13 February 2002

1. "Turkish court acquits publisher of book by US radical Chomsky", the Turkish publisher of the left-wing US linguist Noam Chomsky was acquitted by a state security court on Wednesday on charges of separatist propaganda for publishing a collection of Chomsky's essays.

2. "Turkey gives green light for Amnesty to reopen office", Turkey said on Tuesday it will allow leading human rights group Amnesty International to reopen an office in Turkey after 22 years.

3. "Turkey arrests 59 Kurdish party members over education campaign", Turkey has arrested 59 members of the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (HADEP) in the past month for backing a campaign to introduce Kurdish-language courses in universities and schools, the party said on Monday.

4. "CIA statement on terrorists disappoints Ankara", Ankara is reportedly dissatisfied with Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet's recent statement to the US Congress listing a number of terrorist organizations which the US might target, since he failed to mention the PKK.

5. "Greeks and Turks need to bury the hatchet", nearly 200 years of antagonism between Greece and Turkey have reached a crucial point, and the future of EU integration is at stake, writes Helena Smith.

6. "Turk PM Says Iraq May Be Ready to Compromise", Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Tuesday Iraq's foreign minister had signaled Baghdad may be ready to seek a compromise to avert possible U.S. military strikes for Iraq's refusal to accept arms inspectors.

7. "Belgian senator: PKK has asked for a federal state", a new dimension in the so-called new strategy of terrorist organization Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has emerged with the visit of a group of Belgian senators to the brother of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of PKK, Osman Ocalan, in northern Iraq last month.

8. "Will the Turkish Army follow the 'Bush Doctrine' into Baghdad?", with his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush turned the page on the Afghan phase of Washington's "war on terror."

1. - AFP - "Turkish court acquits publisher of book by US radical Chomsky":

ISTANBUL

The Turkish publisher of the left-wing US linguist Noam Chomsky was acquitted by a state security court on Wednesday on charges of separatist propaganda for publishing a collection of Chomsky's essays.

Chomsky, who travelled to Turkey to attend the trial, expressed hope as he left the court that the verdict would constitute a step towards establishing freedom of expression in Turkey.

Although he personally faced no charges, Chomsky arrived in the country on Tuesday to attend the trial of his publisher, Fatih Tas, owner of the publishing house Aram.

The case was brought over Chomsky's essays "American Interventionism", which Aram published in Turkish last year. In the book, the vocal critic of US policy accused the United States of supporting human rights abuses by the Turkish government against the country's Kurdish minority.

Later Wednesday Chomsky was to travel to Diyarbakir, the main town in Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey, to give a conference on the situation in the Middle East in the wake of the events of September 11.

He is also due to meet representatives of local non-governmental organisations and representatives of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HADEP), which risks being banned by Ankara for its links with the separatist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). The outlawed PKK ended its 15-year armed struggle for self-rule in the southeast in 1999 but vowed to continue its campaign for increased Kurdish rights.

Accusations of human rights abuses have hampered Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

2. - AFP - "Turkey gives green light for Amnesty to reopen office":

ANKARA

Turkey said on Tuesday it will allow leading human rights group Amnesty International to reopen an office in Turkey after 22 years.

Amnesty International has been seeking permission for local representation since last May. The group, which was forced to close its office after a military coup in 1980, frequently accuses Turkey of violating human rights. Announcing Ankara's decision, State Minister Nejat Arseven who holds the human rights portfolio, described Amnesty's work as "very valuable," Anatolia news agency reported.

"Its absence until now was a great deficiency. The presence of Amnesty International in Turkey will definitely contribute to improving human rights and raising the awareness of the people," he said.

Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, is under pressure to improve its human rights record. Amnesty has accused Turkish authorities of systematically abusing and torturing people in detention and criticised them over the treatment of the country's Kurdish population.

3. - AFP - "Turkey arrests 59 Kurdish party members over education campaign":

ANKARA

Turkey has arrested 59 members of the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (HADEP) in the past month for backing a campaign to introduce Kurdish-language courses in universities and schools, the party said on Monday.

Security forces initially rounded up more than 200 members of HADEP's youth branches in several cities and later formally arrested 59 of them, a party statement said.

The detainees faced charges of promoting the education campaign under orders from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 15-year war for self-rule in southeast Turkey, a HADEP official told AFP.

