24 July 2002

1. "Council of Europe appeals to Turkey to end torture by police", the Council of Europe called on Turkey Tuesday to urgently take measures to stop security forces in the country's southeast from torturing prisoners. In a report on its visit to Diyarbakir, the pan-European human rights body's anti-torture committee said it gathered "compelling evidence of severe ill-treatment by law enforcement officials.

2. "Important cases await beginning of new judicial year", the Constitutional Court must complete closure cases against HADEP, TSIP and the Rights and Freedoms Party, while the Court of Cassation must discuss important cases such as Operation Hope and White Energy.

3. "Turkey party pushes EU reforms before early polls", the junior party in Turkey's coalition government sought opposition support Tuesday to push through democracy reforms, needed for the nation's bid to join the EU, before early elections set for November. The reforms, which include abolition of the death penalty and expanded rights for the sizable Kurdish minority, have been blocked by the far-right government partner in Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's fractious coalition.

4. "Turkey: Battle of the headscarf", in the second programme in our series about Islam and modernity, the BBC's Roger Hardy looks at the clash between religion and secularism in Turkey.

5. "Turkish turmoil affects EU force", the EU’s General Affairs Council yesterday discussed the issue of the EU’s nascent defense force and the bloc’s foreign ministers expressed reservations as to whether a solution with Ankara could be found at a time of such great political turmoil in Turkey.

6. "Protection and help instead of betrayal", after a decade of development and self-rule, Iraqi Kurds have a lot to lose from a botched effort to remove Saddam Hussein. Kurdish leaders see regime change as a golden opportunity, but they are careful not to be too outspoken in calling for Saddam's ouster. In the 1980s his "Anfal Campaign" targeted civilians with chemical weapons. Tens of thousands were killed.

1. - AFP - "Council of Europe appeals to Turkey to end torture by police":

STRASBOURG / 23 July 2002

The Council of Europe called on Turkey Tuesday to urgently take measures to stop security forces in the country's southeast from torturing prisoners. In a report on its visit to Diyarbakir, the pan-European human rights body's anti-torture committee said it gathered "compelling evidence of severe ill-treatment by law enforcement officials.

Turkey's human rights record has been under intense scrutiny in recent years as it strives to implement reforms that will pave its way to future European Union membership. "Very detailed and consistent accounts of such ill-treatment were received from several persons interviewed individually and in different prisons. In two cases, medical evidence consistent with the ill-treatment alleged was gathered," the delegation found.

The delegation, which visited the detention facility of the local police station in which the ill-treatment was said to have occurred, called on Turkish authorities to "either modify the interrogation room or withdraw it from service." In addition, it found that the issue of access to lawyers for people detained by police "clearly has been, and apparently remains, a significant problem in Diyarbakir."

The delegation also visited one of Turkey's controversial new high-security prisons in which cells for one to three people replaced large dormitories for dozens of inmates. Backed by human rights groups, 30 protestors are on hunger strike in Turkish jails, claiming the new arrangement leaves them socially isolated and more vulnerable to torture and maltreatment. The hunger strikes began in October 2000 by mainly left-wing inmates to protest against the new jails but the government has categorically ruled out a return to the dormitory system, arguing that it was the main reason behind frequent riots and hostage-taking incidents in the country's unruly prison.

The delegation found some progress had been made with communal activities, which allow conversation periods for up to 10 prisoners at a time being introduced. "We also welcome the fact that arrangements for open visits and access to the telephone were developing, including with participation by some prisoners held under the Law to Fight Terrorism." However, it noted that all of the prisoners held under the terrorism law were refusing to take part in communal activities because of the condition that they should have participated in at least one of the other programmed communal activities. The council urged Turkish authorities to drop this condition.

2. - Turkish Daily News - "Important cases await beginning of new judicial year":

The Constitutional Court must complete closure cases against HADEP, TSIP and the Rights and Freedoms Party, while the Court of Cassation must discuss important cases such as Operation Hope and White Energy

ANKARA / 24 July 2002

With the beginning of the new judicial year set for September, Turkey's two high courts, the Constitutional Court and the Court of Cassation, are facing a very busy schedule.

The Constitutional Court, in the new judicial year, is expected to complete the closure case against the People's Democracy Party (HADEP).

HADEP, charged with acting as a front for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has appealed to the high court claiming constitutional violations in five articles of the Political Parties Law.

The closure case has dragged on for more than three years, since former chief prosecutor Vural Savas filed the charges against Turkey's only legal Kurdish party, HADEP, in January 1999. Party officials deny the accusations.

The court's decision to handle HADEP's objections coincided with the increased expectation of changes in the political landscape amid the country's elections mood.

