16 February 2007

1. "US genocide bill angers Turks", now the Turco-American relationship is heading for a potentially spectacular rupture after the decision of the US House of Representatives' newly installed Democratic leadership to follow France in endorsing a bill officially recognising as genocide the 1915 killings of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks. As matters stand, there is sufficient bipartisan support to pass the measure if, as expected, it is put to a vote in the next few weeks.

2. "Turkey aide foresees revisions to Article 30", Turkey plans to revise a controversial law that makes insulting Turkishness a crime by the end of this year, Ankara's chief European Union negotiator said Thursday. The law — Article 301 of the Turkish penal code — has resulted in prosecutions against leading Turkish intellectuals, including the Nobel author Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink, an Armenian- Turkish journalist killed last month in Istanbul.

3. "Controversial Ban on Radio Station in Turkey", Radio and Television Supreme Council ruled for a complete ban on the Voice of Anatolia radio station on grounds that it continiously broadcasted programmes that would cause discrimination and hatred among people of different ethnicity in the country.

4. "Turkish writer reported in exile in U.S.", Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk has fled his home country of Turkey and is now living in exile in the United States, reports say.

5. "Turkey raps Cyprus over oil offer", Turkey has warned Cyprus to cancel its tender for oil exploration and drilling rights off the divided island's coast. "Continuation of the tender process will adversely affect peace and stability on the island of Cyprus", a Turkish government spokesman said.

6. "US Support for Kurdistan Will Backfire", Qabad Talabani ,Washington representative for Kurdistan and son of Iraq’s president Jalal Talabani, is meeting with White House and State Department officials asking for US security guarantees for Kurdistan. Meanwhile, Iraqi government officials are now warning Turkey’s government against discussing Kirkuk issues at all, which is a new low in international diplomacy. By doing so, Iraq’s government is putting a marker down that it would defend Kurdistan from intervention by Turkey.

1. - The Guardian - "US genocide bill angers Turks":

15 February 2007 / by Simon Tisdall

It seems an odd way to treat a friend. Washington's relations with Turkey, a key Nato ally, have been on the slide since 2003, when Ankara's parliament refused to allow US troops to transit into Iraq. That infuriated the Bush administration.

Ensuing chaos in Iraq and the impetus the occupation has given Kurdish secessionism infuriated Turks in their turn. Iran and Hamas are other points of strain. One recent poll found 81% disapproved of US policies.

Now the relationship is heading for a potentially spectacular rupture after the decision of the US House of Representatives' newly installed Democratic leadership to follow France in endorsing a bill officially recognising as genocide the 1915 killings of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks. As matters stand, there is sufficient bipartisan support to pass the measure if, as expected, it is put to a vote in the next few weeks.

The genocide label is an ultra-sensitive issue in Turkey. The country has long claimed that mass killings at the time by both sides were part of the civil upheavals accompanying the collapse of the Ottoman empire. "If this measure is adopted it will create a very serious problem in US-Turkish relations," a senior Turkish official said yesterday. "You cannot put Turkey in the same shoes as the Nazis."

Armenia (and the Armenian diaspora) should accept a proposal by Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to set up a joint commission to study what happened, the official said.

But politics in Ankara and Washington are stoking confrontation. A presidential election is due in Turkey in May, followed by parliamentary polls this autumn. Neither Mr Erdogan, tipped as the next president, nor other candidates can ignore intense national feelings stirred by the genocide debate.

At the same time, the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, like other members from California, has a vociferous Armenian-American constituency to placate. When Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, was in Washington last week, she refused to meet him. "Local politics must not be allowed to poison strategic ties," Mr Gul said later; passage of the bill would create a "nightmare".

Calls are already being heard in Turkey for a downgrading of bilateral military cooperation, including logistical assistance to US forces in Iraq. General Yasar Büyükanit, chief of the Turkish general staff, went to the Pentagon this week to spell out the possible damaging consequences.

"Turkey is playing the security card against the genocide bill," wrote columnist Mehmet Ali Birand of the Turkish Daily News. That meant, he said, reminding the Americans of Turkey's contributions in Afghanistan and Kosovo, its supportive ties to Israel - Ehud Olmert was in Ankara yesterday - and the way it "actively participates in communications between Iran and the US".

The White House opposes the bill but may be unable to stop it. Meanwhile, the US is urging Turkish "outreach" to Armenia in the wake of the Hrant Dink murder.

