22 April 2002

1. "Turkish court acquits prominent Kurdish writer", a Turkish state security court on Friday acquitted a prominent Kurdish writer of charges of separatism, for which he risked up to three years in jail in Turkey. Mehmed Uzun, 49, who attended the trial in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir despite having been a resident of Sweden for the past 25 years, hailed the ruling as "a very important step in Turkey's democratization process."

2. "Turkish PM rejects Kurdish rebels' reform bid as "deception", Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Friday that a drive by Kurdish rebels to reorganize within a peaceful and democratic organization was a sham to cover up their separatist ambitions.

3. "Turkey's Highest Court Bars Islamist From Parliament", Government: The ruling is widely seen as part of a campaign to stamp out religious political movements in the nation.

4. "US, Kurds in secret talks near Berlin to plan anti-Saddam strike", US officials held a secret meeting near Berlin with the leaders of the main Kurdish factions controlling northern Iraq to plan a strike against President Saddam Hussein "by year's end," an Arab newspaper reported Sunday.

5. "Berlin Selling Turks Tank Motors", Germany is to supply 170 tank engines via Israel to modernize the Turkish army's pool of U.S.-made M60 tanks, the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.

6. "E.U. Reviews List Of Terrorist Organizations", permanent representatives of the European Union (EU) member countries in Brussels started to review the list of terrorist organizations. The EU had determined the first list of terrorist organizations and the terrorists in the wake of September 11 terrorist attacks, and decided to review this list once in six month.

1. - AFP - "Turkish court acquits prominent Kurdish writer":

DIYARBAKIR / April 19

A Turkish state security court on Friday acquitted a prominent Kurdish writer of charges of separatism, for which he risked up to three years in jail in Turkey. Mehmed Uzun, 49, who attended the trial in the mainly Kurdish city of

Diyarbakir despite having been a resident of Sweden for the past 25 years, hailed the ruling as "a very important step in Turkey's democratization process."

The prosecution had demanded between one and three years in jail for Uzun for a speech he made on Kurdish language and literature at a conference in Diyarbakir in January 2000. The indictment had said the speech amounted to "inciting the people to separatism." Uzun, who became a Swedish citizen after fleeing the country, travelled to attend the trial after the Turkish authorities last month agreed to lift an arrest warrant against him. A number of foreign intellectuals and diplomats attended the hearing to show their support for the writer.

Among them were Anne Dismorr, Sweden's ambassador to Turkey, Eric Ostberg, a former prosecutor for the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague who now heads a Uzun support committee, and Kjell Espmark, the head of the Nobel committee for literature. Uzun, who writes in Kurdish, Turkish and Swedish, has also won acclaim as one of the leading Kurdish linguists today. Turkey, which has long denied cultural freedoms to its sizeable Kurdish minority, is under pressure from the European Union to improve its troubled human rights record to strengthen its bid for EU membership.

The parliament recently passed reforms that authorise the use of the Kurdish language in publications, but Ankara has so far been reluctant to legalise television broadcasts and education in Kurdish. Turkey fears such reforms could fan separatist sentiment among the Kurds at a time when a 15-year Kurdish rebellion for self-rule in the southeast has significantly subdued.

2. - AFP - "Turkish PM rejects Kurdish rebels' reform bid as "deception"":

ANKARA / April 19

Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Friday that a drive by Kurdish rebels to reorganize within a peaceful and democratic organization was a sham to cover up their separatist ambitions.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 15-year war for self-rule in southeast Turkey, said Tuesday it was reorganizing itself under the name of Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK) as part of a new strategy to campaign for Kurdish freedoms through democratic means.

"The change of name is a deception, because the PKK has not actually given up its separatist ambitions," Ecevit told reporters here.

He stressed the PKK move was aimed at misleading the European Union, which has long put pressure on Turkey, a struggling membership candidate, to grant its Kurdish minority cultural freedoms.

"Our European friends, I hope, are also aware" that the PKK maintains its separatist goals, Ecevit said.

Ecevit's deputy, Mesut Yilmaz, recently said the Union was considering including the PKK on a list of terrorist organizations along with a far-left radical Turkish group.

The PKK's reform bid came as a follow-up of its 1999 decision to lay down arms to seek a democratic solution to the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed some 36,500 lives since 1984.

