10 December 2001

1. “Turkish women want to wear the pants at work”, a Turkish union Friday called upon women government employees to show up at their workplace in pants to protest a nearly 20-year-old rule forbidding them from wearing trousers at their jobs.

2. “President approves Civil Code”, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer has approved the amended version of the Civil Code and its adaptation law, the Anatolia news agency reported on Sunday.

3. “Middle East Defense: Turkish officials said Ankara and Berlin have agreed in principle to the sale of up to 400 howitzers to the Turkish military. The howitzers are mounted on tanks”, Turkey is hoping that Germany will approve the sale of howitzer artillery pieces.

4. “Military concentration in South Kurdistan”, Turkey deployed 120 more tanks to South Kurdish within the last three days. According to local sources Turkey deployed 30-40 tanks Bamerni Airport a short while ago.

5. “Turkey/Armenia: Panel Seeks Independent Study On 1915 Mass Killings”, a recently formed group of prominent Turks and Armenians has launched a major initiative that could have important ramifications for attempts to promote reconciliation between their estranged nations.

6. “Corruption scandal rocks Turkey“, Senior Turkish Government officials are facing corruption charges after footage of the men apparently accepting bribes was broadcast live on private television on Thursday night.

1. – AFP – “Turkish women want to wear the pants at work”:

ANKARA

A Turkish union Friday called upon women government employees to show up at their workplace in pants to protest a nearly 20-year-old rule forbidding them from wearing trousers at their jobs.

The union of government workers KEKS said it organized the "symbolic day of trousers" to protest injustices women faced because of the 1982 regulation, Sevgi Goyce told AFP. "We wanted to raise our voice against the injustices against women in the world of work," she said, comparing the rule to those in place under the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan and Adolf Hitler in Germany.

"Authoritarian regimes always want to place women under their control," she said. Goyce said women responded well to the appeal around the country, though in the western city of Izmir some school directors did not allow female teachers to enter their place of work. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, however, expressed surprise at a news conference over the campaign, saying he did not understand the women's campaign for the right to wear trousers.

2. – Turkish Daily News – “President approves Civil Code”:

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer has approved the amended version of the Civil Code and its adaptation law, the Anatolia news agency reported on Sunday.

The new Civil Code includes a number of important revisions in Family Law and vows gender equality in every means.

Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk said on Sunday that the new Civil Code was prepared in harmony with the 21st century and according to Turkey's needs.

The previous code, virtually unchanged since it was introduced in 1926, designated the man as the head of the family and gave the woman no say in decisions concerning the home or children. If there is a divorce, women were only entitled to property legally registered under their names.

The new code uses plainer, more politically correct language and scraps the phrase "the head of the marriage union is the man." Men and women are given equal say in making decisions concerning the family.

Under the previous code, a woman had to seek her husband's permission to work outside the home, although a court ruling in 1994 voided that provision. The new code makes it clear that a woman does not need her husband's consent to get a job.

Turkey adopted its previous code from Swiss family law, replacing the old Ottoman system which, for example, allowed a man to have more than one wife or to repudiate a wife who was no longer in favor. The 1926 code was considered revolutionary for a Muslim country when it was adopted, but it failed to keep up with the times.

Under the new code, men will be able to request alimony from their wives.

A man can take his wife's surname if he wishes, while a woman can use her maiden name together with her husband's family name.

The new code raises the legal age for marriage to 18 from the current 17 for men and 15 for women. It sets a legal separation period of six months before couples can file for divorce.

The code also lowers the legal age for adopting children from 35 to 30 and allows a single parent to adopt. Out-of-wedlock offspring are given the same inheritance rights as others.

It makes sex change operations harder, requiring people over 18 to prove in court that the change is physically necessary.

The new code does not mention modern issues such as surrogate motherhood or homosexual marriages. In this predominantly Muslim country where unmarried couples living together are still frowned upon, it also makes no provisions for cohabiting families.

3. – Middle East Newsline – “Middle East Defense: Turkish officials said Ankara and Berlin have agreed in principle to the sale of up to 400 howitzers to the Turkish military. The howitzers are mounted on tanks”:

Turkey is hoping that Germany will approve the sale of howitzer artillery pieces.

Turkish officials said Ankara and Berlin have agreed in principle to the sale of up to 400 howitzers to the Turkish military. The howitzers are mounted on tanks.

In Ankara, the French electronics giant Thales has teamed with the U.S. company Raytheon to recapture a $190 million project to install electronic warfare systems for Turkey's fleet of F-16s.

Officials said Thales informed the Turkish military and Defense Ministry of the French contractor's partnership with Raytheon. Thales said the U.S. Air Force has approved the cooperation.

Also in Ankara, Turkey has stressed its preference for development of a missile defense umbrella rather than its purchase from a foreign country. Turkish Officials said the policy does not favor the procurement of the Arrow-2 missile defense system from Israel.

In Moscow, Russia continues to woo Turkey for defense cooperation.

Turkish officials said the Russian efforts has intensified over the last few weeks amid reports that Ankara has frozen the assets of Chechen groups aligned with Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden. They said the cooperation would include joint training and the sale of Russian defense systems.

In other developments, Turkey, Israel and the United States are planning to stage a search-and-rescue naval exercise next month.

Officials in all three countries said the exercise in the eastern Mediterranean will begin on Dec. 3. The exercise will include warships and military aircraft and will last for four days.

4. – Kurdish Observer – “Military concentration in South Kurdistan”:

Turkey deployed 120 more tanks to South Kurdish within the last three days. According to local sources Turkey deployed 30-40 tanks Bamerni Airport a short while ago. It has been reported that some of tanks were deployed in Soran region, some in Begova and some in Zaxo. With the latest tanks the number of tanks in South Kurdistan to 150-160.

