14 February 2002

1. "THIV: Pressures peaked in 2001", Turkey's prominent human rights association reveals its report on Turkey's human rights issues for 2001. The report reveals that expectations of improvements in human rights issues were not fulfilled.

2. "US radical sees rights victory as court acquits publisher", the left-wing US academic Noam Chomsky hailed a victory for freedom of speech on Wednesday as a Turkish state security court acquitted a local publisher who had been put on trial for publishing one of his books.

3. "Turkey will not "tolerate" unilateral US action against Iraq", Turkey warned its top ally the United States on Wednesday that it would not agree to any unilateral military action against neighboring Iraq, which Washington has described as part of an "axis of evil."

4. "Turkey bans Alawite cultural association", a Turkish court banned on Wednesday a cultural association of the country's Alawites, a moderate Muslim sect, on the grounds that it promoted religious separatism, Anatolia news agency reported.

5. "Iraqi Kurds want security, not fight with Saddam", Iraqi Kurds may fervently desire Saddam Hussein's downfall, but bitter past experience has made them wary of U.S. talk of overthrowing the Iraqi leader.

6. "PKK is preparing for a new era", excerpts from a comentary by MURAT CELIK.

1. - Turkish Daily News - "THIV: Pressures peaked in 2001":

Turkey's prominent human rights association reveals its report on Turkey's human rights issues for 2001. The report reveals that expectations of improvements in human rights issues were not fulfilled...

Esra Erduran

Pressures peaked in 2001 in Turkey, which witnessed a difficult period in 2001 due to the biggest economic crisis of its history, and travelled a rocky road in the democratization process, Turkish Human Rights Foundation (THIV) Chairman Yavuz Onen told the Turkish Daily News in an interview.

"Turkey has taken important steps in its democratization process, but on the other hand, pressures have reached a peak. Almost every professional association and labor union was investigated by the police or judiciary. Improvements in democracy and a pressure period; this is the summary of 2001 in Turkey," Onen said.

Onen said that constitutional reform packages were a positive move, but failed to fulfill the expectations of the Turkish and International community.

In a review of 2001, in terms of human rights issues, Onen said that the economy was a factor that effected basic rights and freedoms in people's lives.

"People were asked to foot the bill for the economic crisis, and this caused an outcry from the people. The economic crisis caused the middle class to take to the streets, and to cry out in anger and reaction. Farmers and tradesmen were hardest hit by the crisis, and clashed with police," Onen said.

According to Onen, another important topic in 2001 was privatization.

The State cut down on its expenses. Some State offices were included in the context of privitization, causing them to sack 1.5 million workers.

Onen also cited the media sector, seriously hit by the economic crisis, mentioning 4,000 jobless media workers.

"The economic crisis has had deep effects on social life," Onen said.

'National security' concept

Discussing 2001 in regard to human rights issues, Onen also underlined that it was very important that Turkey discuss the "national security" concept.

Onen stated that Turkey's relations with the European Union and the Accession Partnership Document within this framework, had caused Turkey to review its political, social and economic policies. Turkey tried to cure the economic crisis, as it also began to debate its political structure.

Within this framework, the national security concept has became a hot issue on the domestic scene.

"Junior coalition partner Motherland Party (ANAP) leader Mesut Yilmaz and the General Staff have been involved in a serious dispute on this issue. Yilmaz said that the "national security" taboo was blocking the democratization process, while the chief of General Staff was claiming the opposite," Onen said.

According to Onen, the national security concept was forming the root of many human rights violations in Turkey.

Onen, stating that in 2001 there had been no changes in the fight against terrorism or the national security concept in Turkey, he also said that the state had identified three main threats: "Separatist terrorism, Islamist terrorism and leftists terrorism... Due to conflicts in these three spheres, human rights violations have taken place in Turkey."

According to Onen, some of the main human rights violations in Turkey included: murders whose murderers remained unknown; missing people; widespread torture that some times ended up with the death of the victim; compelled immigration; and restriction against those who want to return to their villages.

Onen also mentioned that the state viewed those with sympathies towards the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) or other terrorist organizations as members of these groups, and treated them as terrorists. In this light, some who freely expressed their thoughts were punished, and some local radio and televisions stations that broadcast songs in Kurdish were banned.

