18 April 2002

1. "Turkey launches military operation after PKK name change", Immediately after the declaration of the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Party (Kadek), Turkish army forces launched a comprehensive operation in southern Kurdistan [northern Iraq].

2. "Newsweek: A showdown is brewing between Turkey and the EU", the influential American magazine, Newsweek, gave space in its latest issue to the evaluation of relations between Turkey and the European Union. By evaluating Turkey's contributions to the policies of the Western world, Newsweek criticizes both the approaches of the ECU towards Turkey and Turkey's slow reforms process.

3. "Parliamentary commission to debate draft limiting death penalty", The Parliamentary Constitutional Commission is scheduled to discuss a law draft that would abolish the capital sentence expected in cases of terrorism and treason, a move aimed at easing Turkey's path to European Union membership.

4. "EU tells Turkey to work toward date", the European Union yesterday told Turkey that it was making “substantial efforts” to get in shape for EU accession but that it still needed to restructure its economy and improve its human rights record.

5. "A new era in Kurdish politics", the Kurdistan Workers¹ Party (PKK) has successfully concluded its long awaited 8th Congress. Some key decisions were taken which will shape the political landscape of the region and exert an influence more generally. The impact will be widely felt on the peoples of all parts of Kurdistan and more extensively throughout the Middle East and beyond.

6. "IMF chief says Turkey can attain 3.0 percent growth", Turkey, emerging from a sharp contraction last year, can still expand 3.0 percent in 2002 if it sticks to reforms, IMF chief Horst Koehler said here Wednesday.

1. - BBC Monitoring Service - "Turkey launches military operation after PKK name change":

18 April 2002

In Botan [Hakkari]", as published by German-based Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika web site on 18 April

Immediately after the declaration of the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Party (Kadek), Turkish army forces launched a comprehensive operation in southern Kurdistan [northern Iraq].

The Central Headquarters of the People's Defence Forces (HPG) announced that Turkish army forces conducted an operation in the rural sector of Sirnak and the Haftanin region. It was noted that on 15 April, Turkish army forces and village guards conducted an operation against Sirnak's Bestler, Avyan, Osyan, and Cakcako regions. Pointing out that a clash broke out between the HPG guerrillas and the soldiers on the first day of the operation, the HPG Central Headquarters reported that a village guard by the name of Ibrahim, who is said to be the team commander, was killed in the clash, while a village guard named Selim was wounded. It was learned that the soldiers received reinforcements from Sirnak by means of Sikorsky helicopters and the Turkish army forces withdrew partially on 15 April.

It was learned that at the same time, another similar operation was conducted encompassing the Elcan and Hezil valleys. No clashes were reported between the guerrilla forces and the soldiers in this operation. The soldiers are said to be deployed in areas near the border.

Meanwhile, mass arrests were reported in Guclukonak, Idil, and central Districts of Cizre on charges of aiding and abetting the guerrillas. Local sources said that the mayor of the Sindik township was also detained.

2. - Newsweek / Turkish Daily News - "Newsweek: A showdown is brewing between Turkey and the EU":

ANKARA / 18 April 2002

Influential American magazine, Newsweek, in its latest issue defines Turkey as 'Europe's Orphan'

The influential American magazine, Newsweek, gave space in its latest issue to the evaluation of relations between Turkey and the European Union. By evaluating Turkey's contributions to the policies of the Western world, Newsweek criticizes both the approaches of the ECU towards Turkey and Turkey's slow reforms process.

Newsweek writes that "Quietly and without fanfare, the Turks are demonstrating on the international stage, at least, that they are a full member of the Western world's post-Sept. 11 alliance against terrorism. The West tends to take the friendship for granted. It shouldn't. Turkey is heading for a major crisis in its relations with the EU, and that could in turn trigger a major rethink of just who its real friends are-and where its best strategic interests lie.