European Union candidate Turkey has been under fire from its European allies for failing to meet EU standards on democracy and human rights for membership in the 15-nation club. HADEP's predecessors, the HEP and the DEP, were closed down on similar charges.

Apart from HADEP, the Constitutional Court has to hear closure cases against the Rights and Freedoms Party and the Turkish Socialist Workers' Party (TSIP).

Both closure cases were opened by Court of Cassation Chief Prosecutor Sabih Kanadoglu.

The Rights and Freedoms Party must stand before the Constitutional Court for including articles in its party program that are against the unity of the country. Meanwhile, Kanadoglu demanded the closure of the TSIP for inciting crime and supporting class dictatorship.

Controversial media law row

The Constitutional Court also has to make a decision on the controversial media law, know publicly as the RTUK (Supreme Board of Radio and Television) law.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, last year vetoed the media law and sent it back to Parliament for a rewrite on the grounds that the law, in its original state, would lead to a monopolization of the media and that the fines envisaged by the law were so high as to inhibit the freedom of expression.

However, Parliament passed the law despite the reactions and criticisms and sent it back to Sezer for his approval. Sezer approved the law, but applied to the Constitutional Court for the cancellation of some of its clauses.

The court decided to halt the implementation of some of the RTUK law's clauses and is expected to complete the RTUK case in the upcoming judicial year.

Another important case awaiting a Constitutional Court decision is the Tobacco Law.

The main opposition True Path Party (DYP) has asked the court to open the tobacco market up to free competition and to reconstruct the State Monopoly system in the market.

Court of Cassation also faces busy schedule

The Court of Cassation also has to decide on several important cases in the upcoming judicial year.

First of all, it will see "Operation Hope," which was prompted in order to catch the assassins of journalist-writer Ugur Mumcu, professor Ahmet Taner Kislali, professor Muammer Aksoy and assistant professor Bahriye Ucok.

The Ankara State Security Court (DGM), earlier this year, sentenced three of the 24 defendants to death in the so-called Hope Case, which was launched some 17 months ago, for a series of murders and for belonging to an armed gang aimed at changing the constitutional secular democratic order of the country with a system based on religion.

The Court of Cassation will discuss the suspects' appeal in the next judicial term.

Another important case facing the Court of Cassation will be the embezzlement allegations made against Necmettin Erbakan, the former leader of the now defunct Welfare Party (RP).

An Ankara court earlier found Erbakan guilty and sentenced him to two years imprisonment on embezzlement charges.

3. - AFP - "Turkey party pushes EU reforms before early polls":

ANKARA / 23 July 2002

The junior party in Turkey's coalition government sought opposition support Tuesday to push through democracy reforms, needed for the nation's bid to join the EU, before early elections set for November. The reforms, which include abolition of the death penalty and expanded rights for the sizable Kurdish minority, have been blocked by the far-right government partner in Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's fractious coalition.

Ecevit has been hoping to get them approved before the early polls which he was forced to call last week after his support collapsed and he lost the government's majority in parliament. Many are worried that Turkey's EU bid could be postponed indefinitely if it fails to win a date for opening of accession talks by year-end when the EU is to draw up its enlargement calendar. A rift in the government over the reforms lies at the core of the current political turmoil in Ankara, where MPs have been called back from summer recess for a vote Monday on whether to hold the snap polls.

The far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), the senior partner in Ecevit's three-way coalition, warned they would quite the government if the ailing prime minister tried to put off the proposed November poll date. The MHP has fought against the reforms but reportedly will not oppose them as long as the early elections, which would be moved ahead from April 2004, are not blocked by Ecevit. Mesut Yilmaz, who heads the junior partner, the Motherland (ANAP) party, met with opposition leaders on Tuesday to get support for his party's newly drafted reform package.

Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk said the proposals include abolishing the death penalty except in times of war or imminent war -- which notably would save jailed Kurdish rebel Abdullah Ocalan from the gallows. Other proposals legalize broadcasts in Kurdish and allow private institutions to teach the language. The MHP says such freedoms could fan separatism among the Kurds and rekindle a recently subdued Kurdish rebellion for self-rule, which has claimed about 36,500 lives since 1984. The package also aims to expand freedom of expression and ease restrictions on public associations and demonstrations.

4. - BBC - "Turkey: Battle of the headscarf":

22 July 2002 / By Roger Hardy

In the second programme in our series about Islam and modernity, the BBC's Roger Hardy looks at the clash between religion and secularism in Turkey.

On the streets of Istanbul, Muslim girls march in defiance of the Turkish state.

They are demanding the right to wear a headscarf when they go to school.

In most countries, the issue would be uncontentious, but not here.

In Turkey the official orthodoxy of the state is Kemalism - the secular nationalism introduced by Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, when he created the modern state in the 1920s.