The campaign started last November in Istanbul, where university students submitted petitions asking for courses in Kurdish, and quickly spread to universities and schools across the country. Authorities arrested several hundred signatories to the petitions and categorically ruled out providing education in the Kurdish language, which is banned under the Turkish constitution.

Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, is under pressure to grant its Kurds cultural freedoms in line with prevailing EU standards. In October, Turkey passed a set of constitutional reforms that paved the way for the Kurds to broadcast and publish material in their mother tongue. But Kurdish-language education was left outside the scope of the reforms due to fears it could fan nationalist sentiment among the Kurdis minority and rekindle separatist violence in the mainly-Kurdish southeast.

Officials say the campaign is masterminded and directed by the PKK as part of a "civil disobedience" strategy developed after September 1999, when the PKK said it was laying down its arms to seek a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed some 36,600 lives since 1984.

4. - Cumhuriyet - "CIA statement on terrorists disappoints Ankara":

Ankara is reportedly dissatisfied with Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet's recent statement to the US Congress listing a number of terrorist organizations which the US might target, since he failed to mention the PKK.

But US diplomatic sources responded that Tenet's listing of groups was not intended to be comprehensive. "Tenet indicated that there were many terrorist organizations besides Al Qaeda which the US must target since they plan to attack US military installations," said one US diplomat.

He mentioned the DHKP-C since we know that it has plans to attack the US and its interests abroad. However, the PKK has never declared any intention to attack our interests. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that we don't consider it a terrorist organization."

5. - The Guardian - "Greeks and Turks need to bury the hatchet":

Nearly 200 years of antagonism between Greece and Turkey have reached a crucial point, and the future of EU integration is at stake, writes Helena Smith

Ever since Greece emerged out of the ashes of the Ottoman empire, proclaiming independence 172 years ago, relations with its former overlord - bar a sunny period in the 1930s - have verged from angry to openly antagonistic.

In 1974, ties between the two Nato rivals fell apart completely when they fought bloodily and brutally over Cyprus, in the wake of a rightwing coup to unite the island with Greece.

Since then, the neighbours have come close to war three times; most recently in 1996 over a disputed isle in the Aegean sea that until then had been of interest only to grazing goats.

Although a period of détente followed the outpouring of mutual sympathy over the two countries' devastating earthquakes in 1999, rapprochement has been a fragile business.

Over two years of dogged reconciliation efforts - otherwise known as "earthquake diplomacy" - have produced 10 low-level agreements on soft issues, such as tourism, trade, ecological cooperation and culture, but little more.

Tourists may now enjoy the possibility of fishermen ferrying them from Greek islands to the Anatolian coast, but in the face of hostility Greek Cypriots still find it almost impossible to visit Turkey, and on both sides of the Aegean it is skeptics who reign supreme.

Indeed, Graeco-Turkish tensions ensure that Nato's southeastern front remains the edgiest in the Alliance.

It is with great relief, then, that the 19-member body has greeted the neighbours' sudden decision to hold talks on resolving some of thorniest issues that divide them.

The Greek foreign minister, George Papandreou, flew to Istanbul today to meet his Turkish counterpart, Ismail Cem, in what many have described as the most significant push yet to reconcile the two countries' differences.

The meeting, which takes place on the sidelines of a gathering of EU foreign ministers with leaders from the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), coincides with critical, UN-brokered talks to reunify Cyprus.

Mr Papandreou says the settlement of key territorial disputes, not least the delimitation of the continental shelf in the Aegean, will be on the agenda. Other issues will almost certainly include the neighbours' stark differences over airspace control - often blamed for fighter jet pilots engaging in dangerous dogfights in the Aegean skies - and territorial waters.

"Our national interest today dictates that we go ahead with this process," said Mr Papandreou, a moderate who, alongside Mr Cem, has been credited as the driving force behind rapprochement.

"Fear is bad council," added Mr Papandreou, who agreed to the talks after Turkey said it was willing to discuss the disputes. "We must face the course of Greek-Turkish relations with confidence."

This is the first time in 25 years that the two have agreed to discuss where their continental shelf ends in the Aegean. In 1987 the neighbours nearly fought a war over the issue.

The rivals are at odds over definition: while Athens argues that each island has its own continental shelf which can be explored for minerals and oil, Ankara claims that, under international law, the continental shelf is defined as the extension of a nation's land mass.

Turkey says if the Greeks had it their way the entire Aegean would effectively be theirs because of the thousands of islands that fall under their jurisdiction.

