5 December 2002

1. "US moves to close loophole in terrorism designation for Kurdish group", the United States moved Wednesday to close a loophole in its designation of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as a "terrorist organization" by amending its records to add the group's new name.

2. "Turkey: Ankara Agrees Conditionally To Join U.S. 'War Coalition' As EU, Cyprus Issues Loom", a key piece of Washington's "war coalition" appeared to fall into place yesterday with Turkey's announcement that it would allow Western war planes to use its air bases for any military campaign against Iraq that is approved by the UN Security Council. But U.S. officials are still said to worry that an anti-Western backlash could erupt in Turkey and weaken its support on Iraq if the European Union fails to embrace Ankara's hopes of joining the union.

3. "Europe must not turn its back on Turkey at such a pivotal moment", nothing would provide a greater incentive to speed up human rights reform than a date for starting EU negotiations.

4. "New Turkish leader plays up secular credentials", although she does not cover her hair, Rabiya Ozbay, a 41-year-old shopkeeper in the southern Turkish city of Adana, rigidly observes Ramadan, the Muslim month of dawn-to-dusk fasting that ended yesterday. Nor does she go to the mosque, even though her concrete-paved grocery store is opposite the biggest mosque in town.

5. "Wolfowitz Tells Turks Not to Act Alone in N Iraq", the United States is pressing Turkey not to act on its own in northern Iraq during any U.S.-led strike on Iraq, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying Thursday.

6. "Former DEP deputies appeal to EC", following exclusion of an article dealing with the right to re-prosecution from the package of adjustment laws, Yusuf Alatas, lawyer of former DEP deputies, stated that they would appeal to the European Council's Council of Ministers a second time.

1. - AFP - "US moves to close loophole in terrorism designation for Kurdish group":

WASHINGTON / 4 December 2002

The United States moved Wednesday to close a loophole in its designation of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as a "terrorist organization" by amending its records to add the group's new name.

The State Department added the PKK's new name, the Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK), to the designation which imposes financial sanctions on the group in a notice published in the Federal Register, a government gazette.

The notice was to have been published on Tuesday -- the same day a pair of senior US envoys were visiting Ankara to court Turkey's support in the event of possible military action against Iraq -- but was inadvertantly omitted from that edition, the department said. The PKK, which has waged a 15-year guerilla struggle for self-rule in southeast Turkey resulting in the deaths of more than 36,000 people, has long been designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by Washington and subject to financial and travel restrictions.

Broader sanctions were then imposed under new US anti-terror regulations adopted after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The PKK is also outlawed in Britain, France, Germany and Turkey. However in April, the PKK announced it had disbanded and reformed as KADEK, a named not previously included in US or other sanctions. Many observers saw the change as a move by the PKK to skirt the ban on its activities in Europe and elsewhere.

2. - Radio Free Europe - "Turkey: Ankara Agrees Conditionally To Join U.S. 'War Coalition' As EU, Cyprus Issues Loom":

A key piece of Washington's "war coalition" appeared to fall into place yesterday with Turkey's announcement that it would allow Western war planes to use its air bases for any military campaign against Iraq that is approved by the UN Security Council. But U.S. officials are still said to worry that an anti-Western backlash could erupt in Turkey and weaken its support on Iraq if the European Union fails to embrace Ankara's hopes of joining the union.

WASHINGTON / 4 December 2002 / by Jeffrey Donovan

With Turkey signing on yesterday, at least conditionally, the United States appears to have sewn up a network of military support from countries around Iraq to back a possible U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein.

Over the past few months, the United States has been building up its military presence in the Persian Gulf region and securing agreements with countries to support U.S. equipment and personnel for any campaign against Iraq.

Turkey announced yesterday that U.S. planes could use its air bases in any war against Iraq that was first approved by a UN resolution authorizing the use of force. Turkey is a key link in a chain of countries that have pledged cooperation with the United States, including Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and possibly Saudi Arabia.

Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis made the announcement in Ankara yesterday after talks with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. "If it comes to [war], then, of course, we will cooperate with the United States, because it's a big ally," Yakis said.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry later clarified Yakis's comments, saying he was speaking of "possibilities," not firm commitments. Yakis also said it is difficult to foresee allowing the United States to launch a large-scale ground attack against Iraq from Turkish soil.

Turkish media outlets report the hesitation expressed by Ankara is most likely for domestic political consumption. The left-liberal Turkish newspaper "Cumhuriyet" reports that the United States and Turkey have achieved a "broad-based agreement" on a plan for a possible war against Iraq in which Turkey would play a major role, while Turkish NTV television says Ankara will cooperate with Washington provided the United States satisfies Ankara's "main demands," such as prevention of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq and compensation for economic losses in the event of war.