Pledges for 2002

Onen stated that there was no difference in Turkey's approach to human rights issues and that it had maintained the status quo, hinting that there would be no improvement in 2002 regarding human rights issues.

"There is a need for changing the philosophy. The existing intention is to create a society without differences. The system requires one religion, one language, and one national identity. It cannot tolerate cultural variety. People from different ethnicities should be able live in a more democratic environment," Onen said.

Onen noted that Turkey should stop living in fear. "Turkey should make peace with its neighbors. If not, constant fear may cause an increase in military spending. What we need in Turkey is to create a civil life and thought style," Onen pointed out.

Moreover, Turkey should take steps towards solving the Kurdish question. "Lifting emergency rule and the village guard system is essential in order to eliminate unemployment and poverty in the region. Political and economic programs should be planned and implemented."

As Turkey's prominent human rights advocate, Onen added that Turkey had become a member candidate to the EU according to its own wishes, and if it wants to become a full-member, it has to fulfill EU demands.

"The EU does not ask anything special from Turkey. Their demands of Turkey are the same as their demands of other countries. In this light, there is no need for conflict and tension between Turkey and the EU -- but there is," Onen stated.

2. - AFP - "US radical sees rights victory as court acquits publisher":

ISTANBUL

The left-wing US academic Noam Chomsky hailed a victory for freedom of speech on Wednesday as a Turkish state security court acquitted a local publisher who had been put on trial for publishing one of his books.

"I hope it will serve as a step towards establishing freedom of speech in Turkey," Chomsky said after attending the trial, in which the Aram publishing house was charged with separatist propaganda for a book in which he criticised US arms sales to Turkey. The trial arose from Chomsky's essays on "American Interventionism," which Aram published in Turkish last year, and in which Chomsky claims that US-supplied arms were used against Turkey's Kurdish minority. Although he personally faced no charges, Chomsky, a long-term critic of US foreign policy, attended the trial of Fatih Tas, owner of Aram.

"As a human being I have a moral responsibility," the academic said: "I'm responsible for crimes in Turkey. "When the United States provides 80 percent of the arms to Turkey for the express purpose of carrying out violent and brutal repression, that's my responsibility, and I want to go to the place where it happens."

"We were not expecting this verdict," said Tas, who pleaded not guilty. "We believe Turkish courts should learn greater respect for persons accused." Tas is also facing separate charges for publishing other books on the Kurdish question.

The Turkish authorities have long been waging a major campaign against Kurdish separatism.

The outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) ended a 15-year armed struggle for self-rule in the predominantly 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. Chomsky has combined a career as a distinguished academic specialising in linguistics with decades of high-profile criticism of US foreign policy dating back to the Vietnam War.

In the essays in question, Chomsky accused Washington of supporting human rights abuses by the Turkish government against the Kurdish minority.

"There are countries where books are banned," he said: "For example in the old Soviet union everything I wrote was banned, or in China, or in the military dictatorships of Latin America. "But this is the first time that I recall that anyone is actually being prosecuted for publishing sentences from a lecture within a book, so that is so extreme that I wanted to be here mainly to express support for the people who are defending the honour of Turkey by standing up for freedom of speech quite courageously."

"The intellectuals' position in Turkey is very difficult," Chomsky remarked: "Turkish intellectuals who are standing up for freedom of speech and the rights of Kurds are a model for the entire world." He was later due in Diyarbakir, main town of Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey, to give a conference on the situation in the Middle East in the wake

of the September 11 attacks in the US. He was 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 PKK. Chomsky said he was going to Diyarbakir because it was "the centre of the repressive activities of the state."

3. - AFP - "Turkey will not "tolerate" unilateral US action against Iraq":

ANKARA

Turkey warned its top ally the United States on Wednesday that it would not agree to any unilateral military action against neighboring Iraq, which Washington has described as part of an "axis of evil."

Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz also urged the United States to consider the repercussions of a strike against Iraq on the battered Turkish economy. "We do not tolerate the development, outside our knowledge and initiative, of a process that will have close impact on us, nor our priorities being disregarded and our national interests being trampled on," Yilmaz said in a speech to party MPs.