"Turkey certainly isn't about to sign up to the Axis of Evil, however bad, relations with Europe might get. But as the EU crafts a new constitution governing its enlargement, and as it threatens to ignore Turkish objections by accepting the Greek part of the divided island of Cyprus into its club, Ankara is understandably looking on with growing dismay. Before long, in fact, Turkey just may decide that the EU's demands for membership are too exacting, that Brussels is being too highhanded and that other regional allies might prove less troublesome and more rewarding. The bottom line is, the problem is that the EU is dealing with Turkey as though it were an impoverished Eastern European nation with no option but to go along with Brussels's every whim. That's a big mistake. 'You can't treat Turkey like Slovakia,' says Karen Fogg, EU ambassador to Ankara. 'You can't say, 'Let us show you how to become like us'.' Trying to do so, she believes, will only breed resentment." resentment is already festering. Just listen to the remarks of a powerful member of Ankara's ruling military, made recently with calculated intent largely lost on Western capitals. 'Turkey has never received any support or understanding from the EU,' said Maj. Gen. Tuncer Kilinc after listening to an anti-EU speech at Ankara's War Academy. Voicing the bitterness of many among Turkey's political establishment over what they see as the EU's unfair and patronizing attitudes, he went on to say that 'Turkey needs new allies. We should engage in a search which includes Russia and Iran.' If ever there was a wake-up call, this is it. For Kilinc who is nothing less than the secretary-general of Turkey's National Security Council, the joint military-civilian body that is the country's supreme de facto authority. Historically, as go the Army and the security council, so goes Turkey."

Stating that "Ever since the days of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic and a zealous modernizer, Turks have lived under the comfortable assumption that sooner or later they would join Europe, completing a westward journey, the Turks began two millennia ago as Asian nomads. But now, as they've grown closer to Europe, many Turks are having second thoughts. Most agree that they would be better off joining Europe. But they don't like being dictated to, and they aren't sure Europe wants them anyway. For their part, Europeans seem oblivious to the growing schism in relations. Preoccupied with enlargement to the East, diverted by the Balkans and the Baltics and the Middle East, they seem utterly unaware of the equally serious problem brewing on their Asian doorstep. Europe assumes that Turkey, like others before it, will wait patiently to join its club, dutifully making whatever social and political changes the grandees of Brussels deem to be appropriate. That may be far less true than it once was," the news magazine continued:

"General Kilinc did not mean to imply that Turkey might cut its ties with Europe. That, says one leading pro-Europe parliamentarian, would be 'as ridiculous as Mexico turning its back on the United States.' But between the extremes of a member of the club and a wayward ally, there's a lot of room for trouble. If it is rebuffed by Europe, it's not hard to imagine Turkey turning to other friends elsewhere, as Kilinc so bluntly warned. Patching up relations with Iraq, it could downscale its hitherto unquestioned allegiance to the United States and its NATO allies. Indeed, last week Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit warned Israel that its actions in the occupied territories amounted to a 'genocide' against Palestinians. Could this be a disturbing new sign that Turkey might begin to reconsider its historical (and, in the Muslim world, almost unique) friendship with Israel? And if so, what would this mean for America's strategy of unseating Saddam Hussein, which it seems willing to support despite deep reservations? All these matters hang in the balance. And Europe, by mishandling and underestimating the challenge, could well blow it.

"Turkey has been preparing to join Europe ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. 'There are many nations, but only one civilization,' Ataturk declared after the debacle of World War I, when victorious Allied powers occupied Istanbul and created the modern map of the Middle East. Almost single-handedly, he dragged Turkey toward the West. He decreed that Turks abandon the fez for European fedoras. He introduced the Latin alphabet, suppressed the wearing of the veil and moved Turkey's capital to Ankara, which he set about turning into a model European city-as well as imprisoning anyone who didn't want to be 'progressive' and 'enlightened'."

Newsweek also criticized the role of the Turkish army in politics and wrote that "Turkey's General Staff still sees itself as a kind of big brother to the country's elected politicians. The Army has deposed four governments over the past 40 years-the last time in 1997, when it ousted Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan for being too Islamist. But there's a problem with challenging the Army's supremacy: almost no one inside Turkey wants to. The military is far and away the most revered and respected institution in the country, regardless of political stripe. Ahmed Dogan, a grocer in downtown Istanbul, speaks for almost everyone when he lauds the Army as the guarantor of Turkey's stability and future. 'They are honest,' he says, 'and think for the good of the country rather than themselves.' Yet to hear Europeans tell it, the Army is an 'obstacle,' 'old- fashioned' and 'blinkered.' If Turkey is to join the EU, the Eurocrats say, the military's leading role must go."