Yakis said Turkey hopes the standoff over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction will end peacefully. He was echoed by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who also met with Yakis yesterday in Ankara along with U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman.

Wolfowitz added that Hussein must radically change his behavior to avoid a military conflict. "Our focus with Iraq is to try to bring about a peaceful resolution of the problem that is posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and that requires persuading [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein that there has to be a fundamental change," Wolfowitz said.

Bulent Aliriza is the director of the Turkish program at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. Aliriza told RFE/RL that negotiations between Washington and Ankara over an Iraq war are complex, involving U.S. financial and military assistance to Turkey and a host of other matters.

Aliriza said it's possible that Turkey will provide a lot more to a U.S. military effort than what Yakis is indicating. "We're going to find out in the next few days exactly what the Turks have signed on to. And my guess is that they've signed on to a lot more than we know at this stage," Aliriza said.

It also remains unclear to what extent the other key regional player, Saudi Arabia, will cooperate with a U.S. war. The United States directed the 1991 Gulf War from bases in Saudi Arabia, but Riyadh has been reluctant to publicly pledge similar support this time.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has built a new command post in Qatar in the event of another Iraqi war.

Adel al-Jubeir, foreign-policy adviser to Saudi Arabia, summed up the Saudi position at a Washington news conference yesterday. "We have said that, as a member of the UN, we'll support whatever decisions the UN makes. How we translate that support is something that we will have to decide when the time comes and when we weigh all the options," al-Jubeir said.

Analysts say that even if Riyadh does not allow the United States to operate on its soil, the addition of Turkey to what the U.S. media are calling "the war coalition" gives Washington the key ability to strike Iraq from both the north and the south.

But Wolfowitz's visit to Ankara, his second this year, was not limited to lobbying for support on Iraq, at least not directly.

The Pentagon's No. 2 man arrived in Ankara after delivering a major speech in London on Monday in which he urged the European Union to open its doors to Turkey.

Washington has long argued that Europe should embrace democratic and secular Turkey as a model and bridge to the West for the Muslim world.

Wolfowitz, in his London speech, stepped up traditional U.S. support for Turkey's bid to join the EU, saying that while it is a European matter, it would be "unthinkable" for the EU to leave out Turkey.

The EU is due to announce a decision on whether to give Turkey a key date by which to begin negotiations on joining the union at a summit in Copenhagen on 12 December.

Aliriza said that beyond the long-term strategic interests that bind Washington to Ankara, the United States is concerned that its short-term Iraq plans could be hurt if the European Union fails to embrace Turkey and if a United Nations-brokered deal on reuniting divided Cyprus is not reached.

The Turkish-born analyst said that if the EU door is slammed on Ankara, an anti-West backlash could erupt in Turkey, whose new ruling party has Islamist roots. "The xenophobic reaction to Turkey might make the current government less responsive to U.S. needs. It won't say no, but it might be slightly less cooperative because the [Turkish] mood may be against the West in a xenophobic kind of way," Aliriza said.

At Copenhagen, the EU is expected to invite the Greek side of Cyprus -- divided since 1974 -- to join in 2004. The EU wants the whole island to join together under a UN reunification plan, but Turkish Cypriot leaders are stalling.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, has said the EU won't give Turkey its prized date unless there is a deal on Cyprus.

Aliriza said U.S. officials will be lobbying hard in the next few days on the EU question and on Cyprus. "At the operational level, you don't want an unhappy Turkey reviewing its links with the West because of what the Europeans have done. You want a Turkey looking forward to enhanced cooperation with the Western alliance -- that's the importance of Copenhagen," Aliriza said.

Both Moeller and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday that they still believe a Cyprus deal can be reached in time for the summit.

3. - The Independent - "Europe must not turn its back on Turkey at such a pivotal moment":

Nothing would provide a greater incentive to speed up human rights reform than a date for starting EU negotiations

5 December 2002 / by Donald Macintyre

A vivid painting in the British Ambassador's house in Ankara depicts one of his early 18th century predececessors, Charles Wortley Montague, paying court to the Grand Vizier in Constantinople. The Briton is perched uncomfortably on a plain, hard-backed chair, looking up respectfully at the Sultan's chief minister, who is relaxing cross legged on a luxuriant settee. There is not a shred of doubt who is the supplicant and who the man with the power.

Turkey no longer presides over a great empire. Yet it's hard not to see a parallel, however imperfect, in the stream of international visitors sitting at the feet of her new leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Suddenly everyone wants to know the man whose Islamist party won a landslide last month against a coalition fatally weakened by corruption and economic collapse.

