25 January 2002

1. "Turkey prosecutes Chomsky publisher for essay on Kurds", Noam Chomsky, one of America's greatest philosophers and linguists, has become the target of Turkey's chief of "terrorism prosecution".

2. "Police confiscate Kurdish appointment books", backed by a court's anti-propaganda ruling, police in a northwestern city Wednesday seized appointment books with the date of terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan's capture marked in black, a Turkish news report said.

3. "Talking Turkey: Sept. 11 Fallout Has Serious Implications for Turkey's Fragile Economy, Regional Role", while most Turks were as shocked by the events of Sept. 11 as the inhabitants of any other country, the fallout from across the Atlantic had a particular effect here, with dark forecasts for the future being made.

4. "More calls for Cyprus solution", Council of Europe 'desires' an accord to be reached before republic accedes to EU - but it's not a prerequisite.

5. "France's Richard in Turkey to mend fences", French Defense Minister Alain Richard arrived here on Thursday for a visit aimed at improving military ties, hit by a French law recognizing as genocide the massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

6. "Turkey urges Iraq to end arms stand-off to escape US wrath", Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit called on neighbouring Iraq Thursday to comply with United Nations resolutions and allow the return of arms inspectors to evade the wrath of the United States.

1. - Independent - "Turkey prosecutes Chomsky publisher for essay on Kurds":

By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent

Noam Chomsky, one of America's greatest philosophers and linguists, has become the target of Turkey's chief of "terrorism prosecution".

Scarcely two months after the European Union praised Turkey for passing new laws protecting freedom of expression, the authorities in Ankara are using anti-terrorism legislation to prosecute Mr Chomsky's Turkish publisher.

Fatih Tas of the Aram Publishing House faces a year in prison for daring to print American Interventionism, a collection of Mr Chomsky's recent essays including harsh criticism of Turkey's treatment of its Kurdish minority.

Mr Chomsky, a linguistics professor at Harvard, is planning to fly to Turkey for Mr Tas's first court appearance on 13 February and has already written to the offices of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, pointing out that amendments to Turkish law were supposed to have provided greater freedom of expression, not less.

Mr Chomsky plans to visit the Turkish city of Diyarbakir to meet Kurdish "activists" and it will be a test of Turkey's freedoms to see if he is allowed to visit the area.

In one of his essays, originally a university lecture, he says that "the Kurds have been miserably oppressed throughout the whole history of the modern Turkish state ... In 1984, the Turkish government launched a major war in the south-east against the Kurdish population ... The end result was pretty awesome: tens of thousands of people killed, two to three million refugees, massive ethnic cleansing with some 3,500 villages destroyed."

This, according to the Turks, constitutes an incitement to violence. Mr Chomsky has been suitably outraged, regarding the trial as part of a much broader wave of repression directed against Kurds appealing for greater use of the Kurdish language. Bekir Rayif Aldemyr, Turkey's chief prosecutor, claims that the Chomsky essay "propagates separatism".

A spiky, inexhaustible academic of Jewish origin who has been an inveterate critic of Israel and especially of the United States, Mr Chomsky's condemnation of Turkey's treatment of the Kurds - and of the vast arms shipments made to Turkey by the United States - was bound to enrage Ankara.

Mr Chomsky describes the prosecution as "a very severe attack on the most elementary human and civil rights". The EU, so impressed by those changes in Turkish law last November, has remained silent.

2 - AP - "Police confiscate Kurdish appointment books":

Backed by a court's anti-propaganda ruling, police in a northwestern city Wednesday seized appointment books with the date of terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan's capture marked in black, a Turkish news report said.

The confiscation order came as Turkish authorities crack down on demands for Kurdish education, detaining hundreds of students who submitted petitions for the right to be taught Kurdish on campuses over the past few weeks.

Authorities claim the petitions are part of a campaign orchestrated by Ocalan's outlawed separatist terror organization Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which fought a 15-year war for autonomy in the southeast Anatolia.

The semi-official Anatolia news agency said the appointment books, with the dates and months printed in Kurdish, were distributed during a regional congress of the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party, or HADEP, in the northwestern city of Bursa last week.

It was not clear where the appointment books were being confiscated or how many would be seized. Police officials in Bursa could not be reached for comment.

Anatolia said the appointment books marked Feb. 15 in black, in a sign of mourning. Turkish commandos captured Ocalan on Feb. 15, 1999, in Kenya.

The PKK fought for autonomy until shortly after Ocalan's capture in a war that killed 37,000 people.

HADEP, Turkey's only legal pro-Kurdish party, which is facing closure on charges of links to the terrorists, denied any connection to the appointment books.

"All sorts of people sell or distribute all sorts of different things at these congresses," said HADEP official Veli Buyuksahin. "If appointment books were distributed, it was done without our knowledge."

The pro-Kurdish party rejects any links to the terrorists and seeks greater cultural rights for Turkey's 12 million Kurds, such as education in Kurdish. Turkey does not recognize its Kurdish population as a minority.

Turkey amended its constitution last year to permit Kurdish-language broadcasting, but argues that education in Kurdish could divide the country.

3. - Washington Post - "Talking Turkey: Sept. 11 Fallout Has Serious Implications for Turkey's Fragile Economy, Regional Role":

By Jon Gorvett

While most Turks were as shocked by the events of Sept. 11 as the inhabitants of any other country, the fallout from across the Atlantic had a particular effect here, with dark forecasts for the future being made.