Until now, Athens had flatly refused to discuss this particular dispute, saying it could only be settled before the international court of justice at the Hague.

But, as in Cyprus, where the island's imminent EU accession has injected a hitherto unprecedented urgency into reunification talks, Athens and Ankara also face a new deadline to settle their differences in the Aegean: the EU has decreed that it wants member Greece and candidate Turkey to resolve the disputes by 2004. If they are not, they will have to be settled by the international court.

Even more significantly, Brussels has made Turkey's own EU candidacy conditional on the headway it makes improving human rights and relations with Greece, not least in the Aegean.

Failure to resolve the disputes could, therefore, not only be disastrous for Greek-Turkish relations, but relations between the EU and Turkey as well.

Ominously, Ankara has threatened to annex northern Cyprus, which it invaded and seized in 1974, if the island enters the EU without a negotiated political settlement in 2004. Athens has vowed to veto the accession of nine Baltic and eastern European states if Cyprus' candidacy is rejected in any way.

"The success of the Cyprus and Aegean talks is not only vital to building peace and security in the eastern Mediterranean but to ensuring a smooth EU enlargement process," says Dr James Ker-Lindsay at the Nicosia-based risk consultancy Civilitas Research.

"If the talks on Cyprus fail it could well end any EU accession hopes Turkey has for the foreseeable future. That could lead to all sorts of internal destabilisation and would remove the main incentive Ankara has for changing many of its worse practices around human rights."

6. - Reuters - "Turk PM Says Iraq May Be Ready to Compromise":

ISTANBUL

Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Tuesday Iraq's foreign minister had signaled Baghdad may be ready to seek a compromise to avert possible U.S. military strikes for Iraq's refusal to accept arms inspectors.

"Words that could be understood as meaning Iraq is ready to find a compromise were said," he told the state-run Anatolian news agency.

"The Arab League's general secretary confirmed these.

"I had the impression of movement but what kind of result this will give and what can be given in return, these are not yet clear," he said.

Ecevit met Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri on the sidelines of an international conference in Istanbul.

U.S. President George Bush said this month Iraq helped make up an "axis of evil" with Iran and North Korea (news - web sites) that threatens U.S. interests.

Monday Bush said the United States would stop nations that were developing weapons of mass destruction from teaming up with terrorists.

Ecevit exchanged letters last week with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), urging him to allow U.N. inspectors to return to the country or face "serious consequences," but said last week that the reply he got showed no signs of compromise.

"We want a military operation against Iraq to be out of the question," Ecevit said Monday. "We are doing our best to solve our region's problems without war."

NATO (news - web sites) ally Turkey has said it opposes the United States expanding its "war on terrorism" to Iraq for Saddam's refusal to allow visits by U.N. weapons inspectors.

Ankara fears a military reprisal against its neighbor Iraq would batter its already ailing economy and spur its restive Kurdish minority to relaunch a campaign for self-rule.

Sabri said before his meeting with Ecevit that Baghdad expected Turkey would work to prevent any U.S. strikes on Iraq.

"An attack on Iraq would not be to Turkey's or any country's advantage," Sabri said ahead of the summit of European Union (news - web sites) and Organization of the Islamic Conference foreign ministers.

Baghdad has criticized Ankara for allowing U.S. and British warplanes to patrol a no-fly zone over northern Iraq from an airbase in southern Turkey. Turkish military support would probably play a role in any strike on Iraq, Ecevit said.

"It is very difficult to stage an operation without Turkey," he said Monday.

7. - Turkish Daily News - "Belgian senator: PKK has asked for a federal state":

BRUSSELS / Selcuk Gultasli

A new dimension in the so-called new strategy of terrorist organization Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has emerged with the visit of a group of Belgian senators to the brother of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of PKK, Osman Ocalan, in northern Iraq last month.

Belgian Senator Vincent Van Quickenborne told the Turkish Daily News that Osman Ocalan had indicated that they had changed their strategy and were now seeking a federal state for Turkey, but not a confederal one. This new dimension goes beyond the current demands of the PKK as the new ones asked for more than mere cultural rights. The claim for a federal structure to a Turkish state comes at a time when the PKK is reportedly on the eve of a new campaign to register the word "kurd" on identity cards.

Van Quickenborne, who is from the Spirit Party, which is a democratic progressive party, came under fire from Turkey for visiting one of the public enemies of the Turkish people. Despite the reaction, Van Quickenborne declined to characterize the PKK as a terrorist organization.