Most prominent this week among the suitors, of course, has been the US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, here to plead for military co-operation in a possible war in Iraq about which Turkey remains distinctly nervous. Turkey, in turn, is already driving a hard bargain, well on the way to securing guarantees of hundreds of millions of US dollars and against a new Kurdish state emerging in Northern Iraq if Saddam Hussein is toppled.

Nor is that all. For the hawkish Mr Wolfowitz has been at his most vocal in supporting Turkey's most cherished foreign policy goal – membership of the EU. It's tempting for some in Europe to think that because Mr Wolfowitz is pushing this so hard and because the British Government, the US's principal ally on Iraq, are the leading EU champions of Turkish entry, that there must be something wrong with the idea or that it is merely a short term ramp to get round a difficult military corner. Tempting and utterly wrong. The stakes are much higher than that.

While it may be hard to admit, Mr Wolfowitz happens to be right on this. The decisions the Copenhagen EU summit will take at the end of next week on Turkey may prove pivotal to relations between what we call the West and the Muslim world. This is a historic moment and not just for the EU.

First, a little detail. Thanks to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, not to mention Lord Hannay, the Government's special envoy on Cyprus, there has never been a better opportunity since the mid-Seventies – and may never be again – to settle the too long neglected conflict between the two peoples of that bitterly divided island. The UN-brokered deal, which offers Greek and Turkish Cypriots two autonomous sectors within a lightly federal structure, has much to offer both groups. The hope, by no means certain of fulfilment, is that with the support of Greece and Turkey the two local communities can be persuaded next week to sign up to its principles.

As it happens both Turkey and Greece, as the government of each well realises, have an incentive to persuade, respectively, the stubborn Rauf Denktash and his Greek Cypriot counterpart George Clerides to sign the crucial pre-amble to the agreement next week. For Turkey, an end to the long running problem would remove one more excuse for the EU to block its application for membership. And a progressive Greek government which actually wants good political and economic relations with the big Eastern neighbour with which it has quarrelled for so long, will support Turkey's EU application provided Cyprus can be settled.

But Cyprus has now become inextricably linked with a much bigger picture. It's a near-certainty that the issue of Cyprus and that of a Turkish EU application date will go to the wire in the familiar nothing-is-agreed-until-everything-is-agreed mode of EU summits. For Turkey has some leverage here, not least because the EU would dearly like her to allow the use of NATO command and control assets for its own defence initiatives. Which it won't do until Cyprus is settled. And so on.

Confused? If only, in reality, it were that simple. For the enthusiasm for Turkish EU entry is, to put it politely, mixed. French opposition to the idea was perhaps best summed up by the sub-text of Valery Giscard D'Estaing's blast against it, namely that Turkey was neither Christian nor European. The Germans deeply dislike the idea of a country larger than itself dominating the EU. And the Dutch, their politics now contaminated by the issue of race, are scarcely less opposed.

What's more they have a ready made excuse to hand. The human rights record of Turkey for a century or more has been abysmal. Routine torture in its prisons, massacres of Turkish Kurds, the "disappearances" of intellectuals, journalists and dissident politicians, are only part of it. OK, Mr Erdogan has started to clean up Turkey's act, pushing through an impressive raft of measures – including abolition of the death penalty – designed to meet the EU's membership criteria. But can it yet be really time to begin negotiations on joining the modern liberal democracies of Europe?

Yes, it can. It's true that Mr Erdogan has a good deal more to do. Measures, for example, to retry, in accordance with the European court of Human Rights judgements, five Kurdish politicians wrongly gaoled and expelled from the parliament have been deferred. Politically sensitive about upsetting secularists, he has yet to readmit students banned for agitating for the use of the Kurdish language because that will unleash similar agitation by those wanting to wear traditional headscarves. Immunity from corruption prosecutions for public servants has yet to be ended. And so on.

But here's the point. It is just an excuse. Nothing, but nothing, would provide a greater incentive for the Turkish regime to speed up its human right reforms than the a clear date for starting EU negotiations. It's easily forgotten that that's how Spain and Portugal's newly democratic regimes abolished the judicial institions which had survived from their fascist predecessors. Or how more recently – say – Slovakia, now an uncontested EU candidate ended most of its human rights abuses. Maybe it will take a decade or more for Turkey to be admitted. But for the EU to turn its back on the new government now is the one way to slow its progress on human rights.

