8
February 2002
1. "EU: Rights Reform Sparks Controversy In Candidate Turkey", four months after modifying its constitution, Turkey is considering amending the most controversial provisions of its penal code in a further attempt to bring its legislation in line with European democratic standards. But liberal critics have dismissed the proposed reforms, saying they will restrict individual freedoms rather than expanding them.
2. "Turkey's prominent human rights association, IHD, says punishment of students seeking education in Kurdish as illegal: IHD supports the right to submit petitions", Turkey's leading human rights advocate, the Human Rights Association (IHD), said on Thursday that punishments, such as detention, arrest and expulsion, of those who submit petitions asking for education in Kurdish, are illegal.
3. "EU: 312 and 159 amendments not sufficient", Ankara has amended the drafts of Turkish Penal Code Articles 312 and 159 and accepted in a much better wording than that proposed by junior coalition partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), but the new versions seemed to be far from satisfying the European Union. EU officials welcomed the amendments, but added that they were insufficient for Turkey's membership ambitions.
4. "Iraqi stance on UN inspections is unchanged: Turkey", Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said on Friday that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was not backing down on his refusal to allow the return of UN arms inspectors to his country, Anatolia news agency reported.
5. "Will Turkey enter northern Iraq?", dduring the course of the World Economic Forum meeting in New York, one question reverberated in Forum circles: Will Turkey enter northern Iraq? But, Turkey has been in northern Iraq since 1995, anyway.
6. "Turkey accused of bolstering military in Cyprus", Turkey has been accused of reinforcing its military presence in Cyprus.
7. "As the PKK switches Identities", Opinion by columnist Mustafa Balbay.
8. "Kurd leader warns ban will not stop rights drive", if a top court bans Turkey's only legal Kurdish party, millions of Kurds will still wage a peaceful struggle to gain wider cultural rights, the party's chairman said in an interview on Wednesday.
By Jean-Christophe Peuch
Four months after modifying its constitution, Turkey is considering amending the most controversial provisions of its penal code in a further attempt to bring its legislation in line with European democratic standards. But liberal critics have dismissed the proposed reforms, saying they will restrict individual freedoms rather than expanding them.
PRAGUE
Despite Turkey's recent efforts to reshape its basic legislation
to better harmonize with European standards, much work remains before
the country can meet the requirements to begin EU accession talks.
Although Ankara applied for EU membership in April 1987, it was granted official candidate status only two years ago -- a delay due mostly to European concerns about human rights. Ankara now stands last among 13 candidate countries.
Last March, the coalition government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit approved a national program of political, economic, and legal reforms aimed at paving the way for accession negotiations.
Seven months later, the Turkish parliament passed constitutional changes officially aimed at catching up with EU democratic standards. Among improvements endorsed by the legislature were amendments limiting the use of the death penalty to cases involving terrorism and easing the media ban on languages other than Turkish -- a move Ankara presented as a green light to broadcast in the Kurdish language.
Granting greater cultural rights to Turkey's estimated 12 million Kurds -- whom Ankara does not recognize as an official minority -- is one of the EU's prerequisites to beginning accession talks.
Rights groups and EU officials initially welcomed the constitutional amendments as a step in the right direction, but later concluded these changes had in practice made very little impact.
In its 2002 report on Turkey, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes authorities are still using various legal pretexts to prevent broadcasting in Kurdish and other minority languages. In an interview with RFE/RL, HRW Turkey researcher Jonathan Sugden described last fall's language amendments as merely cosmetic.
"[The Turkish authorities] changed Articles 13 and 14 of the constitution to say and present this as an end to the problems with freedom of expression. [But] at the moment, Fikret Baskaya, a journalist, is in prison for referring to the Kurdish minority in something that he wrote. And the proprietor of a newspaper is in prison for saying that the 1999 earthquake was divine justice. So it really did not impact on fundamental rights in any practical way at all."
Adding to Europe's concerns, a bitter row recently emerged between Ecevit's two coalition partners over new draft legislation that Turkey says is required to reflect the constitutional changes.
The rift arose last month when Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the center-right Motherland Party Mesut Yilmaz -- who oversees government relations with the EU -- said the 15-nation bloc had notified him that the drafts were not satisfactory and should be revised.
Speaking to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity, one high-ranking EU official denied the European body had made any official assessment on the proposed drafts. But he echoed Yilmaz's concerns, saying the projected changes were "broadening the scope of restrictions imposed on individual freedoms rather than narrowing it."
