Untitled Document

5 February

1. "Arseven: There Are Still Certain Problems Of Turkey Regarding Human Rights", State Minister Nejat Arseven said on Monday that there were still certain problems of Turkey regarding human rights. Arseven received Riza Turmen, the Turkish judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

2. "IMF approves 16 billion dollar credit for Turkey", the International Monetary Fund on Monday approved a 16 billion dollar standby credit for Turkey, the third major aid program for Ankara in under two years.

3. "Iraq's 'Northern Alliance'?", Washington remains ambivalent toward the Iraqi National Congress, though the opposition in exile claims to be ready to get rid of Saddam. Moreover, they point to the potential havoc that could be caused by an unsuccessful, INC-led takeover: regional power grabs by local militias for the Kurd-ish north, the Shi'ite south and the Sunni center of the country, resulting in frag-ment-ation, civil war and a failed state along the lines of pre-2001 Afghanistan.

4. "Iraqi opposition ready to fight; US: Iraq can protect its regime", the assistant founder of the opposition Iraqi national conference Ahmad Shalabi said on Friday that his group has almost 40,000 members who are ready to fight and they asked the American Administration to provide military training and the air cover to help in toppling the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

5. "Turkey to warn Iraq it faces threat of war, paper reports", Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit is preparing a letter to Saddam Hussein warning him to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq or face the threat of war, a Turkish newspaper said on Saturday.

6. "Respactable Turkey", retired Ambassador Sukru Elekdagon the debate over freedom of speech within the context of harmonization laws and the EU.

1. - Anadolu Agency - "Arseven: There Are Still Certain Problems Of Turkey Regarding Human Rights":

ANKARA

State Minister Nejat Arseven said on Monday that there were still certain problems of Turkey regarding human rights. Arseven received Riza Turmen, the Turkish judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Following the meeting, Arseven and Turmen responded to questions of reporters.

Arseven said that Turmen paid a courtesy visit and they evaluated the human rights in Turkey during their meeting.

Turmen said that it would be beneficial for Turkey to accept to hear the cases again in the direction of the ECHR verdicts.

''An opposite behaviour will not be perceived as Turkey does not fulfil its responsibilities stemming from the European Convention on Human Rights,'' Turmen noted.

When a reporter asked Turmen how he evaluates the amendments to articles 312 and 159 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), Arseven said that it was an issue concerning themselves and made a brief statement about the issues they debated at the meeting.

Arseven noted that Turmen stated that administrative changes made in human rights in recent days particularly the constitutional amendments were of utmost importance.

Turkey had marked progress in human rights in the process which started with the constitutional amendments, Arseven said.

Arseven stated that Turmen also underlined the importance that those initiatives and amendments carried in a period following the September 11th terrorist attacks when terrorism and human rights had been re-opened to discussion.

Many structural reforms had been made on human rights, Arseven pointed out. But, he said, Turkey had certain problems in practice.

Arseven noted that they had a meeting with Justice and Interior ministers once a month to overcome those problems and said that the Human Rights Supreme Board would hold a meeting on Tuesday.

State Minister Arseven added that the draft law related with the articles 312 and 159 of TCK would become definite in the following days.

Upon a question, Turmen said that there were some Council of Europe (COE) member countries that accepted and rejected re-trial regarding ECHR's decisions against their countries.

When asked if they should derive the meaning from his words that whether or not it happened, Turmen said, ''I have not made such a comment. It will be better if it is done but if it is not done, it will not be perceived as Turkey does not fulfilled its obligations stemming from the European Convention on Human Rights. There is not such an obligation in that convention.''

Arseven said that Turkey did not give up that arrangement and said, ''this is excluded from the adjustment draft law. However, this exclusion should not be evaluated as if this issue will no more be brought to Turkey's agenda.''

Turmen said that Turkey withdrew its declaration which suspended the fifth article of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Emergency Rule (OHAL) Region and noted, ''this is of course a very important step. I would like to stress that this step had very positive impact abroad.''