But new reasons for killing off the resolution are emerging every day. One is that a surge in anti-Americanism after its passage could translate into a Turkish decision to ignore Washington and send its troops into northern Iraq, with potentially disastrous consequences for US efforts to stabilise the country.

The senior Turkish official said there was no plan to intervene and no link to the genocide bill. But Ankara is increasingly impatient over US reluctance to suppress armed PKK rebels who launch raids into south-east Turkey from Iraqi Kurdistan. And according to Asli Aydinbas, of the paper Sabah, a "limited and defined" Turkish military intervention in Iraq is already on the cards.

"The US government believes passage of the Armenian resolution would make a cross-border operation more likely," he said. "Even a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives would end Washington's power to deter such an operation." Seen this way, the genocide bill could spark a whole new bloodbath.

2. - International Herald Tribune - "Turkey aide foresees revisions to Article 30":

BRUSSELS / 15 February 2007 / by Dan Bilefsky

Turkey plans to revise a controversial law that makes insulting Turkishness a crime by the end of this year, Ankara's chief European Union negotiator said Thursday.

The law — Article 301 of the Turkish penal code — has resulted in prosecutions against leading Turkish intellectuals, including the Nobel author Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink, an Armenian- Turkish journalist killed last month in Istanbul.

Ali Babacan, a leading member of the governing Justice and Development Party and a minister in the cabinet, said the law was causing harm to Turkey.

Asked if Ankara would abandon the law, he said: "That is not going to happen. Article 301 will stay." But he said the government was looking at ways to change the way the law was being implemented and said his hope was that it could be altered before elections in November.

Turkish analysts said such a change would most likely entail narrowing the legal definition of what constitutes an insult to Turkishness and amending the law to make it compatible with the European Court of Human Rights.

"As a government, we have indicated we are not happy with what is going on in Turkey with regard to that law," Babacan said. "When novelists, columnists and Nobel Prize winners go back and forth from the courtroom, this is not good for Turkey."

The European Commission, the EU's executive branch, has been particularly concerned by the law, which attracted global criticism last year when Pamuk was put on trial for telling a Swiss newspaper that more than a million Armenians were massacred by Ottoman Turks during World War I. Critics of the law also say that it contributed to a nationalistic political climate in Turkey that led to the murder of Dink, an outspoken proponent of free speech who had criticized the law.

"A strong signal is needed to change the way the law is being implemented," Babacan said.

He said Turkey was going through a difficult period in its relations with the EU following the decision late last year by Union leaders to partially suspend entry negotiations over Ankara's refusal to open its ports to Cyprus, an EU member. Babacan said the intensifying animosity toward Turkey in Europe was making headlines in Turkey and risked spurring an anti-EU backlash.

"There has been severe damage to the credibility of the EU process in Turkish eyes," he said. "Until now the question was when is Turkey going to be ready for the EU. But after the events of 2006, what will be more important is whether the EU will be ready for Turkey."

Babacan said that despite the EU's decision to freeze Turkey's EU talks in eight areas, including some trade matters, Ankara was progressing in other areas like economic and monetary policy. But he said that there had been little if any progress on the Cyprus issue. The northern part of the island is controlled by a government recognized by Ankara but not the EU.

"We are trying everything we can do to find a way out," he said. "But we have made so many gestures and we are seeing no reciprocity."

Babacan added that Ankara believed that Cyprus was intent on prolonging the crisis because it had no interest in seeing Turkey gain the economic and political privileges of EU membership.

3. - Bianet - "Controversial Ban on Radio Station in Turkey":

Radio and Television Supreme Council ruled for a complete ban on the Voice of Anatolia radio station on grounds that it continiously broadcasted programmes that would cause discrimination and hatred among people of different ethnicity in the country.

ISTANBUL / 13 February 2007 / by Ayca Orer

Radio and Television Supreme Council banned the broadcast of Anadolu'nun Sesi (Voice of Anatolia) Radio.

The Council based its decision on grounds that the radio has continued diffusing programmes which "impelled the society to violence and ethnic discrimination as well as aiming at discriminations among peoples on differences of region, language, religious sects, social class or race".

We'll start to all possible legal procedures to revindicate this ruling, said the representatives of the radio station.

The station had been penalized with a temporary interception of broadcast for 30 days in 2004 for broadcasting a song by the dissident Kurdish singer Ahmet Kaya.

Ankara 12th Administrative Court disapproved the RTUK ruling after three days but the same court witheld with the original penalty following the trial.