At the core of the dispute are two controversial provisions of the Turkish Penal Code -- articles 312 and 159 -- which the EU would like Ankara to amend.
In its current version, Article 312 states that inciting crowds to hostility on religious, racial, social, or cultural grounds is punishable by up to three years in prison. The amended draft reportedly extends the criminal offense to include cases of inciting hostility in individuals.
Article 159 says anyone criticizing certain aspects of the military, the police, or other state institutions may face up to six years in jail. Journalists, academics, and human rights activists have been imprisoned under this law, which Turkey's influential military also invoked last year to obtain the closure of a website inviting soldiers to air complaints about army life. Article 159's revised version reportedly extends the ban on criticism to any part of these institutions.
Deputy Prime Minister Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), vigorously defends the proposed amendments, which he says are a safeguard against national disintegration. He also says his opponents are striving to legalize what he describes as "ethnic and religious separatism."
Addressing the MHP parliamentary group yesterday, Bahceli lambasted Yilmaz, whom he accused of yielding to European pressure at the cost of Turkey's domestic stability. "This pathetic picture does not correspond to our understanding of how earnestly the state should be managed."
President Ahmed Necdet Sezer has said he does not wish to get involved in the dispute. Last week (1 February), he nonetheless entered the fray, saying individual freedoms should be expanded. Asked by reporters what the president's views on the proposed changes were, Sezer's chief spokesman Metin Yalman said: "We cannot possibly interfere in the debate at the present stage. However, as a former chairman of the Constitutional Court and as president of the republic, Mr. Sezer believes it is necessary to broaden the scope of individual freedoms. He has openly expressed this opinion in a great number of statements, including his inaugural speech to the [parliament]."
Turkey's nationalist politicians and army generals also advocate the preservation of antiterror legislation passed in the early 1980s, when Ankara was confronted with an armed insurgency in its predominantly Kurdish separatist provinces. Although Turkey's southeast has been relatively calm for the past two years, emergency laws are still being used to jail militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which advocates the creation of an autonomous state near the Iraqi border.
In a bid to appease Europe's criticism, the government last week (30 January) said it would resume observing a key provision of the 1950 European Human Rights Convention and that the maximum detention period before an individual is brought to justice would be reduced to four days from the current seven to 15 days. The change will also allow detainees to contact relatives and lawyers.
Article 5 of the human rights convention, which Turkey endorsed four years after joining the Council of Europe in 1950, theoretically guarantees detainees swift access to a judge and the right to immediate information about the charges brought against them. Ten years ago Turkey withdrew from Article 5, claiming the exemption under a convention article allowing signatories to suspend certain rights and freedoms in time of war or public emergency.
Council of Europe Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer welcomed Turkey's decision to lift the ban on Article 5 as "entailing progress in terms of human rights protection of detainees." He also reiterated his conviction that "respect for basic human rights is not incompatible with a vigilant attitude towards the threat of terrorism."
Since the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States, Turkish authorities have toughened their stance toward separatist and leftist radical movements they commonly refer to as "terrorist organizations."
Besides the PKK, which Ankara claims has been responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since 1984, such organizations include the radical Islamic group Hizbullah -- not to be confused with the Lebanon-based organization of the same name -- and an urban guerilla group known as the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).
Even though Turkey has been observing a moratorium on executions since 1984, pending the beginning of its accession talks with the EU, several DHKP-C and Hizbullah militants have been sentenced to death over the past four months on charges ranging from murder to attempts to subvert constitutional order and create an Islamic state.
Despite urging from Turkey, the EU has so far refused to include the PKK and the DHKP-C in a list of terrorist organizations, as the U.S. and Britain did in the aftermath of the September attacks.
If Turkey's political elite remains divided on how to amend the penal code, there seems to be a broad consensus in Ankara on the need to resist European pressures on Kurdish cultural rights. Both Yilmaz and Ecevit have notably ruled out the possibility of allowing Kurdish-language education in Turkish schools and universities.
Dozens of Kurdish university students have recently been imprisoned for submitting petitions demanding the right to education in their mother tongue. According to Article 8 of Turkey's antiterror law, the students may be charged with disseminating "propaganda aimed at destabilizing the state."
HRW's Sugden believes this is further evidence that last fall's constitutional amendments mean very little in practical terms. "This is definitely something done for external consumption, so they could say that the language problems are solved. And the fact that we have now 64 students in prison because they have petitioned for a change to their curriculum shows how the arrangements concerning the language were completely empty."