Asked if there could be a friendly solution method to reduce many cases against Turkey at ECHR, Arseven said that they were always working on this issue and noted that Turkey was at a very good point in searches for a friendly solution with ECHR.

Arseven added that ECHR chief judge's statements that there was a decrease in applications regarding Turkey was the confirmation of Turkey's initiatives in human rights.

2. - AFP - "IMF approves 16 billion dollar credit for Turkey":

WASHINGTON

The International Monetary Fund on Monday approved a 16 billion dollar standby credit for Turkey, the third major aid program for Ankara in under two years.

The approval gives Turkey the right to draw up to nine billion dollars immediately. The IMF said in a statement that its executive board approved the credit "to support the government's economic program for 2002-2004."

The aid is be the third IMF rescue of Turkey in less than two years, during a period in which the country has been grappling with one of its worst economic crises.

The Fund has already granted some 15.5 billion dollars to Turkey since December 1999. The IMF executive board had been previously expected to convene in late January to approve the aid, but delays in reforms Turkey has pledged in return appeared to have delayed the meeting.

The IMF was believed to have been insisting on reforms to improve investment conditions and transparency and the rehabilitation of the ailing banking sector, seen at the core of the country's financial woes. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer last week approved a key bank support law, which aims to inject capital into banks and reschedule loan payments by private companies.

Sezer had originally vetoed the law, demanding legislators to change three articles which stipulate that the staff and inspectors of three public banks would be bound by private law and not legislation regarding the public sector. But legislators adopted the law for a second time on Wednesday without making any changes, forcing Sezer to ratify it as he does not have a second right of veto on the same law.

3. - The Jerusalem Post - "Iraq's 'Northern Alliance'?":

Heidi Kingstone

Washington remains ambivalent toward the Iraqi National Congress, though the opposition in exile claims to be ready to get rid of Saddam

WITH THE BUSH ADMINistration still deliberating over whether or not to take its war against terror from Afghanistan to Iraq, one might expect the main exiled opposition to the regime of Saddam Hussein to be gearing up for the tantalizing possibility of a takeover of Baghdad, à la Afghanistan's Northern Alliance.

Yet the Iraqi National Congress, the American-backed, London-based umbrella group of Iraqi Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites dedicated to the downfall of Saddam, is treading water instead of making serious preparations to take power. This is not because of any lack of motivation on the INC's part, but mainly because the relationship between the administration in Washington and the INC, always problematic, seems as troubled and ambiguous as ever. According to Nabeel Musawi, a high-profile member of the INC, the organization recently rejected an offer of $8 million from the U.S. administration because the money came with conditions: that it neither be used inside Iraq, nor for military purposes. Rather, the Americans requested that the money be used for lobbying public opinion in the Middle East and the West.

"Either we use it inside the country, or we don't use it at all," fumes Musawi, who believes that Washington is as paralyzed now by its inability to define the endgame in Iraq -- principally the question of who, or what, would replace Saddam -- as it was before, during and after the 1991 Gulf War.

"We believe that the United States is afraid of events in Iraq developing too quickly," says Musawi, "that things will spiral and that they won't be able to control the change." The INC, for its part, argues that it could establish a democratic republic in Iraq tomorrow.

American policy on Iraq has been tailored for decades by a 'better the devil you know' attitude, claim those impatient for change, even though the United States harbors major concerns about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's hands.

Washington's deep ambivalence toward the INC stems from two sources. One involves an ongoing policy dispute over whether the goal should be just to remove Saddam, as both the State Department and the CIA favor, preferably by waiting for an internal coup; or whether -- as the Pentagon, Congress, the Senate, some senior members of the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as the INC, support -- the goal should be to bring down Saddam, his sons and the entire Ba'ath Party structure, along with the intelligence services, the Republican Guard and all other protectors of the current regime.