4. - CBC - "Turkish writer reported in exile in U.S.":

15 February 2007

Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk has fled his home country of Turkey and is now living in exile in the United States, reports say.

Pamuk, the author of Snow and My Name is Red, is believed to have received death threats, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.

He recently cancelled a speaking tour he had lined up in Germany. At that time he was said to be living with a 24-hour security detail.

Last month, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor who had written about the the 1915 killings of Armenians in Turkey was slain by an Islamist radical who had also made threats against Pamuk.

Turkey has strongly denied Armenian claims that about 1.5 million of their people were killed systematically by Ottoman Turks in a "genocide."

Pamuk was charged with "insulting Turkishness" after he gave an interview to a German newspaper in 2005 that mentioned those killings. He was acquitted on a technicality.
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Parmuk's growing international stature after winning the Nobel Prize win has likely made him a high-profile target.

Pamuk flew to the New York on Feb. 1 to begin a lecture tour of American universities, the Tribune reported, and he is unlikely to return to Turkey.

People close to Pamuk have declined to comment because of the "sensitivity of Pamuk's position."

Pamuk's writing career has been dedicated to examining Turkish society and the relationship between ancient traditions and modern life.

5. - BBC - "Turkey raps Cyprus over oil offer":

15 February 2007

Turkey has warned Cyprus to cancel its tender for oil exploration and drilling rights off the divided island's coast.

"Continuation of the tender process will adversely affect peace and stability on the island of Cyprus", a Turkish government spokesman said.

The first round of licensing involves 11 offshore areas covering a total of about 60,000 sq km (23,000 square miles) to the south of Cyprus.

Ankara says Turkish Cypriots should have a say in oil and gas rights.

The officially-recognised government of Cyprus controls the southern two-thirds of the island.

A Turkish Cypriot breakaway state in north Cyprus is recognised only by the Turkish government in Ankara.

Cyprus has signed deals with Lebanon and Egypt to mark out sea boundaries and make oil and gas exploration easier.

6. - The Conservative Voice - "US Support for Kurdistan Will Backfire":

15 February 2006 / by Scott Sullivan

Qabad Talabani ,Washington representative for Kurdistan and son of Iraq’s president Jalal Talabani, is meeting with White House and State Department officials asking for US security guarantees for Kurdistan. Meanwhile, Iraqi government officials are now warning Turkey’s government against discussing Kirkuk issues at all, which is a new low in international diplomacy. By doing so, Iraq’s government is putting a marker down that it would defend Kurdistan from intervention by Turkey.

Good. Turkey should view Kurdistan’s search for US security guarantees as a big plus. Iraq’s threats against Turkey re also a big plus, for several reasons.

First, Kurdistan’s hidden agenda -- full independence from Iraq -- is exposed. In fact, Kurdish independence is feasible only with US security guarantees. Once Kurdistan receives US security guarantees, it will declare independence. The US will then have to fight Kurdistan to keep it as part of Iraq or see its credulity attacked.

Second, the US may well back out of Kurdistan altogether once it becomes evident that the US might be drawn into defending Kurdistan against Turkey.

Third, the US could be forced to crack down on pro-independence sentiment in Kurdistan, and make explicit Kurdistan’s obligation to remain in the Iraqi federation. As part of these efforts, the US, finally, could push the PKK out of northern Iraq.

Fourth, the US, seeking to avoid a crisis over Kurdistan’s self determination, could press the Iraqi and Kurdish authorities to postpone the scheduled referendum on Kirkuk’s status in December 2007. (i.e., should Kirkuk vote to join Kurdistan). The US could also insist that all Iraqis should vote on Kirkuk’s referendum, not just the Kurds. This widened voter pool would reject Kirkuk’s annexation to Kurdistan.

Fifth, this Kurdish power play to take Kirkuk and Kurdistan could forge Shi’a-Sunni unity against the Kurds.

Sixth, the Shi’a project to create separate state, identical to Kurdistan, could take a big hit as Kurdistan comes under fire. The secession of Kurdistan and Shiastan from Iraq would terminate the state of Iraq.

Seventh, Turkish public opinion in favor of Turkish intervention against Kurdistan could become inflamed by Iraqi government threats and warnings on Kirkuk.

In short, the Kurdish search for US security guarantees, as well as Iraq government statements warning Turkey against intervening in Iraq, will backfire against the Kurds.