Last week (29 January), the influential National Security Council -- Turkey's main policymaking body, in which the military wields large powers -- accused the PKK of orchestrating the petitioning campaign and said Turkish will remain the only language authorized in classrooms.
In a further move to clamp down on Kurdish separatism, authorities last week temporarily closed down the Kurdish Institute of Istanbul, a privately funded establishment which publishes documents and holds courses in the Kurdish language.
Turkish legislators are due to discuss possible legal changes in the coming weeks or months, but no date has been appointed yet for the hearings. The new drafts are still being examined by the parliament's legal committee, and it is still unclear what their final wording will be.
But whatever the outcome, some analysts say the ongoing debate may already be damaging Turkey's EU bid.
In an article published on 29 January in the conservative "Milliyet" daily, columnist Sami Kohen lamented that the dispute over the draft legal changes could undermine Turkey-EU relations just as Ankara and Brussels had marked some progress on Cyprus and other international issues.
Kohen added: "Most importantly, however, is that
[the debate] could deal a blow to the hopes and expectations of the
Turkish people regarding modernization and democratization."
2. - Turkish Daily News - "Turkey's prominent
human rights association, IHD, says punishment of students seeking education
in Kurdish as illegal: IHD supports the right to submit petitions":
Turkey's leading human rights advocate, the Human Rights Association
(IHD), said on Thursday that punishments, such as detention, arrest
and expulsion, of those who submit petitions asking for education in
Kurdish, are illegal.
Citing the British Bill of Rights, dated 1689, for their claim, the IHD pointed out that submitting a petition was a right that should not be banned.
The Bill of Rights said that sending requests and letters of praise to the King was a right granted to the citizens, and punishments on charges of such applications were illegal.
"300 years have passed since this Bill of Rights," IHD said.
According to the figures of the IHD, some 15,000 people, mainly students, have submitted petitions for Kurdish elective courses, and 2,000 of those have been detained either by the Public Prosecutor or the police.
Some 74 of them have been arrested, and a number of students
have been dismissed from their schools.
3. - Anadolu Agency - "EU: 312 and 159 amendments not sufficient":
BRUSSELS
Ankara has amended the drafts of Turkish Penal Code Articles 312
and 159 and accepted in a much better wording than that proposed by
junior coalition partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), but
the new versions seemed to be far from satisfying the European Union.
EU officials welcomed the amendments, but added that they were insufficient
for Turkey's membership ambitions.
On the eve of Gunter Verheugen's visit to Turkey next week, the Commission sent a strong message to Turkey to expand and deepen the freedoms envisaged in the Copenhagen criteria through the spokesman of Verheugen's office.
Verheugen's spokesman, Jean-Christophe Filori, stated that they had noted the amendments of Articles 312 and 159, but stressed that they were below expectations. Speaking to a group of Turkish journalists in Brussels, Filori made it clear that the EU was not satisfied, even with the amended versions of the articles. "We expected a bit more," said Filori, and added that they, "urged Turkey to proceed with the political reforms." Stressing that the EU Commission had expected Turkey to expand the limits of freedom of expression, Filori said the topic would be raised during Verheugen's visit to Turkey next week. Asked to elaborate on topics during the visit, Filori refused further comment. "I do not know how these topics will be dealt with, but you can expect that these issues will be addressed," said Filori.
Turkish diplomats in Brussels argue that 2002 will be very crucial for Turkey's candidacy. In the wake of the Laeken Summit, which stated clearly that Turkey had come closer to open accession negotiations with EU, Turkish diplomats underlined the need to accelerate the pace of reforms to catch up with the second wave of enlargement, along with Bulgaria and Romania.
Speculations run high in Brussels that Turkey should do
its best to use the Spanish presidency of the EU, a country known to
be sympathetic to Turkey's EU aspirations, by reforming its laws and
reinforce their application. Experts argue that Turkey could have the
chance to start accession negotiations during the Danish presidency,
starting in July 2002, with the condition of a high-speed reform agenda.
4. - AFP - "Iraqi stance on UN inspections is unchanged: Turkey":
ANKARA
Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said on Friday that Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein was not backing down on his refusal to allow the return
of UN arms inspectors to his country, Anatolia news agency reported.
"There is no change in Saddam Hussein's position," Ecevit said when asked about Saddam's reply to a recent letter he had sent to urge Baghdad to allow the inspectors back in order to escape the wrath of the United States, according to Anatolia.
Saddam's letter in reply to Ecevit's arrived in Ankara on Thursday, but officials have declined to comment directly on its contents. Expectations that Iraq would be the next target in the US military campaign have recently increased with remarks by US President George W. Bush that Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, formed an "axis of evil."
