25 September 2001

1. "Turkey debates constitutional reform", Turkey's parliament has begun debating 37 constitutional amendments which will bring it more in line with countries aspiring to qualifying for European Union membership.

2. "Step by step towards the case of the century…", 4 days before the case of PKK President Abdullah Ocalan in EHRC, YDK expressed that the case has of big importance as it is the place of solution of problems in Middle East which have become a Gordian knot.

3. "Amid crisis, Turkey organizes show", amid a threat of war in the Middle East, Turkey is preparing to hold an international defense exhibition.

4. " Why Greatness Keeps Eluding Turkey", Turkey Between Two Worlds.

5. "NATO'S mind", columnist Gungor Mengi writes on the news that theUS is preparing to form a NATO shield to prevent the spread of fundamentalist religious terrorism in the Balkans.

6. "Turkish MPs debate abolishing death penalty to boost EU bid", Turkish lawmakers opened debate on Monday on abolishing the death penalty and other far-reaching constitutional reforms in an attempt to boost the country's drive to join the European Union.


1. - BBC - "Turkey debates constitutional reform":

By Nick Thorpe in Istanbul

Turkey's parliament has begun debating 37 constitutional amendments which will bring it more in line with countries aspiring to qualifying for European Union membership.

The current constitution was drawn up by the military junta in 1980 and severely limits certain rights.

That constitution has been described as a remarkable exercise in giving with one hand and taking away with the other.

It appears to guarantee many human rights, then names situations when they can be suspended - for example, when their exercise is deemed to be against the national interest.

All six main parties in the country have agreed the package of changes in principal.

Wide backing

Among the most significant are the abolition of the death penalty and the right to broadcast in minority languages.

This should finally allow Turkey's substantial Kurdish community to broadcast in their own language.

The death penalty will remain possible for terrorist crimes or in time of war.

No executions have taken place in Turkey for 17 years, but the Kurdish guerrilla leader, Abdullah Ocalan, remains on death row after he was sentenced to death in December 1999.
The constitutional changes are backed by wide sections of Turkish society.

Nine associations of businessmen and trade unions took out full page advertisements in Monday's Turkish newspapers in support of the amendments.

Ten days of parliamentary debate are expected to be followed by a final vote in early October.


2. - Kurdish Observer - "Step by step towards the case of the century…":

4 days before the case of PKK President Abdullah Ocalan in EHRC, YDK expressed that the case has of big importance as it is the place of solution of problems in Middle East which have become a Gordian knot. A top administrator of YDK emphasized that the abduction of Ocalan would become clear by documents.

Kurdistanis concentrate on the case of PKK President Abdullah Ocalan in European Human Rights Court (EHRC) on September 28. For the case which is seen one of the most important turning point of the history of the Kurdish people, preparations are continuing.

There will marches and meetings in various centers of Europe on September 28, information desks will be organized and Kurds will try to raise the sensitivity of Europeans to the case.

A defence statement of thousands of pages

A top level administrator of YDK (Kurdish Democratic People's Unity) made a statement to Ozgur Politika on the EHRC case. The administrator said that the lawyers of Ocalan would submit the first part of Ocalan's defence statement which exceeds 500 pages and a defence statement of consisting of two thousand pages prepared by Legal Bureau of the Century and English lawyers the same day.

Defence statement obstructed

The administrator, calling attention that the second and the third parts of the defence statement has been still kept in Imrali, pointed that "The written statemen is confiscated by the island command although they do not have right even to see it. They say they have been examining for a month. The defence statement is not given to the lawyers."

The YDK representative mentioned "This case is of a big importance as it is the place of solution of problems in Middle East which have become a Gordian knot", adding that one of the most important subjects to be discussed would be "abduction of Ocalan by an international conspiracy." He added, "This subject will become clear by documents."

Big cities will be places of action

At the day of the case there will be activities in various important centers including Germany, France and England. The administrator said, "There will be marches, meetings in Strasbourg, Paris, Marseilles, Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, London and other places. Information desks will be organized."

Places of actions determined

On the other hand it has been learned that Kurdistanis living in South France will make actions for supporting PKK President Abdullah Ocalan on September 28. Kurdistanis are said to march with torches in Marseilles, Bordeaux and Lyon on 7.00 p.m. The action in Marseilles will begin in front of Reform Church and in Lyon in Teraux, and in Bordeaux at Place Victoir at the same hour.

"Law meets with ethics"

The defence statement of PKK President Abdullah Ocalan for his case in European Human Rights Court on September 28 consists of about thousand pages. The defence statement on which he says "I think it cause a big revolution of thought" includes the following chapters: Civilization and Law, Dialectics of Civilization, Its Basics and Development, Role and Source of Law (Law of Tradition, Law of Class, Religion and Secular Law, and Policy and Law), Kurdish Reality in History, the Kurdish Problem in Turkey, Development and Basic Properties of Turkish-Kurdish Relations, the Relation Between the Kurdish Problem and PKK, Nationalism and Socialism, Independence and Unity Problem. PKK and the Consequences of Violence, Understanding the Self-Criticism, European Civilization, Ways of Solution of Problems Arising from Europe, Capacity of Democratic Constutitional Law to Solve the Problems, European Human Rights Agreement, European Human Rights Court and Possibilities of a Solution, Abdullah Ocalan Case and Probable Consequences, My Personal Situation.

