21 September 2001

1. "Turkey hunger strike toll reaches 36", a Turkish man on hunger strike in protest at prison reforms has died.

2. "EU seeks to see Turkish democratic reforms on ground", Assessing the political reforms as the beginning of a process, the EU wants to see the changes on ground to make an opinion for the degree of Turkey's political progress.

3. "Recep Tayyip Erdogan", Turkey's latest Islamic leader is the country's most popular politician.

4. "Reforms underway with ifs and buts...", a key parliamentary commission gave its go-ahead on Thursday to the lifting of the death penalty and broadcasts in Kurdish, two hot issues for which Ankara was coming under constant pressure from the West.

5. "Let's not invite new barbarousness", a statement made by HADEP, EMEP and ODP Izmir organizations emphasized that the stance to limit the freedoms in USA and Turkey in particular after the attacks in USA meant to invite new barbarousness.

6. "Turkey to decide military support after US details plans", Turkey said Thursday that it would decide the scope of its participation in a possible international strike against terrorism after the United States details its plans to NATO allies.

1. - BBC - "Turkey hunger strike toll reaches 36":

A Turkish man on hunger strike in protest at prison reforms has died.

Abdulbari Yusufoglu is the 36th person to have died during the campaign which has been running for over four months.

Three people have died in the last week, including a prison inmate who set fire to himself on Tuesday in support of the hunger strikers.

Prisoners argue that plans to abolish large dormitories and replace them with small one- or three-person cells leave them vulnerable to abuse from wardens.

The Turkish Government says the new cells meet European standards and are necessary to break the control enforced on prisoners by political groups and organised criminals.

2. - Turkish Daily News - "EU seeks to see Turkish democratic reforms on ground":

Assessing the political reforms as the beginning of a process, the EU wants to see the changes on ground to make an opinion for the degree of Turkey's political progress. A recent internal comparative study conducted by the European Union reveal in general that the Turkish constitutional amendments meet the EU Convention of Human Rights. But the military and MHP dictated restrictions on party closures as well as freedom of speech do not meet the EU standards.

Lale Sariibrahimoglu

Turkey's constitutional reforms process taking place currently comes at a time when the Turkish pro-reformists have raised concerns that the catastrophic terrorist attack against the United States on Sep. 11 will further encourage those who are dragging their feet for real reforms with the aim of furthering a "Security first" policy. In an attempt to alleviate such fears both Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz have ruled out any sacrifice to be made from freedoms in the course of fight against terror.

However, the latest constitutional amendments being made in Parliament have so far sealed the weight of both the Turkish military as well as the Nationalist Movement Party (MH), one of the members of the tri-party coalition government.

The Constitutional Commission members, composed of the five party members represented in Parliament, has currently been making changes to the proposed 37 Amendments in the military dictated 1982 Constitution. Those changes are part of the efforts to meet the eleven short term political criteria set forth by the EU's accession partnership document released last year in November, which was followed by Turkey's National Programme. Turkey was declared a candidate member country during the Helsinki summit of the European Union in 1999.

Despite certain shortcomings in amendments being made to certain articles such as party closures as well as on freedom of speech that the European Union says fall short of meeting EU criteria, overall the Turkish constitutional reforms meet the European Human Rights Convention, revealed a latest internal document prepared by the European Union.

The Parliamentary Commission failed to make liberties not a crime anymore when the MHP refused to altar the word "Opinion" and replace it with "action" when referring to crimes in the preamble of the constitution. Thus the word action is replaced by the word activities, keeping this wording in the preamble of the Constitution in vague terms while maintaining the freedom of speech as a crime.

The changes made to Article 26 and 28 have paved the way for Kurdish education and broadcasting possible when an article under which publication in any language that has been forbidden by laws was lifted from the constitution.

On the role of the military dominated National Security Council (MGK) the European Union says that as has been foreseen in the Turkish reform package, increasing the number of civilians and downgrading its role to a consultative body is acceptable the European Union. However, again its implication in reality and in practice should be seen.