The speculations were fuelled by news from Washington that Vice President Dick Cheney was to visit Israel, Britain, Turkey and eight Middle Eastern Arab countries in mid-March to discuss the struggle against terrorism. Fearing that a possible strike on Iraq, Turkey's southern neighbor, could cause regional turmoil, Ecevit sent a letter to Saddam Hussein earlier this month, urging him to agree to the resumption of UN arms inspections. "Iraq is facing a new threat. We are making extensive efforts to prevent this threat," Ecevit wrote in the letter.
"However for our efforts to bear fruit it is necessary for Iraq to take some concrete steps rapidly and, foremost of all, lift at once all obstructions in the way of UN arms inspections," Ecevit said. Baghad has consistently denied the return of arms inspectors, who pulled out of the country on the eve of a joint US-British military strike in December 1998. Iraq also rejected a 1999 UN resolution to lift the 11-year-old sanctions in return for the return of the inspectors.
If Washington decides to strike Iraq it will almost certainly need Turkey's support, just as it did in the Gulf War in 1991 when US jets bombed Baghdad after taking off from a base in southern Turkey. But Turkey, a NATO member and a key Muslim ally of the US, fears that instability in Iraq could deepen its already dire economic problems and result in the emergence of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, already outside Baghdad's control since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.
Such a state, Ankara fears, could in turn fan separatist
sentiment among its own Kurds at a time when a 15-year Kurdish rebellion
for self-rule in southeast Turkey has declined.
5. - Milliyet - "Will Turkey enter northern Iraq?":
Opinion by Hasan Cemal
During the course of the World Economic Forum meeting in New York, one question reverberated in Forum circles: Will Turkey enter northern Iraq? But, Turkey has been in northern Iraq since 1995, anyway.
If America hits, Turkey may enter northern Iraq once again -- for five reasons:
* To stem a potential Kurdish migration, this time on Iraqi soil.
* To prevent the proclamation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
* To prevent the creation in Afghanistan, with American support, of a formation similar to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance.
* To prevent Kirkuk and Mosul from being seized by the Kurds.
* To have a bigger say in the post-Saddam developments, while taking pains to ensure that Iraq's territorial integrity is preserved.
A reliable diplomatic source said: "Washington has
not yet managed to hear, from Ankara, what it wants to hear on the Iraq
issue."
6. - Middle East Newsline - "Turkey accused of bolstering military in Cyprus":
NICOSIA 
Turkey has been accused of reinforcing its military presence
in Cyprus.
The Republic of Cyprus and Greece assert that Turkey has sent military equipment to the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Turkey deploys 35,000 troops in the northern part of the island.
Greek Cypriot sources said Turkey has moved aircraft, tanks and other weapons to Northern Cyprus. The sources, in reports published by Greek Cypriot newspapers, said the Turkish naval vessel brought tanks and other weaponry to the island at the end of January.
Turkey has denied that it has reinforced troops. The allegation
of a Turkish military buildup comes amid intensive negotiations for
reconciliation between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities on
the island.
7. - Cumhuriyet - "As the PKK switches Identities":
Columnist Mustafa Balbay comments on the efforts of the PKK terrorist organization to change its identity. A summary of his column is as follows:
"The PKK has been trying for two years now to erase its label as a 'terrorist organization' and to achieve a new identity. This search, which began with the capture of Abdullah Ocalan, seems to have reached a certain stage.
The summary of their plan is to change surface form and methods; there seems to be no change in essence, aims or policies. An interesting conflict in the stance of the organization can be observed. It seems that the terrorist organization will discard 'Kurdistan' in its name but try to put 'Kurdish' at the beginning of every activity within the framework of cultural rights. Everyone knows that all of these new policies were drawn up in European cities.
There may be those who know the issue but prefer not to understand what is going on. It is an interesting coincidence that the EU failed to include terrorist organizations active in Turkey in its list of terrorist groups and the PKK has been trying to change its name at about the same time. During the last EU summit in Laeken, Belgium, terrorism was discussed but terrorist organizations were not taken up. Belgian Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Louis Michel, acting as the term president of the EU, stated on Dec. 14, 2001 that they had defined terrorism, but that there were problems which seemed to be impossible to solve while preparing a list.
Michel added that it was easy to determine and denounce a terrorist action but that it was hard to define a terrorist organization. 'It is not always to easy to distinguish between terrorism and resistance,' he said. 'We will take this up next year and maybe some issues can be handled in a way so as to sweep up certain things from the past.'