But, although the state is secular, the people are overwhelmingly Muslim.

So the headscarf has become a highly charged symbol of the collision between Kemalism and Islam.

Seventeen-year-old Zeliha was turned away by riot police when she tried to go to school in her headscarf.

So why does she not simply obey the state and leave the headscarf at home?

"I don't feel I have to comply with what the state says. This is my faith - and I want to live by my faith," Zeliha said.

Vibrant and secular

So how should we understand the headscarf affair? What does it tell us about modern Turkey?

In many ways, Turkey is a vibrantly modern and secular country where Ataturk's legacy appears, on one level, to be alive and well.

The guardians of that legacy - the high priests of Kemalism - are the Turkish generals.

Sabri Yirmibesoglu, himself a retired general, defends the view that it is wrong for women to wear headscarves in government schools or in government departments.

"In Turkey it is not forbidden to cover your hair or your body. But the Turkish public gets upset when this is done in the public sphere - and in public education - and when the headscarf is used as a political symbol."

Fighting radical Islam

Secularism, though, is not confined to the Turkish military.

Mehmet Ali Birand is one of Turkey's best-known liberal commentators.

So doesn't he believe that girls like Zeliha have a point when they claim the democratic right to wear a headscarf?

"Well, she had a point before 11 September. But I don't think that she has as strong a point as before. There is a fight between moderate Islam and radical Islam.

"The fight is not between the United States, and it is not between the Christian world or the Western world and Islamic countries. No, this war is within us," Mehmet Ali Birand said.

To understand why the headscarf issue exercises such passions, it is necessary to look back at the beginnings of modernity in Turkey.

These origins precede Ataturk and his secular nationalism and go back, in fact, to the period of the Tanzimat - the reforms introduced by the Turkish sultans in the middle of the 19th century.

These sultans realised that Europe had outstripped the Muslim world in military power and scientific achievement.

In response, they began to overhaul the ramshackle bureaucracy of the Ottoman Empire and modernise the education system.

The reforms also achieved something lasting which would change the face of Turkey once and for all and create profound social and political divisions.

Islamic revival

But, even if Ataturk owed a debt - an unacknowledged debt - to the reforming sultans, there is no doubt that the reforms introduced in the 1920s and 1930s were far more radical than anything that had gone before.

He changed the way Turks dress, the language they spoke, he gave women the vote and, above all, he pushed religion to the sidelines, most notably in the field of education.

But then came the Islamic revival in Turkey, which found its political expression in the 1970s and 1980s with the emergence of the Refah - or Welfare - party.

It began as an urban working class movement and then grew to affect a group of people the Kemalists had always seen as theirs - the middle class.

Kemalists began to panic.

The Refah party - and its leader Necmettin Erbakan - built up support because Turks were fed up with the mainstream parties of left and right, which they saw as corrupt and self-seeking.

Cutting Islamists to size

In 1996 Erbakan became the country's first Islamist prime minister.

For the Kemalists, it was an earthquake. But Erbakan overplayed his hand and, after only a year in office, he was pushed out as a result of sustained pressure from the generals.

The crackdown did not stop there. The authorities have done their utmost to cut the Islamists down to size.

But their critics are not convinced by their new-found moderation.

Nur Vergin, professor of sociology at Istanbul University, thinks it is purely tactical.

She believes that if the Islamist groups are left unchecked, they will poison the minds of the 8,000 boys and girls at Istanbul's Islamic schools.

"What does the religious teacher teach them? I'll tell you what, because I have examples. For example, a girl of nine, born in Istanbul - her parents have the means of sending her to school, but she doesn't know how to read - she cannot read yet.

"But she knows that, if you put nail polish on your nails, you'll go directly to hell. This is very serious. They want the very young children to be educated in that direction - with a tremendous amount of hatred against whatever looks like European, looks like secular. Little Taleban, you know," Nur Vergin said.

That word. Taleban, is a sign of just how polarised this country has become.

Islamists and Kemalists are not just hostile to one another - each feels deeply threatened by the other.

Issue of identity

So has this polarisation reached the point of an identity crisis? Students at Istanbul University have mixed views.

"Turkey doesn't have an identity crisis. A minority group, a small group of people, are living in line with the principles of Islam. But the majority of the Turkish people are Western-oriented, and they have a Western education," one student said.

Another student said: "Yes, I do think that there is an identity problem in Turkish society, which comes from the educational system, giving us the Eastern values on the one hand, and on the other hand, the same education system is giving us the Western values. So it's mixed up."

Three quarters of a century after the founding of the modern state, Turks have grown used to Kemalism.

But many - perhaps most - consider that Islam is part of who they are.

For now, the Kemalist model of modernity is dominant - not because everyone accepts it - but because the elite which does has managed to impose it on those who do not.