It would also mean broken promises by the EU which, as Jack Straw has repeatedly pointed out in Turkey this week, promised three years ago in Helsinki to treat Turkey as a candidate like any other. But above all it would be to reject co-existence with the Muslim world just when it is most desperately needed, to make a poisonous reality of Samuel Huntingdon's clash of civilisations. For every Giscard, luckily, there is a Michel Rocard. Last week the French socialist wrote in Le Monde that rejecting Turkey would be an "extremely grave blunder with regard to the 10 million Muslims who live in Europe and even more towards the Muslim community worldwide". As Rocard said, the key problem is whether one billion Muslims can accept secular institutions. Rejecting Turkey would be to reject a Muslim country that has done so for 50 years. Amen to that. It's make your mind up time for the EU next week. Can it meet the challenge of the timess?

4. - Financial Times - "New Turkish leader plays up secular credentials":

5 December 2002 / by Leyla Boulton

Although she does not cover her hair, Rabiya Ozbay, a 41-year-old shopkeeper in the southern Turkish city of Adana, rigidly observes Ramadan, the Muslim month of dawn-to-dusk fasting that ended yesterday. Nor does she go to the mosque, even though her concrete-paved grocery store is opposite the biggest mosque in town.

She is in many ways a typical Muslim in a unique hybrid such as Turkey, a Nato ally and secular applicant for membership of the European Union.

She is also typical of the new voters who enabled the Justice and Development party (AKP) to leap beyond the Islamist movement that spawned its charismatic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to claim a new centre-right mantle, analogous to Christian Democrats in western Europe.

Rabiya and her husband Malik previously voted for the Democratic Left Party of Bulent Ecevit, the 77-year-old former prime minister, whose three-party coalition was thrown out of office by anger at a devastating economic crisis.

Taking votes from most existing parties, and further benefiting from a 10 per cent threshold to enter parliament, the AKP won nearly two-thirds of the 550-seat parliament with just 35 per cent of the vote.

"We are leftists but we could no longer vote for Ecevit and we realised that the Republican People's party [the left-leaning opposition party with 20 per cent of the vote] could not win either, so we voted for the AKP," says Mrs Ozbay.

So did millions of other Turks, particularly poorer ones worst hit by the crisis, complementing religious conservatives and provincial businessmen resentful of the perceived corrupt ties between Ankara and Istanbul-based conglomerates.

Yet in spite of its clearly pro-EU stance, the party's Islamist roots have nonetheless inspired anxiety among some members of Turkey's arch-secularist establishment - as well as some EU states.

Ilnur Cevik, editor of the Turkish Daily News, and an AKP member, reckons that not more than a third of the 10m people who voted for the AKP are devout Muslims who have a religious reason to support the party.

And even they do not want strict Islamic shariah rule, but any number of smaller changes - ranging from a less pro-western stance in foreign policy to the lifting of a ban on the wearing of Islamic headscarves in official buildings, including universities.

Even still, Mr Erdogan and his close lieutenant, Abdullah Gul, the sophisticated prime minister, have moved decisively to keep such views off the new government's agenda. A case in point was a dispute that broke out last month when the wife of Bulent Arinc, the new speaker of parliament, showed up at the airport in a headscarf to see off Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the president, and his spouse.

With generals and the president making clear that the headscarf ban would stand even on airport tarmacs, Mr Erdogan announced that the issue was not even on the government's agenda.

Mr Gul meanwhile is reported to have asked Mr Arinc to desist from taking his headscarved wife on an official visit to India.

Such issues may seem trivial. But they are the sorts of symbolic red lines that the establishment is monitoring after the military forced the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of political Islam, in 1997 following a series of provocative Islamic gestures including high-profile trips to Iran and Libya. Any confrontation with the establishment would jeopardise the AKP's chance of long-term political survival and achieving its broader agenda of political and economic liberalisation.

"What we did before founding the party was to survey 40,000 people to ask them what kind of party they wanted," recalls Mevlut Cavusoglu, a 34-year-old AKP founder-member whose wife does not wear a headscarf.

"The headscarf issue was eighth or ninth on people's list of priorities, while the economy was right at the top, followed by membership of the EU."

5. - Reuters - "Wolfowitz Tells Turks Not to Act Alone in N Iraq":

ISTANBUL / 5 December 2002

The United States is pressing Turkey not to act on its own in northern Iraq during any U.S.-led strike on Iraq, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying Thursday.

Wolfowitz also told the Hurriyet newspaper that Washington was determined to ensure oil fields in northern Iraq remain in Iraqi hands.

Turkey has drawn up plans to set up refugee camps and bolster its military presence in neighboring northern Iraq to head off any refugee wave and prevent what it fears could be a bid for independence from the region's Kurdish groups.