The news magazine went on to write that "Ultimately, Europe may be right. But that hasn't stopped Turks from asking another logical question: we may want to be in the EU, but are we willing to let Brussels dictate the character of our state? A recent opinion poll showed that 74 percent of Turks still favor joining the EU, but ask about individual steps necessary to get there and the picture is different, says Erol Manisali, professor of economics at Istanbul University and a prominent Euro-skeptic. 'Most people are in favor of going to the moon,' he scoffs. 'But that doesn't mean it's realistic.' Turks have been blind to the implications of joining Europe. Now, at long last, he says, 'they are beginning to see what the EU means. The EU wants us to become like them. But Turkey is not Europe, it's not Asia, it's always been something else.' Europe, too, has decisions to make. It has yet to fully debate whether it really wants Turkey in. It's one thing for Brussels to absorb the 10 candidates from Eastern Europe, where there is a widely shared culture. But admitting Turkey would challenge the very nature of the union, which former German chancellor Helmut Kohl once described as a 'civilization project' -- and some Turks, like nationalist MP Sevket Yahnici, fear is a 'Christian club.'

"Within 15 years Turkey's population will be larger than Germany's, making it potentially the largest country in the EU and, according to new voting rules, the country with the most votes in the European Commission. The EU's borders would stretch to Iran and Iraq, meaning that Europe would officially begin further east than Baghdad. The past two years have been a kind of honeymoon period for Turkey, with powerful voices (notably Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and Greece's dovish Foreign Minister George Papandreou) speaking in favor of Turkey's membership in the EU. But the conservative German chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber speaks for many (if not most) in strenuously opposing it. Such sentiments, long suppressed, could come to the fore this summer, when Brussels must decide whether to admit Cyprus into the Union," wrote Newsweek.

Evaluating Turkey's geo-strategic position, Newsweek wrote that "Some experts have likened the prospect to a 'train wreck.' Clearly, the geopolitical stakes are huge, not just for Turkey but for the region. Consider Iraq. Until the gulf war, it was Turkey's biggest trading partner. Ankara would like to restore strong ties with Baghdad, not just for business but also to sandwich the Kurds of southeast Turkey and northern Iraq and squash any secessionist moves. Culturally, Turkey may look to the west. But its economic and political interests are large to the east and north. Turkey's energy all comes from Asia-gas from Russia and Iran, oil from Iraq and soon from Azerbaijan through a new pipeline to be built from Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. And Turks have been building economic and cultural ties with their ethnic cousins in the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, which are dotted with Turkish supermarkets, hotels and universities." Newsweek concluded that "Perhaps a more enlightened policy would be for Europe to soften its rules at the Union's edges, once the next round of expansion is done, and recognize that the periphery of Europe won't be just like the core. As it stands now, Turkey may officially be a candidate for European membership-but it receives no structural funds to help undertake reforms. It is in the European Customs Union and is therefore bound to open its markets to EU produce, like any full EU member. Yet it receives none of the subsidies that the poorer members of the Union receive, nor does it benefit from the EU's external trade deals, such as with North Africa or the United States.

"If Europe comes up with a 'third way,' giving Turkey some of the benefits of membership and rewarding it for how far it has come, rather than constantly reminding it of how far it has to go, a crisis in relations might be averted. If not, the country might just decide, as Ataturk phrased it when he was fighting Allied occupiers after WWI, that a 'Turk should be master in his own land' -- and go its own way. Because unlike most aspirants to Europe, Turkey has other options."

3. - Turkish Daily News - "Parliamentary commission to debate draft limiting death penalty":

ANKARA / 18 April 2002

The Parliamentary Constitutional Commission is scheduled to discuss a law draft that would abolish the capital sentence expected in cases of terrorism and treason, a move aimed at easing Turkey's path to European Union membership.

The law, which is likely to pass through parliament later this month, enshrines a constitutional amendment passed last year that lifted the death sentence except for crimes of terrorism and treason. It will not, however, affect the fate of Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), currently on death row in a Turkish prison after being convicted of treason.

The EU has pressed Turkey to abolish the death sentence entirely, but nationalists in the three-party coalition government still insist that Ocalan must hang, and oppose a more far-reaching law that would lift the death penalty in all cases.

Other government members, including Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, have expressed backing for complete abolishment. It is not clear if a partial abolishment will meet the EU's criteria for membership.

Nobody has been executed in Turkey since 1984, but this effective moratorium could come under pressure later this year when the European Court of Human Rights rules on Ocalan's appeal against his death sentence.

Turkey has promised to wait for the verdict before deciding whether to execute the terrorist leader, whose terrorist group fought a 15-year war for autonomy in the southeast. The conflict has cost some 37,000 lives, though fighting has eased since the terrorists called a cease fire after Ocalan's arrest in 1999.

4. - AP - "EU tells Turkey to work toward date":

LUXEMBOURG / 18 April 2002

The European Union yesterday told Turkey that it was making “substantial efforts” to get in shape for EU accession but that it still needed to restructure its economy and improve its human rights record.