A group of Belgians, one Federal Senator (Van Quickenborne), one Chamber member (Ferdy Willems) and another senator from a state level parliament (whose name was not disclosed), a researcher and a photographer met with PKK representatives on Jan. 11 in northern Iraq, at a mountainous location described as a spot between the Iraqi and Iranian borders. The group and Ocalan had talks for one-and-a-half hours. The groups spent five days in the region.

Van Quickenborne said that they had the impression that the PKK had changed its strategy on several important issues, such as the PKK giving up the armed struggle for independence. It now asks for a change in the structure of the Turkish state, to make it a federal state but not a confederal one. The PKK has abandoned its marxist ideology and now dub themselves as social democrats. The PKK supports Turkey's bid for European Union membership. It argues that Turkey should be admitted as a member even before it fulfills the Copenhagen criteria, so that PKK and EU can exert more influence on Turkey. The PKK will resume the armed struggle again if Turkey executes Abdullah Ocalan. It will again resume the struggle if Ocalan is not properly treated. The PKK will not be against a U.S. bombing campaign against Iraq, but will not actively support it. The PKK accepts that it was a mistake to kill civilians and will refrain from any further civilian killings if the armed struggle starts again, and will focus only on military targets this time.

Van Quickenborne said that Ocalan claimed to have 7,000 "armed guerillas," and argued that they could increase that number in case of a renewal of the armed struggle. He reportedly gave no details of the whereabouts of the "guerillas."

'I would meet Osama bin Laden'

Asked why he did not care for the sensitivities of Turkish people who had suffered because of PKK terrorism and went to visit Ocalan, a defiant Van Quickenborne said he would meet Osama bin Laden if it was possible. Stressing that he does not sympathize with the cause of Ocalan and condemning the killing of innocent people by the PKK, Van Quickenborne nevertheless declined to dub it as a terrorist organization. Asked why he refrained from characterizing the PKK as a terrorist organization, Van Quickenborne claimed, "Terrorism has no meaning and is a political word. You can apply it to many situations. I condemn the PKK killings, but I also criticize the Turkish government on the disappearances of two HADEP representatives."

Stressing that they had several times told Ocalan that it was a grave mistake to kill so many innocent people, Van Quickenborne said that meeting Ocalan did not mean that he agreed with his cause or strategy.

He underlined that their visit had not been a show of solidarity with the PKK, and argued that they did not know they would end up meeting Osman Ocalan when they set out for northern Iraq. Nevertheless, he added that they intended to meet PKK representatives. He also indicated that the purpose of the visit was to understand what was going on in northern Iraq on the ground." The main purpose was to look at the building of autonomy, democracy, schooling etc. We met with Talibani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) but could not meet with Barzani. Instead, he met several high-ranking representatives from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). "We also had contact with Turkoman representatives," said Quickenborne, adding that he had respect for Ataturk, the founder of the Republic, as he had created a secular state.

Asked about a possible independence of the region, Talibani reportedly responded that it was a farfetched idea.

8. - The Daily Star (Lebanon) - "Will the Turkish Army follow the 'Bush Doctrine' into Baghdad?":

By Mohammed Noureddine

With his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush turned the page on the Afghan phase of Washington's "war on terror."

The fact that Bush didn't even mention the two biggest targets of the Afghan campaign Mullah Mohammad Omar and Osama bin Laden made that very clear.

It was as if the Afghan war were already over. It was also as if that war were merely a dry run or a pretext for moving on to the next, major phase of "Bush's wars," a series of conflicts that he declared would be long and intricate.

Bush's declaration that Iran, Iraq and North Korea form an "axis of evil" which must be confronted using all available means was not only seen as a widening of the objectives declared in the first phase of the "war on terror," but also as a complete abandonment of those objectives.

It seems that the Bush administration's foreign policy is being made at the Pentagon, which is trying to exploit the circumstances created by the Sept. 11 attacks in order to settle scores with all of America's opponents which means more wars and more bloodshed.

This was made clear by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's criticism of the president for describing Iraq, Iran and North Korea as constituting an "axis of evil," and Secretary of State Colin Powell attempts to tone down Bush's harsh language. It seems that the hawks are ruling the roost in Washington right now. This was underlined by the 12 percent increase in defence spending (a $48 billion hike) the biggest increase since the early 1980s.

The Bush administration has thus embarked on a new arms race. A rise in American defence expenditure will trigger similar increases by other major powers.