MHA / SOUTH KURDISTAN

According to the same sources there are a special team in Soran region consisting of 500 soldiers. It has been positioned in Soran after taken the approval of PUK (Kurdistan Patriotic Unity) Leader Jalal Talebani.

Talabani who will visit Turkey soon was reported to ask for money in return for the permission.

5. – Radio Free Europe – “Turkey/Armenia: Panel Seeks Independent Study On 1915 Mass Killings”:

A recently formed group of prominent Turks and Armenians has launched a major initiative that could have important ramifications for attempts to promote reconciliation between their estranged nations.

YEREVAN/ By Emil Danielyan

The Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC) met in New York late last month and asked international law experts to conduct a study to determine whether the 1915 mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constitutes genocide.

According to an American scholar who moderated the four-day meeting, the panel asked a New York-based human rights organization to sponsor an independent third-party analysis of the applicability of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to the events of 1915. A private statement by the scholar, David Phillips, was leaked to RFE/RL.

Armenian members of TARC say an independent judgement on the thorniest issue in Turkish-Armenian relations will be an important element in the U.S.-backed dialogue. Differing interpretations of the bloody events of 1915 are at the heart of a deep divide separating the two neighbors.

By most historical accounts, some 1.5 million people were massacred and starved to death in a systematic campaign to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. Modern-day Turkey denies the massacres were genocide and puts the Armenian death toll at 300,000.

Ankara maintains that Ottoman Armenians were repressed because of their cooperation with the advancing Russian troops during World War I.

The reconciliation commission was set up in July with the behind-the-scenes backing of the U.S. State Department. Its 10 members -- among them two former foreign ministers -- have until now tried to facilitate normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations without debating the validity of each other's position on the sensitive issue. But their appeal to the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in New York means they will eventually discuss the genocide controversy.

One of the commission members is Armenia's former foreign minister Alexander Arzoumanian: "I am sure that the commission will discuss that report in detail and decide whether to publish it or not. I think that our recommendations to our respective governments will take account of the opinion [expressed in the report]."

Another TARC member, prominent Moscow-based political scientist Andranik Migranian, believes the reconciliation process will make "very big progress" if the international experts conclude the 1915 massacres were genocide. In an interview with RFE/RL, Migranian said, "It will be a great political and military victory for us if the experts say that those events can be considered a genocide."

But both men stressed that whatever the results of the study, they will never change their beliefs on the issue. Arzoumanian says: "What we need is not an international verdict but an impartial analysis of whether or not the genocide convention is applicable. But it must be emphasized that the Armenian members of the commission will never cast doubt on the historical fact of the Armenian genocide."

The ex-minister also cautions that the international study can by no means force Turkey to abandon its consistent denial of the genocide.

So far, the only visible result of the commission's activities has been a bitter controversy on the Armenian side. Many Armenian leaders and diaspora activists view the commission's creation as part of a Turkish ploy to prevent parliaments of more Western states from passing resolutions recognizing the genocide.

The Armenian government is also increasingly skeptical about the success of the reconciliation effort. Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian last week effectively urged Armenian participants to consider withdrawing from the commission.

"I call on the Armenians members to assess their six-month activities, to weigh up all positive and negative factors, to see if they have achieved any results and decide their further steps."

The commissioners, however, continue to believe in TARC's success. They say, in particular, that the six Turkish members of the commission, including former Foreign Minister Ilter Turkmen, now think that Turkey should lift its economic blockade of Armenia without any preconditions.

Successive Turkish governments have refused to establish diplomatic relations and open the border with Armenia until Armenia recognizes Azerbaijani sovereignty over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey and Azerbaijan have close ethnic and cultural similarities.

The statement by U.S. mediator Phillips said TARC members agreed at the New York meeting that "normalizing trade and transportation between Armenia and Turkey would advance reconciliation."

Phillips, who is a senior adviser in the U.S. State Department, also said they acknowledged their dialogue is "not a substitute" for diplomatic relations between the two neighboring states -- a key point made by Yerevan.

6. – BBC – “Corruption scandal rocks Turkey“:

ISTANBUL / by Tabitha Morgan

Senior Turkish Government officials are facing corruption charges after footage of the men apparently accepting bribes was broadcast live on private television on Thursday night.

The two men - one of them a senior official in the prime minister's office - were filmed by secret cameras as they negotiated with a journalist posing as a businessman anxious to strike a deal.

Turkish television viewers were rivetted as they watched the men - stuffing bundles of notes into their pockets after they agreed to help secure state funding for a tourism project in return for payments of more than a $140,000.

The set-up was instigated by Turkish television journalist Taner Dileklen, who posed as a businessman seeking government money and the chance to rent government owned land for his tourism venture on the Mediterranean Coast.

The government officials were arrested by plain-clothes policemen after they promised to help the bogus businessman to get his hands on government funds.

Disillusionment

The incident provided compulsive viewing, but it also reopened the debate about corruption in public life, something that is endemic in Turkish society and which is considered to have played a major role in the collapse of the country's economy.

Despite government promises that it would crack down on government corruption, many people feel that it has so far failed to tackle the problem at the highest levels.

With rising unemployment and more and more people living below the poverty line, this latest expose will merely confirm the disillusionment that ordinary Turks feel about the integrity of their public servants.

Turkey's minister in charge of anti-corruption measures has resigned from his party and the government a day after demotion in a cabinet reshuffle.