Guenter Verheugen, the EU commissioner for enlargement, said the EU will set a start date for entry talks only once Turkey meets all membership criteria. “Turkey is engaged in a process of substantial political reforms (and) we are receptive to Turkey’s desire” for early membership, Verheugen said. He added that this can only happen if Turkey completes economic reforms, too.

?he EU said it remains firm on the decisions of the Helsinki summit of 1998, which do not tie Cyprus’s accession to the end to its division and also call for a single international presence and vote for Cyprus. Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique and Verheugen noted, however, that the EU would like to see a solution to the Cyprus problem by June.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem, who was in Luxembourg for the EU-Turkey Association Council meeting, said that a start date for accession talks would serve as a motive for Turkey’s behavior on all the issues raised by the EU. He said also that Turkey was sticking to its opposition to Cyprus’s accession.

Foreign Minister George Papandreou met with Pique and the EU’s defense and foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana, for talks on the EU’s nascent defense force. Greece opposes a deal, accepted by its 14 partners, giving Turkey, a member of NATO who is not in the EU, a say in how the force uses NATO assets.

5. - KNK London / Press Release - "A new era in Kurdish politics":

17 April 2002

The Kurdistan Workers¹ Party (PKK) has successfully concluded its long awaited 8th Congress. Some key decisions were taken which will shape the political landscape of the region and exert an influence more generally. The impact will be widely felt on the peoples of all parts of Kurdistan and more extensively throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Some 285 delegates representing Kurds from everywhere participated in the intense Congress debates between 4 and 10 April. The main outcome is the founding of a new Kurdish political organisation to be known as the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK) which becomes the successor to the PKK.

The new body will seek to maximise unity among all Kurdish groups and will work with any Kurdish organisation striving towards similar aims of democratic transformation and freedom. KADEK does not aim to win power for itself in government, but will support any group that shares its broad objectives.

The Congress praised the long heroic uprising of the PKK but declared that this form of struggle was now at an end.

Delegates to the 8th Congress approved a new constitution for KADEK and elected a steering committee. Abdullah Ocalan was elected as its president and his ³Manifesto of Democratic Civilisation² was adopted as the founding manifesto of the new body.

Within the context of current conflicts in the Middle East, the Congress called on all international and local forces to act more responsibly and in a peaceful manner.

KADEK will campaign for a democratic resolution to the Kurdish Question and blames the continued conflict for Turkey¹s slow progress in development. The new group will work to achieve unity among all democratic, socialist and social democratic forces and non-governmental organisations in Turkey and elsewhere.

To achieve this objective, it agreed to take an active role in the work of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK).

KADEK condemns as real terrorism the persecution and violence carried out against the Kurdish people over the years.

Women and youth are seen by the new body as offering the greatest hope for the future. It assumes as one of its main duties the bringing of women and youth into political activities. KADEK calls on Kurdish women to join the Party of Free Women (PJA) and encourages women to enter its ranks.

KADEK draws its strength from the historic sacrifices of the Kurdish people and the inspiring example of its leadership.

6. - AFP - "IMF chief says Turkey can attain 3.0 percent growth":

WASHINGTON / 17 April 2002

Turkey, emerging from a sharp contraction last year, can still expand 3.0 percent in 2002 if it sticks to reforms, IMF chief Horst Koehler said here Wednesday.

"In principle I am very confident that these reforms will be implemented so that the recovery will not be derailed," Koehler told a National Press Club luncheon. "I expect still for this year a positive growth rate of 3.0 percent, it is possible," he added. "I know there are a lot of concerns about unemployment, job losses. I can say again here it is partly the unavoidable price for a lot of misbehaviour in the past." The Turkish economy performed better with less political interference, the International Monetary Fund managing director said.

"There is a need to recognize some increase in unemployment but there should be also a communication to the people: At the end they have better jobs, more jobs if they implement this program." Koehler said the Turkish economy had taken a hit from the fallout of the September 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York. Now the concerns over developments in the Middle East made it harder to manage the Turkish economy, he added. "The new uncertainties around the Middle East developments (are) a kind of new risk."

Latest data show Turkey's gross domestic product slumped 12.3 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2001, casting some doubt over its target of 3.0 percent growth this year. But the IMF this week cleared the payment of a 1.0-billion-dollar installment to Turkey after reviewing its economic performance. The installment is part of a three-year, 16-billion-dollar IMF program approved in February. Turkey has drawn about nine billion dollars of the available credit.