The other source of ambivalence stems from longstanding questions about the INC's credibility. The INC's supporters, including Iraqi intellectuals and liberals, claim that if and when it takes power, it would usher in a new era of democracy and justice in Iraq. But to its critics, the INC reeks of ineffective disunity and is dismissed as a flamboyant, over-financed talking shop that fits more comfortably in London's elegant Knightsbridge district, where its HQ is located, than in the rugged deserts or streets of Baghdad where the battle against Saddam must be waged.

Moreover, they point to the potential havoc that could be caused by an unsuccessful, INC-led takeover: regional power grabs by local militias for the Kurd-ish north, the Shi'ite south and the Sunni center of the country, resulting in frag-ment-ation, civil war and a failed state along the lines of pre-2001 Afghanistan. The prospect fills powerbrokers from London to Washington to Riyadh with horror.

"The State Department is on an all-out attack to discredit us so that their theory of change through a coup will win the day," says Musawi. "The 'silver bullet' theory is that someone inside the regime will kill Saddam. We've been waiting 12 years for that to happen, and it hasn't yet. They know they are losing the argument rapidly."

Still, according to one philosophy, maintaining stability in the region is paramount, and the notion of keeping the Iraqi structure intact is appealing.

So while Washington plays again with idea of removing Saddam, practically nothing, it seems, is being done to activate the INC, with the exception of some small financial gestures. The INC has received less than $10 million of the $97 million allotted to it under the Iraq Liberation Act passed by Congress in 1997. Most of the funds came through during the past 12 months. According to INC sources, less than $500,000 has been spent on military training in the United States for Saddam's opponents. The rest has gone on establishing a network of offices in London, Washington, Teheran and Damascus, and setting up the satellite Liberty TV station and an opposition newspaper, Al-Moutamar.

The INC has also concentrated recently on its campaign to bring out Iraqi defectors and present them to the media (see box), including former scientists and members of Iraq's security forces whose damning testimonies have revealed details of Saddam's secret non-conventional weapons programs and terrorist training camp at Salman Pak, complete with a grounded airplane for hijack practice.

IT IS FAR FROM CLEAR THAT Washington will opt, in the end, to attack Iraq. "It's more of a policy option than policy at the moment," thinks Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow for Foreign Policy Studies at the Washington-based Brookings Institute. "It's an extraordinarily divisive issue, and there is no point in doing the classic Washington bureaucracy thing of voicing the opposite sides in the debate and then just compromising, which was essentially what the Clinton administration did: Use a little bit of force fairly frequently all to not much effect. I think this administration recognizes that if you are going to do it, you have to do it right."

Doing it right, suggests O'Hanlon, means providing major protection for an Iraqi opposition as it begins to form and arm itself. "More likely," continues O'Hanlon, "it requires a major American military effort."

Military analyst and Washington Post columnist William Arkin agrees a war on Iraq may not be looming tomorrow, but says that if the war against terrorism is to be concluded, "eventually it will occur. The option most gaining momentum," he says, "is proving that smart sanctions and inspections are not going to work. But the State Department is fairly adamant that they be given at least a six-month period to work."

Arkin, who is no fan of the INC, believes that in the event the United States takes on the Baghdad regime, it would be important to see to what degree the middle class and Iraq's own military would become an opposition force. "There is no evi-dence," he says, "that the INC has ever put together any kind of viable network inside Iraq. And if there is one thing Saddam is good at, it is internal security."

The INC dismisses that kind of talk. They know that overthrowing Saddam requires full American support, but they are looking for logistical support including vehicles, guns and mobile hospitals, and the buildup of a ground force that would be supported, Afghanistan-style, by Western air power. "There is no way to do it without ground troops," says Musawi. "Someone must be there to take possession."

The INC has not been waiting for Washington to supply it with a plan of campaign, its activists say. Thousands of professional Iraqi officers, graduates from military academies all over the world, are said to have joined the opposition ranks over the past few years. They live in the north and south of Iraq, across the borders in Turkey, Syria and Iran, and as far afield as the United States.

