turkey would want to view the Iraqi Kurdish representatives as "Iraqi officials" within a central Baghdad government team. But such Kurdish officials view themselves as officials of the "Kurdistan regional government" created last year.

Hence, the problem: If the Iraqi Kurds want to have official tags describing them as "officials of the Kurdistan regional government," Turkey will not sit at the negotiating table with them because Ankara does not recognize any such "Kurdistan."

Wary of Kurdish aspirations for independence, Turkey does not recognize the Kurdistan regional government as a de jure entity although it exists de facto.

5. - Financial Times - "Turkey faces slower economic growth":

ANKARA / 12 September 2006 / by Vincent Boland

Turkey faces slower economic growth in the coming months as recent currency volatility and a big rise in interest rates take effect.

Economists said that while figures released yesterday showed robust performance in the second quarter, the data contained signs that activity in the next two quarters would be more subdued as domestic demand and the construction industry - two key drivers of 18 consecutive quarters of economic expansion - declined.

The data suggested a sharp rise in interest rates in June, following a buffeting for the Turkish lira during a global sell-off in emerging markets, would begin to hit the economy in the second half, although the government insisted yesterday the market volatility had little if any negative effects.

Abdullatif Sener, a deputy prime minister, said: "The Turkish economy did not get hurt by recent fluctuations in the global markets."

He predicted that gross domestic product growth in 2006 would reach 6 per cent. GDP expanded by 7.5 per cent between April and June this year, compared with4.7 per cent in the same period last year.

Economists said the strong first-half performance probably meant that pessimistic forecasts about the year ahead - including fears of a recession - after the central bank was forced to raise interest rates by 425 basis points in the space of two weeks, were overdone.

But they cautioned that there were clear signs from yesterday's data that dom-estic demand, farm production, construction and investment spending were all slowing down. They pointed to figures showing that investment spending rose 37 per cent in the first quarter but only 11 per cent in the second quarter.

"Economic activity . . . will decline significantly in the third and fourth quarters," said Ozgur Altug, chief economist at Raymond James Securities. He said the economy might expand by 5.1 per cent on an annual basis in 2006. Other economists have set forecasts of between 5 per cent and 6 per cent.

The GDP figures present a dilemma to the central bank, which had been suggesting the economy would slow considerably in the second half. An unexpected rise in inflation in the spring appears to have peaked and prices are not rising as rapidly now as they were earlier in the year.

But if the economy continued to grow faster than the bank would like, it would still need to raise ratesfurther by the end of the year, economists said.

6. - Washington Post - "Federalism Plan Dead, Says Iraqi Speaker":

BAGHDAD / 13 September 2006 / by Amit R. Paley and K.I. Ibrahim

The speaker of the Iraqi parliament said Tuesday that a controversial plan to partition the country into three autonomous regions is politically dead.

Mahmoud al-Mashhadani said in an interview that legislation to implement a concept known as federalism, which threatened to collapse the country's fragile multi-sect government, would likely be postponed indefinitely after a meeting of political leaders on Wednesday.

The federalism plan would create a Shiite region in southern Iraq much like the autonomous zone in the north controlled by the Kurds. Sunnis have generally opposed the plan, on grounds that it would leave them only with vast swaths of desert in the country's middle, devoid of the oil reserves in the other regions.

The constitution that Iraq adopted last fall allows for a form of federalism. Sunni parties supported the charter only reluctantly and joined the current government on condition of a resumption of federalism discussions, in which they hoped to kill the concept.

"If federalism is to be applied now, it will lead to the secession of the south and the establishment of an Islamist extremist state in the center of the country," said Mashhadani, an outspoken Sunni Arab who is the third-ranking official in the government. "It is not possible to venture or to start the application of federalism now."

"Look, Iraqi blood is more important than federalism," he said.

When asked to predict the likely outcome of Wednesday's meeting of political leaders, he said: "We could agree on the principle and then postpone the topic for four years."

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest Shiite political coalition in Iraq, is the strongest backer of legislation that would begin translating the constitution's vague concepts of federalism into law.

In the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Tuesday, Hakim issued a full defense of federalism, which he described as a basic constitutional right of all Iraqis. Analysts say Hakim hopes to become the leader of the Shiite region, which would comprise about nine of Iraq's 18 provinces.

"We believe federalism is one of the administrative methods that would help the people gain their rights, undo the injustices, and prevent discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin, sect or religion," Hakim said.

But support for the plan began to erode after a vast array of Sunni, Shiite and secular groups boycotted parliament on Sunday to protest the plan. Mashhadani said Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, had ordered Shiite politicians to back off from the plan in order to prevent bitter infighting.

Mashhadani said the country is not prepared for federalism because its government is not strong enough to provide security and services, and because of troubled relationships with some neighboring countries.

"The United States is a federated system and it is leading the world. But this was after the Civil War," Mashhadani said. "So must we go through a civil war in order to achieve federalism?"

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in his first state visit to Iran, discussed ways to improve the security situation in Iraq with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. American officials have accused Tehran of fomenting violence in Iraq by supporting Shiite militias.

"Iran will provide assistance to the Iraqi government to establish full security," Ahmadinejad said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. "We believe strengthening the Iraqi government is tantamount to promoting security, peace and friendship in that country."

Violence continued across Iraq on Tuesday. At least 32 people were killed or their bodies were found in separate incidents in different parts of the country, authorities said. In northern Baghdad, 14 students were kidnapped after completing their exams, the Iraqi military said. No further details were released.