Saying "It is a psychological analysis, it will reflect to the policy and law as well. It may develop a new freedom concept and a new law. The ethics meet with law", Ocalan continued to say the following: "I analysed neither the classical society nor the state. I took up the Third Fild Theory and Practice and civil society and non-governmental organizations. I call it the Third Field Theory. Civil society or the Third Field Theory is unavoidable."


3. - Middle East Newsline - "Amid crisis, Turkey organizes":

ANKARA

Amid a threat of war in the Middle East, Turkey is preparing to hold an international defense exhibition.

The International Defense Industry, Aviation and Maritime Fair, or IDEF 2001, will be held in Ankara on Sept. 27. The exhibition will end three days later.

Organizers said more than 200 Turkish and foreign defense contractors will exhibit in the show. About 150 military representatives from 85 countries have been invited.

One of the companies is Airbus Military. Turkey is one of the launch customers for the A400M military transport and Turkish Aerospace Industries is an industrial partner in the program.

Turkey has sharply reduced its military procurement program in the wake of its fiscal crisis in February. The military has suspended 32 projects valued at $19.5 billion.

Ankara's biannual defense exhibition will include a range of weapons. They range from main battle tanks to anti-aircraft systems, military space and communication systems to small- and medium-range weapons.

Naval systems will include destroyers, frigates and coast guard vessels. Security systems will also be displayed.

So far, organizers do not report a drop in the number of companies amid U.S. plans to attack Islamic groups in the Middle East suspected of participating in the suicide attacks in New York and Washington earlier this month.


4. - The Buissenes Week - "Why Greatness Keeps Eluding Turkey":

Turkey Between Two Worlds

By Stephen Kinzer, Farrar

Turkey, with 65 million people and a strategic location between Europe and Asia, is an important country that's not well understood in the West. Crescent & Star, Stephen Kinzer's study of Turkey's history and politics, goes a good ways toward redressing that. It's a thoughtful study of the wrenching problems that hold Turkey back--and it's an engaging read to boot.

Kinzer, who until recently was The New York Times correspondent in Istanbul, is an energetic reporter who immersed himself in Turkey's vibrant society. He mixed with ordinary people in buses and smoke shops, hosted a Turkish-language radio program, and he even braved tanker traffic to make the one-mile swim across the Bosphorus. Kinzer also logged plenty of evenings in the Turkish bistros called meyhanes eating meze, or small plates of appetizers, and consuming raki, the Turkish national beverage.

That anise-based alcoholic drink resembles its Greek counterpart, ouzo, but don't tell that to the Turks, who believe it is "gloriously unique." Raki, which is clear in the bottle but turns cloudy when mixed with water, here becomes a metaphor for Kinzer's experience in Turkey. In the early days of his posting, Turkey seemed "a jewel of a country poised on the brink of greatness." Later, however, he found its future direction to be more murky and began wondering whether his temporary home was "condemned to remain an unfulfilled dream."

He depicts Turkey as a country gripped in a long-term struggle between a young, increasingly well-educated population "eager to build a nation that embodies the ideals of democracy and human rights" and a ruling elite that "refuses to embrace this new nation or even admit that it exists." The irony is the latter, which he describes as a "sclerotic cadre" of "military commanders, prosecutors...lapdog newspaper editors, [and] rigidly conservative politicians," claim they are acting out of loyalty to the principles of the country's modernizing founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Ataturk was a "one man revolution" who ordered the traditional Arabic script to be replaced with Latin characters; banned traditional Muslim garb, the veil and the fez; and tried to stamp out the influence of religion. Yet, more than 60 years after his death in 1938, his legacy has become a straitjacket. What remains of Kemalism is not so much the founder's enlightened secularism but his autocratic approach. He believed, Kinzer writes, that "the state, not popular will, was the instrument by which social and political change would be achieved."

Ataturk's military successors also think that big decisions are too important to be left to the people or the politicians. What's more, they will go to great lengths to suppress anything or anyone that seems threatening to the state. Dissident writers are packed off to prison. And in the 1990s, the Turkish military waged a vicious war against leftist Kurdish rebels in a vast area in the mountainous eastern part of the country. According to Kinzer, hundreds of villages were burned, suspected rebel sympathizers were assassinated, and torture was widespread.

This hard-line approach tends to backfire. For instance, the country aspires to join the European Union, but its abysmal human-rights record is a major roadblock. And Turkey's authoritarianism breeds inept and corrupt politicians.

Kinzer provides some telling glimpses of military-civilian interaction. Once a month, the military commanders meet with the supposed heads of government to give them their orders. The beginning of the meeting is televised, and the pictures "perfectly convey the balance of power." The civilians squirm like "guilty schoolboys." The military commanders glower "at their charges...and prepare to deliver their decrees. Always...it is understood that their will must be done."