Bush's description of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an "axis of evil" had nothing to do with terrorism or the events of Sept. 11. There is no proof linking any of the three countries with the attacks on New York and Washington. The stated reason they were chosen as targets is that they possess or are in the process of acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

This definition of the dangers posed by the "axis of evil" falls foul of UN Security Council Resolution 1373 as far as fighting terrorism is concerned.

In other words, waging war against any of the three countries will violate international legitimacy on the one hand, and will broaden the concept of terrorism on the other. This will cause more flexible definitions of terrorism to be adopted, and will enable the US, the world's only superpower, to become even more tyrannical.

On the other hand, American hegemony and tyranny will cause other countries even some of those currently counted among Washington's allies to create bloc of resistance to America's policies.

Bush went far beyond what his predecessor ever said about the three countries. While Bill Clinton only described them as "rogue states," Bush said they were "evil." Not only that, but they also form an "axis," reminding his listeners of the German-Italian-Japanese axis in World War II.

As if that were not enough, the president also called for using all available means to eliminate the threat posed by this new "axis."

If any country was directly involved and concerned by what Bush said in his latest speech, then Turkey was that country. After all, two of the three members of Bush's "axis of evil" are Turkey's neighbours.

Despite the fact that many observers believe Bush only mentioned North Korea as a ploy to camouflage his true objectives (Iran and Iraq), others suggest that it was only Iraq he meant.

Attacking Iran a strong, cohesive country with many friends is no simple matter. Unlike the Taleban, Iran demonstrated a level of cooperation with the US at the beginning of the war on terror that was noticed by all, and even led some Turkish commentators to say that rapprochement between Washington and Tehran would come at Ankara's expense.

That is why all eyes are now on Iraq and, of course, Turkey.

Bush, the "American cowboy," didn't say that he was about to attack the "axis of evil" straight away. Yet indications show that the Americans are soliciting the support of countries directly concerned with both Iran and Iraq, at the forefront of which is Turkey.

First, an article that hawkish commentator William Safire penned for The New York Times recently was remarkable for mentioning the "Iraqi bait" with which Washington is enticing Ankara.

After stating that Washington might only go after Pyongyang's nuclear facilities and encourage domestic opposition to the Tehran government, Safire went into a descriptive of the planned blitz on Iraq. The scenario he envisaged includes sustained air strikes, a Kurdish uprising in the north, and Turkish tanks racing toward Baghdad.

Safire even went so far as to say that Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit had agreed to the scenario when Ecevit was in Washington last month.

Ecevit didn't wait long. The very next day, he responded (through Milliyet columnist Fikret Bila) by saying that what Safire wrote was completely false. Ecevit expressed amazement at how a respected newspaper like The New York Times could print such "fantasies."

Yet Ecevit's rebuttal failed to dissipate the strong impression prevailing in Ankara that Washington has already begun its preparations for a blitz on Iraq. In the absence of Arab support for such an attack, Turkey will play a major role in the coming conflict.

Turkey is preparing itself for any eventuality: Ecevit sent a letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warning him of the seriousness of the situation. He called on the Iraqi leader to remove all obstacles blocking the return of UN arms inspectors to Iraq. Ecevit's letter was seen as an attempt by Turkey to absolve itself of any responsibility beforehand, as well as being a pretext for participating in the American attack.

Ecevit's letter was described as a "final warning" to Iraq. Some Turkish commentators have already begun to trumpet Ankara's major role in any military operation against its southern neighbour. Guneri Civaoglu, for example, wrote in Milliyet that relying on the Iraqi Kurds or waiting for a coup in Baghdad were both out of the question. The only available option, according to Civaoglu, is for the Turkish Army to march on Baghdad. Exactly what Safire envisaged in The New York Times.

There is no denying Turkey's importance for US strategy after Sept. 11. At the just-concluded World Economic Forum annual meeting held in New York, Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem was feted by the high and mighty. Earlier this month, the IMF agreed to grant Turkey an aid package worth $16 billion over the next three years including a tranche of $9 billion disbursed forthwith. Turkey thus becomes the biggest recipient of IMF aid in the world.

Turkey's stature on the world stage will be enhanced still further when it assumes command of the international force in Afghanistan next April. The US certainly expects to find Turkey on its side when it decides to move against Iraq and eventually become the bulwark of the "Bush Doctrine." If past experience is anything to go by, Turkey will neither disappoint the Americans nor turn down any of their requests.