These words may be explained as, if the PKK changes its name and says that it is not the same organization anymore, the EU may turn a blind eye to its past offenses. We can almost hear Belgium's reply to the announcement of PKK that it has changed its name after its upcoming eight congress that it is in the process of recognizing the new organization. It doesn't square with human rights to accuse a 'newly founded' organization with possible crimes to be perpetrated in the future.
We have delved into the archives more than necessary, but Cemil Bayik, a representative of the terrorist organization in Europe, had stated in a magazine published in the Netherlands in Turkish that it was necessary to carry out this new strategy to achieve victory. 'In the Middle East to be strong, you have to have arms. Our basic guarantee of survival is our power in armed struggle... The method to achieve victory in carrying out new strategies passes through uprising.'
The Paris meeting of the terrorist organization held on January 4-6 was entitled the 'Diplomacy and Institutional Political Studies Coordination Council'. These statements given and meetings set on different dates demonstrate that the terrorist organization will form its policies in the future by leaning on Europe.
Under these circumstances, Turkey has no other choice
but to finish off terrorism completely, not allow a new terror game
on its territories, follow the changing strategies, and formulate counter
strategies in addition to reacting to them."
8. - Reuters - "Kurd leader warns ban will not stop rights drive":
ANKARA
If a top court bans Turkey's only legal Kurdish party, millions
of Kurds will still wage a peaceful struggle to gain wider cultural
rights, the party's chairman said in an interview on Wednesday.
"There are millions behind us. You can close the party, ban its leaders, but those millions won't disappear," said Murat Bozlak, who heads the People's Democracy Party, or HADEP.
"They will not leave the path we have set," he told Reuters.
The Constitutional Court is weighing charges to ban HADEP for allegedly serving as a front for the separatist Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK). HADEP denies the charges.
Bozlak, facing up to 22 years in prison on related charges, said he believed recent reforms to Turkey's constitution, originally drawn up under military rule in the 1980s, may convince the Constitutional Court to spare his party.
The case is the first test of the constitutional reforms, designed to meet European Union criteria that include making bans on political parties more difficult.
The EU has urged Turkey to expand civil liberties for its 12 million Kurds to smooth the way for talks about Ankara joining the bloc. It says party bans stifle democratic debate and encourage the disaffected to seek ever more radical outlets.
State prosecutors filed the case against HADEP in 1999 when fighting still raged between Turkish soldiers and the PKK, which launched a guerrilla campaign in 1984 for self-rule in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the violence.
DEATH ROW
Fighting has largely ended in the southeast since commandos captured PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan in 1999. From death row, Ocalan has called on PKK fighters to withdraw from Turkey and seek rights for Kurds through political means.
"This (case) is because we said, 'Kurds exist'. That may have been enough to shut us down in the past, but it no longer means we should be closed," Bozlak said.
"The previous tension in Turkey and the ensuing political motivation to shut us down have passed," he said.
Turkey prohibits parties from setting up along religious or ethnic lines and has banned about 20 parties since the 1960s, including three of HADEP's predecessors. Last June, the Constitutional Court outlawed parliament's main opposition, the Islamist Virtue Party.
Many outlawed parties have simply regrouped under new names.
Despite the relative peace in the southeast, flashpoints still erupt over the Kurdish issue. Police last month detained hundreds of university students and parents who signed petitions calling for Kurdish-language instruction in schools.
Last year's constitutional amendments lifted a ban on Kurdish TV and radio broadcasting, but authorities fear allowing the Kurdish language in the classroom could undermine national unity.
HADEP won less than the 10 percent of votes needed to enter parliament in 1999 elections, but has topped polls in the southeast and holds several large mayoral offices in areas governed by emergency rule since 1987.
The powerful military has voiced concerns about HADEP's popularity in the impoverished southeast.
"Turkey doesn't have a tradition of diversity. It has a tradition of closing down parties," Bozlak said.
"Our fundamental purpose has been to try and solve the Kurdish question, one of Turkey's most painful issues. No one else discusses this issue, let alone does anything," he said.
During the height of the guerrilla conflict, HADEP activists faced regular police detentions and political bans. Bozlak has already been imprisoned for three years.
If HADEP escapes closure, its leaders must use their new-found freedom to widen the party's base and pass parliament's threshold -- or face elimination at the polls.
"It is natural that Kurds support us. But we must
work to represent all of Turkey," Bozlak said.