"We do not want to experience chaos on our borders with unpredictable consequences," he added. "Those countries which are considering an intervention in Iraq should add to the cost of such a process the losses Turkey will suffer directly or indirectly."

Turkey complains it has lost up to 40 billion dollars from the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. A NATO member and a key Muslim ally of the United States in the post September 11 anti-terror campaign, Turkey is opposed to any action against its southern neighbor, fearing it could worsen its own economic strife and spark

political turmoil in the region. If the United States decides to strike Iraq it will almost certainly need Turkey's support, just as it did in the 1991 Gulf War when US jets used bases in southern Turkey to launch bombing raids on Baghdad.

Expectations that Iraq would be the next target of the US-led war on terrorism escalated after President George W. Bush described Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil."

US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday warned Iraq bluntly that the Washington is looking at ways to topple President Saddam Hussein but insisted it had no plans to go to war with any nation ... for now. Earlier this month, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit wrote to Saddam, urging him to allow the return of UN arms inspectors -- who were withdrawn in December 1998 -- to escape the wrath of the United States. Yilmaz stressed that Turkey's position did constitute support for Saddam's regime, which he described as a "primitive, archaic dictatorship."

"What we support is the solution of problems peacefully through dialogue, respect for the decisions of the international community and the reconciliation of different interests in a just manner," he said. Turkey fears that instability in Iraq could lead to the emergence of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, a Kurdish-dominated area that has been outside Baghdad's control since the Gulf War. Ankara fears that such a state could fan separatist sentiment among its own Kurds at a time when a violent 15-year Kurdish campaign for self-rule in southeast Turkey has scaled down.

4. - AFP - "Turkey bans Alawite cultural association":

ANKARA

A Turkish court banned on Wednesday a cultural association of the country's Alawites, a moderate Muslim sect, on the grounds that it promoted religious separatism, Anatolia news agency reported. The court said the Cultural Association of the Alawite Organizations' Union violated the law by putting the sect's name in its title and mentioning the promotion of Alawite culture among its objectives. The judge backed the prosecution case that the Turkish constitution guarded religious freedoms as long as they are not used to create religious and sectarian differences, Anatolia reported.

A law regulating associations stipulates that the activities of associations must not be based on religious differences and must not promote privileges for certain races, religions or sects, the prosecution argued. "I have sympathy for the Alawite community, but I heeded the law," judge Yilmaz Igrek said, according to Anatolia.

The case was launched after the group refused to heed a warning by the interior ministry to make the necessary changes in its title and charter. The Alawites, who are estimated to number between 10 and 20 million in Turkey, are a moderate Muslim sect. The faith emerged from a schism with Shiite Islam in the ninth century. Throughout history, Shiites and Sunnis alike have persecuted the Alawites, who also live in Syria and Lebanon.

Turkey's Alawite community is free to perform religious practices but it has long complained of discrimination by the Sunni-dominated state establishment.

5. - Reuters - "Iraqi Kurds want security, not fight with Saddam":

LONDON / by Alistair Lyon

Iraqi Kurds may fervently desire Saddam Hussein's downfall, but bitter past experience has made them wary of U.S. talk of overthrowing the Iraqi leader.

"The scars are still there, the fear is still there," Rowsch Shaways, president of the Kurdistan National Assembly in northern Iraq, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

He was referring to past treatment meted out to rebellious Kurds by Iraqi governments, culminating in the bloody ethnic cleansing of the late 1980s, including a poison gas attack on the eastern town of Halabja that killed thousands of people.

U.S. President George W. Bush last month branded Iraq as part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and North Korea. He vowed on Monday that his country would prevent nations developing weapons of mass destruction from teaming up with terrorists.

Some Washington hawks see the Kurds, whose peshmerga guerrillas fought Baghdad on and off for decades, acting as a local ground force in a U.S.-led campaign to oust Saddam, likening them to Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

"Nobody has asked us to play this role," Shaways said cautiously. "If someone asks us, we will think about it."