Wolfowitz, who visited the Turkish capital earlier this week, told the newspaper he had pressed his NATO allies not to take action on their own but act in coordination with the broader alliance Washington is trying to build.

"What we have been saying to our Turkish counterparts is this: Maximum U.S. participation is a good thing for Turkey. I believe that rather than acting alone to protect its interests in northern Iraq, it would be much better for Turkey to act within a coalition," he told the newspaper.

Wolfowitz said after his visit to Turkey the United States would invest in upgrading Turkish military bases that might be used in a war on Iraq. He said he was confident of "a significant level of Turkish participation" in any strike.

Turkey has watched with growing unease as the U.S.-backed Kurdish groups that run northern Iraq prepare for possible turmoil in the country by drafting a constitution for autonomy and staking claims to the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.

Ankara fears that an independent Kurdish state in Iraq would fuel similar desires among its own Kurds and rekindle the armed separatist Kurdish violence it has fought since 1984.

Washington has struggled to bridge the suspicion that divides the Turks and Kurds and build a united approach for what could be the northern front of any war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government.

"So far there is no clarity on what kind of final result we want to see in northern Iraq, not just between the U.S. and Turkey but also among the sides in northern Iraq," Wolfowitz said in remarks translated into Turkish. "We want to see a situation in which neither Kurds nor Turks nor any other group is imposing unilateral views on northern Iraq."

He said the United States was also determined to ensure that Iraqi oil fields around Kirkuk and Mosul remain in the hands of a central Iraqi authority. While the Kurds say the cities are historically theirs, some Turks say their Ottoman legacy gives them rights over the area.

"Our aim is to preserve Iraq's integrity and not have its resources cut off and taken by us or Turkey or another outside force," Wolfowitz said.

6. - Kurdish Observer - "Former DEP deputies appeal to EC":

Following exclusion of an article dealing with the right to re-prosecution from the package of adjustment laws, Yusuf Alatas, lawyer of former DEP deputies, stated that they would appeal to the European Council's Council of Ministers a second time.

ANKARA / 4 December 2002

Laws included in "adjustment laws package" were passed in the parliament. Following exclusion of an article dealing with the right to re-prosecution from the package, closed-down DEP deputies' lawyer Yusuf Alatas said that they would appeal to European Council's (EC) Council of Ministers a second time. The Council has warned Turkey to comply with the rule of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the matter. Releasing a written statement, Alatas criticized the exclusion and emphasized that it would damage the trust on the state and its sincerity to comply with exercising ECHR rules. The lawyer said that because of violation of the European Accord of Human Rights they had a right to a new application, stressing that it was clear that the Turkish state did not go along to re-prosecute the DEP deputies. He furthermore stated that the state institutions themselves violated the principle of "just prosecution" amended to the Constitution in October 2001.

Drawing attention that to this day they had not appeal to the European Council a second time in order not to give damage to Turkey, Alatas said that they did not demanded any sanction on Turkey from Europe. "Those who do not fulfil the criteria will be responsible for our future applications and cases," said the lawyer.

Mazlum-Der: If they begin like this…

And Mustafa Ercan, Deputy Chairman of Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed Peoples (Mazlum-Der), said that the government did not have any right to make impositions on basic human rights. Ercan considered the exclusion of a law dealing with expelled students because of "turban" and Kurdish education "disgusting" and said the following: "Basic human rights have nothing to do with politics. Politicians can make adjustments for use of human rights. Governments do not have the right to utter pretensions, they do their duties. AKP came to power with the claim of securing order of law but if they begin like this, they cannot succeed."

Turkey was warned time and again

Hatip Dicle and Leyla Zana who were elected as SHP deputies in 1991 elections then resigned from it and became a member of People's Labor Party (HEP). Following their resign, 14 deputies more went to Democracy Party (DEP) that was founded after HEP was closed down. But DEP deputies Sedat Yurttas, Sirri Sakik, Ahmet Turk, Nizamettin Toguc, Naif Gunes, Mahmut Kilinc, Zubeyir Aydar, Ali Ligit and Remzi Kartal lost their right to immunity together with Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Dogan and were sentenced to 15 years in prison under the article 168 of the Turkish Penal Code on March 2, 1994.

Former DEP deputies appealed to ECHR in 1995 and the court ruled that they were not prosecuted justly and they should be re-prosecuted on July 17 of the last year.

Although Turkey was warned to comply with the decision time and again by ECHR, Turkey decided to consent to the decision for cases from 2003 on. If the article was not excluded from the package at the last minute, the DEP deputies would be re-prosecuted.