Since then heavy fighting in the mainly Kurdish southeast has declined, but Turkey played down that peace bid too as a ploy and the army continues to hunt down the rebels.

The PKK is outlawed in Britain, France and Germany, but the EU has not so far included the group on its list of terrorist organizations, prompting harsh criticism from Ankara.

Along with Ankara, Washington has also branded the PKK a "terrorist" organization.

3. - The Los Angeles Times - "Turkey's Highest Court Bars Islamist From Parliament":

Government: The ruling is widely seen as part of a campaign to stamp out religious political movements in the nation.

ISTANBUL / 20 April / by Amberin Zaman, special to the Times

The nation's top court on Friday barred Turkey's leading Islamist politician from holding a seat in parliament, dashing his hopes of becoming the next prime minister.

The ruling--the latest in a string of legal challenges hampering Recep Tayyip Erdogan's bid to govern Turkey--is widely seen as part of a broader campaign led by military leaders and the judiciary to stamp out Islamic political movements in this largely Muslim but officially secular nation.

Erdogan was stripped of his post as Istanbul's mayor and banned from politics for life in 1998 for reciting verses of a nationalist poem--taught in state schools--that were deemed to incite religious hatred. He served four months in jail for the reading, convicted under an article of the penal code that has been used to imprison scores of dissident politicians, journalists and academics of all political stripes. In January, the Constitutional Court ruled that Erdogan's conviction barred him from running for parliament. Publication of that ruling in Friday's Official Gazette put the court's decision into effect and closed off any appeal.

Only lawmakers in the 550-member parliament are eligible to become prime minister.

Erdogan, a former professional soccer player, had insisted that he was cleared of criminal charges under an amnesty law passed in 2000. He downplayed the impact of the court's decision on his Justice and Development Party.

"For us, it isn't that much of a difference," he said Friday. "It is out of the question that this will affect our leadership."

Murat Mercan, deputy chairman of the party, said he believes that parliament will amend the penal code article used to convict Erdogan, to bolster Turkey's long-running effort to join the European Union. "If we want to become a full-blooded Western-style democracy, such laws will have to change," he said in a telephone interview.

Many commentators here disagree.

Erdogan's "political career may not be over, but he will not become prime minister any time in the near future," said Rusen Cakir, a prominent author and commentator on Islamic politics.

For one thing, Turkey's ruling three-party coalition of conservatives, ultranationalists and leftists, which commands a majority in the parliament, is unlikely to change laws disqualifying Erdogan. Polls consistently show his bloc far ahead of each party that makes up the coalition, whose approval ratings have been battered by a yearlong recession.

Turkey's generals, who see themselves as custodians of the secular ideals advanced by the nation's founder, Kemal Ataturk, remain bitterly opposed to Erdogan. They maintain that Islamic radicalism is the gravest danger facing the nation.

The armed forces have seized power three times in the last four decades and played a key role in unseating Turkey's first Islamic-led government in 1997 on charges that it was seeking to introduce religious rule. Necmettin Erbakan, who led that government and is Erdogan's mentor, was barred from politics for five years, and his Welfare Party was outlawed by the Constitutional Court.

The Islamists regrouped under the Virtue Party, only to have it banned last year for anti-secular activities.

Erdogan formed his own party and has distanced himself from the radical rhetoric of his Islamist predecessors, saying he does not believe in mixing religion with politics. But his attacks on birth control and calls during recent rallies for a referendum on whether to ban alcohol have strengthened critics' claims that he has not changed his fundamentalist views.

Earlier this week, an investigation was launched over a 1992 speech Erdogan made criticizing the army.

4. - AFP - "US, Kurds in secret talks near Berlin to plan anti-Saddam strike":

DUBAI / April 21

US officials held a secret meeting near Berlin with the leaders of the main Kurdish factions controlling northern Iraq to plan a strike against President Saddam Hussein "by year's end," an Arab newspaper reported Sunday.

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, quoting an Iraqi Kurdish source, said the US side at the meeting included military officials and representatives of the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Massoud Barzani and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) chief Jalal Talabani, whose factions share control of a Western-protected Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, both attended the three-day meeting which ended on Friday, the paper said.

The US strike would be launched from northern Iraq, where "three airports have been upgraded" to serve as springboards for the attack, it said.