He said the two overriding requirements for the Kurds were to retain Western military protection for the northern Iraqi enclave they have held since the 1991 Gulf War and to keep their 13 percent share in Iraq's U.N.-supervised oil revenue.

Much at stake

Shaways, who belongs to the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), one of the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties, said his people had far more to lose now from any failed attempt to topple Saddam than they did during their desperate post-Gulf War uprising.

In March 1991, hordes of panic-stricken Kurds poured across snow-bound mountains into Turkey to escape Iraqi troops crushing revolts by Kurds in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south.

The United States, under former President George Bush, had seemed to encourage the unrest, but failed to aid the rebels.

"The Kurdish administration is responsible for 3.6 million people and for the achievements of the last 10 years," Shaways said of the enclave that is off-limits to Baghdad. "Any step must be thought about very carefully, and should not be at the expense of our principles of democracy and federalism."

The KDP and its chief political rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), both endorse a federal solution that would give Kurds substantial autonomy within a united Iraq.

Shaways said Iraqi Kurds backed the U.S.-declared war on terrorism and considered Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Islamic radicals based near Halabja, as terrorist groups.

"What the PKK has done in northern Iraq has caused a lot of damage," he said. "We are against our areas being used to launch attacks on Turkey. The Turks should feel that our area is an element of stability for them."

Shaways said he had no information on reports that members of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, which Washington believes was behind the September 11 attacks on the United States, had fled to northern Iraq from Afghanistan.

"There are Islamic fundamentalists operating in eastern Kurdistan and they are terrorists," he said of the Jund al-Islam group. "But no important al-Qaeda people could be there."

The KDP backs the PUK in its periodic clashes with groups such as Jund al-Islam. PUK assertions that Jund al-Islam has links with bin Laden have not been confirmed.

Nobody's pawn

Iraqi Kurds, while keenly aware of their reliance on the U.S. and British warplanes that have defended them for a decade, clearly have misgivings about a U.S. bid to remove Saddam.

"If the U.S. strikes Iraq, there is nothing we can do," KDP leader Massoud Barzani said last week. "But we will not be ordered by America or any others. We will not be a bargaining chip or tool of pressure to be used against Iraq."

PUK leader Jalal Talabani echoed the views of his old rival. "We will not enter adventures whose end is unclear. In the same way we cannot support any project for change in which we do not see the alternative," he declared. "We prefer the current situation to a change we could not accept. At least now Saddam is under international pressure and contained, alone and powerless, and we are under international protection."

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will make stops in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan, which all border Iraq, next month during a regional tour to seek support for U.S. policies.

6. - Star - "PKK is preparing for a new era":

Excerpts from a comentary by MURAT CELIK

The PKK is preparing for a new era. The organization is continuing to discuss 'Strategies for the Politicisation Process'. It is determining policies not only by itself but with the help of the politicians from such countries as France, Germany and the Netherlands. The decisions which will be finalized in Europe will be conveyed to the international community

through the Eighth PKK Congress. A change in the name of the organization is also expected to be proclaimed. (...)

The European representative ofthe group, Riza Altun, sent a message to Abdullah's brother Osman Ocalansaying, that he had met with the officials of the countries he cited. 'They laid out the resolutions which must be taken so that the PKK could overcome its current troubles and so that some countries could ease their policies towards it. The following decisions must be taken and proclaimed at the congress, otherwise serious troubles may emerge.' The message of the

PKK European representative is clear: Europe is dictating to the PKK what it is going to do and if its conditions are not met, it will not support the organization as before. (...)

The conditions they have listed are , first the new name of the organization should not disturb anyone. Second, the PKK armed forces should be renamed 'National Defence Forces.' Third, there should be no compromise in the demands for Kurdish education or from the mention of 'Kurd' in identity cards. Fourth, the expression 'Kurdistan' should not be used in the congress decision but should rather wait for developments in Iraq to play out. Fifth, it should be stated that the PKK is ready to abandon arms but that a general amnesty should be granted to all PKK members.(..) Europe is trying to mould the PKK in a form of its desiring. Until this final form is given, they are delaying the members of the PKK in advance without drawing any reactions. Therefore the eight congress of the PKK is of great importance.