"We have manpower available in huge quantities in the north and south of Iraq," says Musawi, who reckons that a reputable force could be put together within six months. "We've had to deal with Saddam for 32 years. It's fine if he survives for another few months while we organize ourselves."

AS FAR AS O'HANLON IS CONcerned, dislodging Saddam will take much more than airpower and a local opposition ground force. In his view, anything short of a ground invasion by U.S. troops, who he believes will have to go it alone, would be bound to fail. A serious U.S. commitment would, by his estimates, translate into 150,000-300,000 troops.

"You have to imagine that even if all the opposition forces are aggregated, they have the strength of about one-tenth of the Iraqi armed forces," he surmises. "The Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard forces, loyal to Saddam, total about 100,000 personnel. They realize they are not going to be given the same treatment that the Taliban managed to negotiate."

Unless the Americans were to storm Baghdad, the naysayers argue, the wholesale capitulation of Saddam's security and political elite, which is pampered with villas and cars, seems unlikely.

"Of course they would support Saddam Hussein," opines Musawi. "They have the country. But they don't have the people."

Furthermore, Musawi points out, Iraq's Russian tanks are 30 years old, and while they may be polished to a shine and intimidate civilians, they are not militarily significant. O'Hanlon counters that the Ba'athist regime is able to maintain the tanks adequately.

As for the repeated charges, particularly in Britain where the INC is based, that the organization is fractious and lacks the ability to deliver its utopian promises of a post-Saddam Iraq, Musawi acknowledges that INC factions disagree politically on issues such as whether Iraq should be centrally ruled or organized federally. But he asks whether that isn't the essence of democracy.

"We disagree politically, but don't they do that in the Senate and in Parliament?" he asks. "We all say that Iraq must remain united, become democratic and abide by U.N. resolutions. Do we all have to sing from the same song sheet?"

Critic Arkin doesn't put much store by that. "You say Iraqi opposition, which connotes one thing. This is wrong," he says. "The Kurdish forces in the north not only control Iraqi real estate, but also have a far greater military capability" than any of the other component parts of the opposition, he says. "The INC is a group of London ex-pats who have no identifiable military presence."

INC detractors also point to the lack of support the alliance generates in other Arab countries. But Musawi maintains that the Saudis, Egyptians and even the Kuwaitis can't offer support because if they did, it could only be interpreted as support for the INC's ideals as well as its intention of getting rid of Saddam. "The next thing, their people would ask why their own illegitimate and fragile regimes aren't implementing the exact same principles of democracy and pluralism," he says.

Finally, the INC believes, what costs it Arab and wider Iraqi support is a profound fear of retribution among potential allies should Saddam be subjected to American attack -- and survive again. During the Gulf War, the Arab countries joined the Western coalition confident that Saddam was on his last legs. In the aftermath, they were left feeling vulnerable and exposed.

The question today for many inside and outside Iraq remains the one of American resolve to see any attack on the country through to a post-Saddam end. When it comes to Washington's relationship with the INC, though, it appears that resolve is not yet the operative word.

4. - Arabic News - "Iraqi opposition ready to fight; US: Iraq can protect its regime":

The assistant founder of the opposition Iraqi national conference Ahmad Shalabi said on Friday that his group has almost 40,000 members who are ready to fight and they asked the American Administration to provide military training and the air cover to help in toppling the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

News reports quoted Shalabi as saying that the fighters in the line of the Iraqi opposition are ready to launch a battle similar to that launched by the anti- Taliban movement, if the American air force drops bombs from air against Iraq.

Shalabi added:" we want to revive the forces of the American society to challenge Saddam Hussein with an American help." Worthy mentioning that the US state and defense departments are still split towards supporting the Iraqi opposition, however, the desire to topple Saddam Hussein was offered by US President George Bush offered greater opportunity in his speech made on Tuesday. In that speech President Bush considered Iraq, Iran and North Korea as " the axis of evil."