A planned meeting of US officials with Barzani and Talabani in a mediation bid in Washington on Thursday was called off after the Berlin talks brought the rival leaders closer, according to Asharq Al-Awsat's source.

One of the topics discussed was the possibility of merging the KDP's and PUK's military resources into a single force in anticipation of the anti-Saddam strike, which would take place "by year's end."

The United States has threatened to launch a military offensive against Iraq and try to overthrow Saddam unless he allows UN arms inspectors back into the country to verify that Baghdad no longer has weapons of mass destruction.

5. - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - "Berlin Selling Turks Tank Motors":

BERLIN / 22 April / by Michael Inacker

Germany is to supply 170 tank engines via Israel to modernize the Turkish army's pool of U.S.-made M60 tanks, the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.

German officials involved with the transaction say the deal was approved by the German government, while industry sources have added that the Turkish-Israeli part of the deal was negotiated last year and concluded a few months ago.

An Israeli company was awarded a contract to modernize the M60s, which in many ways correspond to the German Leopard I and are a mainstay of both the Israeli and German armies.

Israel in turn issued contracts for the tank parts to the companies MTU (motors) and Renk (gearboxes), giving preference to German firms above a U.S. competitor.

Turkey sees the modernization as an alternative to buying new main battle tanks, an issue at the heart of tensions between Ankara and Berlin in recent years.

In 1999, the Turks indicated that they were interested in buying the German Leopard II main battle tank. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democratic Party was inclined to agree to the deal, but his party's junior coalition partner, Alliance 90/The Greens, which includes Foreign Minister Joseph (Joschka) Fischer, were opposed, citing Turkish human rights violations.

Two weeks ago, the German government let it leak that, in reaction to recent Israeli military action in Palestinian territories, Berlin had suspended shipments of parts for the Israeli Merkava IV main battle tank.

But it may not be so simple. The business dealings surrounding Turkey's M60s suggest that, despite its disapproval of recent Israeli actions, Berlin was not going to let Israeli incursions stand in the way of arms deals.

And this is something unlikely to go unnoticed in Ankara.

The evolution of the coalition's arms export policy has led to contradictions, some observers point out.

First, Germany is still willing to conduct arms deals with a country on which Berlin has, more or less, imposed a temporary embargo for certain ground-based weapons systems.

Second, given Ankara's sensitivity to criticism regarding its human rights record, Berlin's conducting one policy regarding arms and Israel and another for arms and Turkey could complicate Germany's efforts to have Turkey assume the lead-nation role in the international security force in Afghanistan when the British relinquish command in later this spring.

Still, Berlin is hoping to win support for this idea from a Turkish army to which it has refused to provide certain types of armaments in recent years.

Military cooperation between the German Bundeswehr and the Israeli Defense Forces is more profound than would appear at first sight from their tacit alliance.

Regular meetings take place between the general staffs of both sides and an exchange program between officer cadets. In return, the Israelis, with their experience in fighting terrorism, helped in setting up the German military's KSK special forces.

6. - Anadolu Agency - "E.U. Reviews List Of Terrorist Organizations":

BRUSSELS / 20 April

Permanent representatives of the European Union (EU) member countries in Brussels started to review the list of terrorist organizations. The EU had determined the first list of terrorist organizations and the terrorists in the wake of September 11 terrorist attacks, and decided to review this list once in six month.

The first list in question did not include terrorist organizations like PKK and DHKP-C, whose activities are known in Turkey and Western Europe, despite insistent demands of Ankara.

EU Permanent Representatives Council (COREPER) initiated a process to examine the names which were proposed by member or candidate countries to be included in the list. COREPER will determine them at the beginning of May, and is expected to present the list to the approval of General Affairs Council in foreign ministers level on May 13.

It is seen as a great possibility that PKK and ERNK, shown as the political flank of this organization, and DHKP-C will be included in the list of terrorist organizations.

Diplomatic sources of Belgium, which exhibited the most negative attitude in this respect, pointed out that the issue was discussed in governmental level, and that green light would be shed to the inclusion of the names of those two terrorist organizations in question within the framework of some specific conditions.

Turkey's Permanent Representation to the EU said developments regarding the issue was covered, yet noted that a decision was not expected to be issued today.