Kinzer is also good on military culture. The officers-to-be, who enter elite military schools at the age of 14, have become a caste unto themselves--a "priesthood" with Ataturk as their "secular God." They inhabit a world apart, often marrying the daughters of senior officers. They don't see the "vibrant, self-confident and boldly ambitious Turkey that many civilians see. Rather they see a nation surrounded by enemies and populated by simpletons."

Although the military still enjoys public respect, the gap between the officers and the people is growing. Several events that occurred during Kinzer's tenure in Turkey helped widen the divide. One was an extraordinary car crash at the town of Susurluk in 1996. When rescuers arrived, they found a top police commander, the leader of a reactionary Kurdish feudal clan, and a notorious gangster, all dead in the same Mercedes. Susurluk pulled the lid off a seamy world of political killings and drug smuggling. "For generations Turks had clung to a childlike belief that however confusing things seemed, the state probably knew best," Kinzer writes. Susurluk "began to destroy that faith." So did the 1999 earthquake that killed tens of thousands while the military and the government proved incapable of organizing effective rescue operations.

Will the officers back off, allowing a democratic Turkish society to bloom? Kinzer in the end is optimistic that generational change will prompt the leadership to "recognize how fully their people deserve democracy." But it seems unlikely that those in power will easily loosen their grip.


5. - Sabah - "NATO'S mind":

By Gungor Mengi

Columnist Gungor Mengi writes on the news that theUS is preparing to form a NATO shield to prevent the spread of fundamentalist religious terrorism in the Balkans. A summary of his column is as follows: "It is reported that the US will form a 'NATO Shield' in the Balkans to prevent the spread of fundamentalistterror.

Cannot Turkey, the only secular democratic state in theIslamic world, inspire the necessary confidence on the issue that new measures are sought for? In an interview to the Sunday Times, the USAmbassador to London William Farish, officialy stated that the Bush Administration is concerned over the rise of a possible fundamentalist religious movement in Turkey. The newspaper wrote that the project proposed by Vice President Richard Cheney was also supported by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Turkey must oppose such a project. The most concrete guarantee against the spread of fundamentalist religious terror in Europe by way of the Balkans is Turkey who shoud be sincerely supported by her allies. Forming a second defence line instead of enhancing a bulwark such as Turkey will be a folly which will show that the Western world has not learned a lesson from the tragedy most probably incurred by the fundamentalist religious terror in the USA. Furthermore, it will provoke the designs on Turkey.

In Turkey there is the accumulation of knowledge, tradition, experience and faith which will protect the secular-democratic regime against all kinds of terrorism. This front is so strong that there is no need for a second front line. The only condition is that our allies should not cast a shadow on us. Our friends must not protect ideologies which produce terror and terrorist organizations. For years Germany fostered Kaplancilar known as 'Kara Ses'(Black Voice) who dreamt of bringing a regime worse than the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is the US who did not deliver the leader of a community to Turkish justice who said 'Take pour places in the arteries of the State, hold the most important positions and wait for my signal for the last strike'.

Western Statesmen are searching for countries who are supporting fundamentalist religious terrorists. When they are wondering who those are, we would suggest them to look into the mirror. "


6. - AFP - "Turkish MPs debate abolishing death penalty to boost EU bid":

ANKARA

Turkish lawmakers opened debate on Monday on abolishing the death penalty and other far-reaching constitutional reforms in an attempt to boost the country's drive to join the European Union.

The MPs returned to parliament last week, cutting short their summer recess, after the parliament speaker issued a call for an extraordinary session to take up the 37-item package aimed at catching up with EU norms. The reforms are expected to be passed in early October after the deputies complete lengthy debate and voting procedures.

The government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit aims to have the package adopted before November when EU executives will release a report on Turkey's progress towards membership since the declaration of its candidacy in 1999. A severe economic crisis and intra-government bickering have so far blocked the way for any major reform to improve Turkey's much-criticized human rights record, which the EU puts as a condition for the opening of accession talks.

Turkey, the only Muslim country vying for EU membership, is lagging behind the other 12 aspirants, who have already started accession talks with the Union. The reform package has received backing from all six parties in parliament as well as from civic groups with many of them calling even for a completely new constitution. Turkey's top business associations and trade unions voiced support for the reforms in one-page advertisements in the Turkish press on Monday.

"Yes to changing the constitution in the name of moving towards a strong and secure country, respectful of human rights, and living in democracy, peace and freedom," read the advertisement. The long-sought reforms include the abolition of capital punishment except in times of war and for crimes of terrorism, a provision designed to exclude Turkey's public enemy number one, Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan, who is on a death row for separatism.

The draft lifts a ban on using "forbidden languages" in the expression and dissemination of thought, which could allow for the broadcast of the Kurdish language by the media. It also makes it more difficult to ban political parties and adds more civilian members to the country's top policy-making body, the military-dominated National Security Council. Other proposals seek to improve freedom of expression and expand the rights of trade unions. Turkey's constitution, criticized as oppressive and restrictive, is the legacy of the 1980 military coup when the army took over the country's administration amid political chaos and bloody street clashes between supporters of the left and right.