Last year, US Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, Director, Defense Intelligence Agency said Iraq's ground forces "are able to protect the regime effectively" and that "North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, could field ICBMs with WMD, presenting a new strategic threat that we've not faced before."

5. - Reuters - "Turkey to warn Iraq it faces threat of war, paper reports":

ANKARA

Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit is preparing a letter to Saddam Hussein warning him to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq or face the threat of war, a Turkish newspaper said on Saturday.

Sabah daily said Ecevit, who met U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington in January, and his advisers had prepared the letter on Friday and would send it in the coming week.

"Allow the United Nations weapons inspectors to enter your country. Stop the production of weapons of mass destruction," Sabah quoted the letter as saying.

"If you do not, the United States, which has fears about the production of chemical weapons, may consider an operation against Iraq, and the whole region will be dragged into war."

Bush said this week that Iraq was part of an "axis of evil" threatening world security, and some in Washington would like to see the U.S. "war on terrorism" extended to Iraq after Afghanistan.

Turkey, which borders Iraq, has expressed deep concern about the prospect of U.S. military action in Iraq.

As a member of NATO, Ankara allows the United States and Britain to use one of its air bases to patrol a no-fly zone over the north of Iraq set up to protect Iraqi Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War.

Turkey's big fear is that military intervention could reignite Kurdish separatism in its own territory.

Ankara also complains it has lost over $30 billion in trade as a result of sanctions against Baghdad and fears further military action could damage its economy even more.

U.N. inspectors sent to Iraq after the Gulf War to monitor the destruction of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction left in December 1998 and have not been allowed to return.

6. - Sabah - "Respactable Turkey":

Retired Ambassador Sukru Elekdag on the debate over freedom of speech within the context of harmonization laws and the EU.

The freedoms of speech and expression as well as education in Kurdish and Kurdish radio-TV broadcasts, which have recently dominated our country's agenda within the framework of the harmonization laws with the EU, have a more significant meaning for Turkey than being just for gaining EU membership.

Their importance lies in the desire of the Turkish people to see a respectable Turkey with a sound democratic system, one based on the rule of law. The preconditions for being a respectable state today, lie in our ensuring a democratic system which guarantees the basic rights and freedoms of our citizens.

Articles 312 and 159 of the Penal Code in their present state would impose restrictions on freedom of thought and expression akin to those in dictatorial regimes. The changes on the table should have been in line with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decisions. If Ankara wants the ECHR not to impose sentences on itself, it should break the chains of the freedoms of thought and expression and while doing so take the norms of the ECHR into consideration so as not to be in the wrong.

We must declare that President Sezer's words, saying that statements which do not call for action or pose a concrete threat cannot be punished, aptly summarize these norms. On education in Kurdish, the chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP) made a moderate and balanced explanation saying that the official and educational language in Turkey was Turkish. However, all citizens have the right to speak freely, improve their mother tongues and develop their cultural riches.

He added that the state is ethnically blind and that it doesn't discriminate among its citizens according to mother tongue, religion or sects. The state's stance regarding education and training covers two different areas,.one public and the other private. Public education is given in Turkish, the official language of the country.

The state has no commitment to give education in the various tongues spoken within the country. On the other hand, all Turkish citizens must have the opportunity to establish training and educational courses in their mother tongues within the framework of individual rights. The barriers to broadcasting in Kurdsih must be lifted within these individual rights.

A short time ago, Ankara struck a clause from the Constitution speaking of 'language banned by the law'. Some EU circles believe that this action was taken to mislead the Europeans just before the Laeken Summit. Such a stance doesn't become Turkey. Therefore, I hope that necessary changes will be introduced and that the path to Kurdish broadcasts will be opened. Moscow is no longer a foreign threat to Turkey.

It wants to be a NATO member and sees cooperation with Turkey in its national interests. Therefore, demands for individual rights should not be opposed by saying that these would pose a threat to the territorial integrity and political unity of the country.