The European Union sees the MGK as a tool for the military intervening in the political life and it's accession criteria includes civilian control over the military. Article 118 of the 1982 Constitution granted the MGK a more assertive formal role than previously.

EU: Beginning of a process

For the European Union, the constitutional amendments represent only the beginning of a process towards reforms. "The amendments do not change the reality. There needs to be changes on penal code and on other laws. More importantly we (EU) can not make an opinion before seeing all those reforms implemented. In practice we still see the extrajudicial killings and torture cases in Turkey," says a senior EU diplomat.

Another EU diplomat recalls that still journalists attempting to investigate corruption cases are penalized, adding that, the European Union would look into the objective indicators of progress.

The Progress Report of the EU Commission on Turkey is expected to be released on 12 November. The eleven political criteria set forth by Turkey under the National Programme should be met by March 2002.

Turkey has currently been under the pre screening process of the EU, a stage prior to screening process under which full membership negotiations start.

EU diplomats strongly signal that Turkey does not have the chance to start the screening process with the EU soon due to an extremely detailed technical analysis that Turkey should be doing and in fact it has been moving slowly in that respect.

3. - The Economist - "Recep Tayyip Erdogan":

Turkey's latest Islamic leader is the country's most popular politician

AS THE West ponders its response to terrorism, the importance of Turkey, the sole Muslim country in NATO and Israel's only regional ally, is plain. Yet the country's rocky economy and mucky politics are alarming. Opinion pollsters reckon that, if a general election were held today, Turkey's main new Islamist party would easily win, and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a popular but somewhat questionable former mayor of Istanbul, would have a fair chance of becoming prime minister. What might that do for regional stability in so combustible a part of the world-where Turkey, for all its manifold faults and fissures, has long been a beacon of comparative calm and sanity?

For one thing, a general election is not due until 2004, and the ruling three-party coalition, embracing both the moderate and secular left and the ultra-nationalist right, seems secure for the moment. For another, Mr Erdogan is at pains to reassure people at home and abroad that he has changed his mind about many matters. He was quick, for instance, to condemn the terrorist outrages in America last week. And he no longer says that Turkey should leave NATO.

All the same, Turkey's generals, who still pull strings behind the scenes, are keen to keep Mr Erdogan out of power. But the economy is still in a mess, and the ranks of the discontented swell by the day. If the authorities were seen to persecute Mr Erdogan, his support might grow. It is certainly conceivable, so long as the generals and judges hold off, that he and his new Justice and Development party, better known by its initials AK, could be running Turkey in the not-too-distant future.

Born 47 years ago into a poor family that migrated to Istanbul from a province on the Black Sea coast, Mr Erdogan got his street education as a teenager peddling lemonade and simits (sesame buns) in one of Istanbul's roughest districts. After attending an Islamic school for would-be imams, he played football professionally for a team sponsored by the city's transport authority, while taking a degree in management at Istanbul's Marmara University. It was then that he fell in with Necmettin Erbakan, who dominated Turkey's Islamic movement from the 1960s until losing control over a big chunk of it-to Mr Erdogan-this year.

The new man's first brush with Turkey's soldiers came after their coup of 1980, their third in the space of 20 years, when his boss in the transport authority, a retired colonel, told him to shave off his moustache. Mr Erdogan refused-and went into business and politics instead. His star in Welfare, as the Islamists' party was known in the 1980s and most of the 1990s, rose fast. In 1994 he was elected mayor of Istanbul, Turkey's grandest city, on the fulcrum between Europe and Asia.

Even his fiercest critics acknowledge that he did the job well. He improved the water supply, cleared slums, tackled pollution and planted thousands of trees. Though the state prosecutor is sniffing into allegations of foul play to do with municipal tenders, most people reckon Mr Erdogan was pretty honest-in contrast to many of his critics within government.