But can that continue indefinitely?

Since Ataturk's death, his brand of secularism has come under periodic challenge. Many say there is no reason to believe it won't come under challenge again.

5. - Kathimerini - "Turkish turmoil affects EU force":

23 July 2002

The EU’s General Affairs Council yesterday discussed the issue of the EU’s nascent defense force and the bloc’s foreign ministers expressed reservations as to whether a solution with Ankara could be found at a time of such great political turmoil in Turkey.

Foreign Minister George Papandreou briefed his colleagues on the results of talks held on the issue by Greek and Turkish officials as well as on EU-Turkish talks. None of the ministers expressed optimism that the issue would be resolved soon, especially as the Turkish government is not in a position to undertake the political initiative needed for any real progress.

The 15 ministers, therefore, discussed alternative possibilities for the force to take over peacekeeping operations in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia this autumn. This will be either through an ad hoc agreement with NATO or without the EU force using alliance’s assets.

The EU commissioner for enlargement, Guenter Verheugen, reiterated yesterday that Cyprus will join the union irrespective of whether the problem of its division has been solved.

6. - International Herald Tribune - "Protection and help instead of betrayal":

ERBIL / Iraqi Kurdistan / 22 July 2002 / by David L. Phillips

After a decade of development and self-rule, Iraqi Kurds have a lot to lose from a botched effort to remove Saddam Hussein. Kurdish leaders see regime change as a golden opportunity, but they are careful not to be too outspoken in calling for Saddam's ouster. In the 1980s his "Anfal Campaign" targeted civilians with chemical weapons. Tens of thousands were killed.

The Kurds have a tragic history of betrayal. After the Gulf War the United States encouraged Iraqi opposition groups to rebel against Saddam. Then Washington stepped aside while Iraq's Republican Guard brutally repressed the Kurdish uprising. Washington finally marshaled a humanitarian intervention and established a no-flight zone over Northern Iraq so that displaced Kurds could return home and begin rebuilding their lives.

I visited Iraqi Kurdistan soon after the Gulf War. It was devastated. Since then the Kurds have worked hard at recovery and reconstruction. With allied airpower keeping Saddam's forces at bay, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have restored order and administered territories under their control like a de facto sovereign state. The UN Oil for Food Program pays for humanitarian assistance from the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales. Thirteen percent goes to the Kurds. Since 1996, UN agencies have dispensed more than $3 billion in food and medicine in Iraqi Kurdistan. But the international community avoids activities that might be construed as support for independence. The Kurds recognize their limited possibilities. As a result, they affirm support for Iraq's territorial integrity.

But Iraq's neighbors are concerned that military action would cause instability and inspire Kurdish nationalism. They also worry that the emergence of a federal democracy in Iraq might inspire democratic movements elsewhere in the region.

Neighboring states are carving out spheres of influence in anticipation of Saddam's removal. Turkey seeks a buffer zone along its border, and covets access to the Kirkuk oil fields. Iran is determined that Iraq's Shiites, who are more than half the population, play a leading role in whatever government is established after Saddam. Such pressures have exacerbated historic differences among the Kurds. In 1996 a dispute between the Union and the Kurdish Democratic Party erupted into violence. Iran intervened to support one of the Kurdish groups; Iraq seized the opportunity to strengthen its ties with the other. Finally, the United States mediated an end to the conflict, but not until the Kurds had divided their territory into two entities and frittered away much of their goodwill with the international community.

At the present critical juncture, Kurdish leaders must consolidate their gains and, by demonstrating responsible leadership, encourage the international community to stay involved. Iraqi Kurds need to show that they can get along. To this end, the democratically elected Parliament is on the verge of reconvening after a six-year hiatus.

The Kurds are taking steps to ensure religious freedom for Christian Assyrians and expand Iraqi Turkoman cultural rights. Kurdish legal experts are collaborating with other Iraqi opposition groups to develop governance arrangements for the day when a new government is established in Baghdad.

The Kurds affirm that peace and prosperity would have been unattainable without U.S. protection. They caution that international support is still essential to keep progress from eroding. America can help by further encouraging power-sharing agreements between the Kurdish factions.

The United Nations should more vigorously assist the transition from relief to development. The no-flight zone must be vigorously enforced. If the Iraqi army attacks, the United States should be prepared to provide close air support to Kurdish fighters. The Kurds are precariously perched between their tragic past and a promising future. While a decade of self-rule has transformed Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq's imminent transition is inherently unstable. Iraqi Kurdistan may serve as a model for regional democratic development, or it may prove to be yet another failed humanitarian intervention and ill-conceived Western experiment in nation-building for Iraq.

The writer, deputy director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.