As mayor, he also subscribed to many of the tenets of political Islam. He banned alcohol in restaurants run by the municipality. At first he inveighed against the UN as well as NATO, calling them both lackeys of the United States. He opposed Turkey's ambition to join the European Union. He was loth to condemn intolerance in neighbouring Iran, while claiming that Muslims in the West were not allowed to practise their religion freely. In a video recorded in 1995 but recently shown on Turkish television, he angrily declared, "You cannot be secular and a Muslim at the same time. The world's 1.5 billion Muslims are waiting for the Turkish people to rise up. We will rise. With Allah's permission, the rebellion will start."

Today he sings a new tune. "The world has changed and so have I," he says. His new party, he insists, "has no demands for a religion-based state...Our party is not an Islamic one and I am not an Islamist-I'm just an observant Muslim and that's my own business." Joining the EU is now, he says, a "necessary goal" for Turkey, which should even maintain "mutually profitable" relations with Israel. He even sounds unfussed about whether women should be allowed to wear the Islamic headscarf in government offices and schools. At present, they are not.

Believe him or not

The generals, along with many secular-minded Turks, are unconvinced. However much Mr Erdogan stresses his new-found moderation, his party is heir to the Islamist parties of the past. He still knows little of the outside world, nothing about economics, and no foreign language. Some fear he might change his tune once again if he got his hands on the levers of power.

In 1998 the Constitutional Court banned the Welfare party, the AK's forebear, on the shaky ground that it sought to impose religious rule. Shortly after, Mr Erdogan was kicked out of the mayor's office, banned from politics for life and sentenced to ten months in jail, four of which he served, for reciting a nationalist poem deemed to urge religious rebellion. This year the Virtue party, which replaced Welfare, was banned too. Now Mr Erdogan has persuaded 51 MPs from the banned party to join his AK, which means "white" in Turkish, declaring that the new group, already the second-largest opposition party in parliament, should embrace "all Turks, on right or left, devout or not". The chief prosecutor, still gunning for Mr Erdogan, says he should be ousted as the AK's leader because of his previous conviction.

Turkey's Islamists are a mild lot compared with some of their fearsome counterparts elsewhere. Their occasional calls for jihad (in the sense of holy war) have never gone beyond rhetorical bluster-and have landed quite a few of them in jail. These days Mr Erdogan sounds milder too. But if things continue to go wrong in a secular-minded Turkey, who knows what the future may hold?

4. - Turkish Daily News - "Reforms underway with ifs and buts...":

A key parliamentary commission gave its go-ahead on Thursday to the lifting of the death penalty and broadcasts in Kurdish, two hot issues for which Ankara was coming under constant pressure from the West.

The Constitutional Commission of Parliament approved on Thursday some more key articles of a constitutional amendment draft supported by all parties represented in Parliament. If legislated later this month by Parliament without any further change, the approved articles of the reform package restrict the death penalty only for war and terrorist crimes.

Turkish Parliament has not ratified any death sentence since 1994 as it is applying an undeclared moratorium on the issue and death sentences passed against a total of 116 persons are awaiting parliamentary approval. According to Turkish laws, the approval of Parliament is required before a death sentence can be executed.

If the amendment is approved by Parliament, a sentence will be added to Article 38 of the Constitution, that "Except times of war or imminent threat of war and for terrorist activities, death sentences cannot be passed." The Constitution does not include any reference now to the death penalty.

If approved by Parliament and made law, the government will have to make an amendment to the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) as well in order to conform with the constitutional stipulation that only at times of war or imminent threat of war and for terrorist activities can capital punishment be given.

In the original draft sent to the commission by an all-party commission, rather than "terrorist activities" the term "acts of terror" was used. However, during commission debates, at the pressing of Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputies, the wording was changed from "acts of terror" to "terrorist actions" and thus the scope of the article was enhanced.

Four deputies of the main opposition True Path Party (DYP) voted against this key article of the reform package, but at a second vote only two DYP deputies, Ayvaz Gokdemir and Salih Celen, who claimed that the government under pressure of the European Union was trying to salvage separatist chieftain Abdullah Ocalan from the gallows and that was why it was trying to lift the death penalty, voted against.

Ocalan was captured in Kenya and brought to Turkey two years ago and sentenced to death. His death file, however, unlike other death penalty files, was not submitted for parliamentary approval and is being withheld at the Prime Ministry pending a European Court of Human Rights trial on the issue.

Despite the opposition of the two DYP deputies to the amendment, however, if approved by Parliament the reform package will make it very difficult for the government to prevent the execution of Ocalan as he was sentenced to death for leading a campaign of terror that claimed the lives of over 30,000 Turkish nationals.

The commission approved Thursday also the articles of the reform package restricting the use of any language other than Turkish and the languages of countries with which Turkey has diplomatic relations in broadcasting.

Thus, if the amendments are approved by Parliament later this month, the controversial ban on the use of Kurdish in broadcasting will come to an end. The articles approved by the commission states that any language could be used in exercising the rights of expression and the spread of thought. The approved articles stipulate the lifting of the sentence "Broadcasting cannot be made in languages banned by law" in Article 28 of the Constitution, which regulates press freedom.

The commission also decided to make an insert in the draft presented to it for approval to the effect that no broadcast could be made against the fundamentals of the state, public order, territorial and national integrity of the country and national security.

5. - Kurdish Observer - "Let's not invite new barbarousness":

A statement made by HADEP, EMEP and ODP Izmir organizations emphasized that the stance to limit the freedoms in USA and Turkey in particular after the attacks in USA meant to invite new barbarousness.

HADEP (People's Democracy Party), EMEP (Labor Party) and ODP (Freedom and Solidarity Party) Izmir organizations made a common statement on the latest political developments after the attacks on September 11. The statement pointed out that stances after the attacks have invited new barbarousness and attracted attention to the danger which will be caused by limiting the rights and freedoms in Turkey showing the attacks as justification. The statement stressed that USA drags the world to a new disaster with an excuse to punish those responsible for the attacks and their supporters, adding "They try to show the despair, rage and violence as a result of differences of cultures, beliefs and races and invite barbarousness which the history has several times condemned."

Calling attention to the stance of Turkey as well, the organizations reminded that the Gulf War has caused grave economic and political results. The statement emphasized that the rights and freedoms are tried to be limited on the grounds of security and continued to say the following: "MHP (Nationalistic Action Party) tries to be spokesman of it. All forces, all societal opposition which resist against exclusion, disaster and poverty caused by globalization and want peace for the world and for our region should not give permission to them to determine our future."

"Evidences should be shared with the world"

Yilmaz Ensaroglu, Chairman of Mazlum-Der, stated that they condemned the attacks severely, adding, "But terrorism cannot be eliminated by terrorist methods, justice should not be sacrificed to rage." Ensaroglu pointed out in a press conference that USA and its allied countries should bring the real criminals before the international independent courts and the verdicts should be shared with the world together with all evidences. The Mazlum-Der Chairman emphasized that safety of foreign people living in USA and other western countries should be ensured and this disaster should not cause new offences against humanity.

6. - AFP - "Turkey to decide military support after US details plans":

ANKARA

Turkey said Thursday that it would decide the scope of its participation in a possible international strike against terrorism after the United States details its plans to NATO allies. After a top security meeting at the presidential palace, a spokesman said that Turkey was waiting for the United States to conclude its evaluation of last week's terrorist attacks and inform its allies of what it intends to do.

"After the (US) evaluations are shared with Turkey, of course, we will in turn assess to what extent Turkey will be a part of the international cooperation and how it will contribute to it," presidential spokesman Tacan Ildem told reporters. The statement fell short of Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's remarks last week that Ankara would back a likely NATO action even if it targeted one of its neighbours, which include Syria, Iraq, and Iran - countries Washington accuses of supporting terrorism.

However, Ildem underlined that Turkey backed its key ally the United States in fighting terrorism. "Turkey affirms once more that it is in full solidarity with the United States and its people, shares their pain and will display the necessary cooperation to punish terrorists," he said. Hijackers believed to be linked to Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden rammed three planes into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, leaving nearly 6,000 dead.