Of major concern was the possible effect on Turkey's fragile economy. After major economic crises in November 2000 and this past February, unemployment and bankruptcies have been soaring, while economic output has been shrinking. An IMF/World Bank-backed rescue package has been implemented, with widespread cutbacks in government funding and pressure to speed up privatization and economic restructuring.

All of which would have been hard enough under any normal circumstances, but, after Sept. 11, began to look almost impossible. Planned privatizations-such as that of the national carrier, Turkish Airlines-have been postponed, while tourism sector gurus are predicting a disaster for an industry that all had been relying on to boost the nation's liquidity.

Trying to put a different spin on these events, however, and attempting to play Turkey's strategic significance as a financial card, State Minister Kemal Dervis, the man appointed by the government to manage the economic restructuring, began a round of meetings in October with IMF and World Bank officials, followed by a road show through European capitals. The idea was that Turkey now should be given more aid than ever before, as it forms a bulwark of secular values against rising Islamist militancy.

Turkey could provide a large number of tanks, as well. In fact, on the military front, the fallout from Sept. 11 so far has been quite positive for the generals in Ankara. It seems likely that U.S. congressional restrictions on Turkey's weapons buying-the result of pressure from Greek, Armenian and human rights lobbies-will be dropped. Local media reported in mid-October that all it would take would be "a slight nod" from President Bush for the guns to start flowing.

Too, with "terrorism" apparently now a concept that needs no more definition than any "anti-state group"-and anti-any state-many Turkish politicians and columnists began to use the attacks on the U.S. to lambaste the Europeans for "sheltering terrorism" over the years. "Good Morning Europe!" screamed the headline in Hurriyet, a rightist popular daily, when EU countries moved to curtail the activities of certain Islamist, leftist and Kurdish groups based within the Union. Another gift for the generals, courtesy of Osama bin Laden.

Turkey has long been against any campaign to topple Saddam Hussain.

Discussion then focused on a proposal reported in the U.S. media for an Islamic peacekeeping force to be sent to Afghanistan once the Taliban had been removed. This received enthusiastic coverage, despite the fact that it was nobody's official position and, indeed, despite the fact that after weeks of bombing, the Taliban did not appear to be going. The appeal of the suggestion, however, was that this force would be led by Turkey.

Foreign Minister Ismail Cem reacted more coolly to the idea. Naturally, he said, Turkey would meet any international obligations the world community might wish to place on its shoulders, but Turkish troops would not be going to Kabul unless there was already a "safe environment" and a water-tight U.N. resolution behind the plan.

The most schizophrenic reactions to all this, however, came from the far-right, which is represented by the National Action Party (MHP), the second largest member of Turkey's three-party coalition government. The pro-MHP press long has had a hankering for Turkey's Central Asian origins. Its symbol, the grey wolf, it based on the legendary animal that first led the Turks out of the Asian steppes to Anatolia centuries ago. The concept that the Turkic peoples of the region-who are scattered from Azerbaijan to Xinjiang in Western China-should somehow be united under Turkish leadership is known as Turanism, and has a strong base of support among the MHP. Thus the idea of a Turkish-led force in Central Asia was something of a turn-on for the Nationalists.

The MHP is also at times quite anti-Western, however. This is in part the result of a grass roots feeling among Turks left, right and center that, while Turkey must align itself with the West in order to modernize, the West is still, at heart, the enemy. Leading such a force in Afghanistan might also be seen, then, as the West manipulating Turkey to act as a cop over its fellow Central Asians.

While anti-Western sentiment tends to focus on Europe rather than the U.S., when Western warplanes begin bombing eastern, Muslim countries, the popular reaction in Turkey is generally to identify with the people being bombed.

Many Turks therefore have great sympathy with the Iraqis, who have suffered years of U.S. and British bombing, in addition to a U.N. embargo. This feeling exists despite the fact that in the 1991 Gulf war Turkey was on the side of the allies-and despite the fact that Ankara still allows U.S. and British warplanes to launch its missions from a base in Turkey.

Ankara's Kurdish Strategy

It also exists despite the fact that, as part of Ankara's anti-Kurdish separatist strategy, Turkish troops themselves regularly cross over the border into Iraq and conduct their own bombing raids and artillery barrages against the local inhabitants. Indeed, this strategy was behind the deep concern in Ankara during late September and early October that the U.S. might widen the parameters of its "Enduring Freedom" and decide to topple Saddam Hussain.

Turkey has long been against any such campaign for fear that it would lead to northern Iraq-which has a largely Kurdish population and which has more or less run its own affairs since the end of the Gulf war-breaking away from Baghdad's control and declaring itself an independent Kurdish state. This might make it difficult for Turkey to resist demands from its own Kurdish population, concentrated traditionally near the Iraqi border, for greater autonomy-if not outright secession.

Therefore British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was greeted with a barrage of Turkish diplomatic and political outcries when he arrived in Ankara mid-October. Straw was quick, though, to reassure Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit that there was no plan to extend the war to Iraq and that both the U.S. and Britain were now moving back to the idea of smart sanctions to deal with Saddam Hussain.

This left many here with the feeling that, despite all the sound and fury going on over Afghanistan and the new new world order, Ankara's role in all this might really signify nothing much at all.

It seems unlikely, however, that the events now unfolding in Central Asia will not have a real impact on Turkey in the future. But all bets are off on just what that impact might be.

(Jon Gorvett is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul)

4. - AP - "More calls for Cyprus solution":

Council of Europe 'desires' an accord to be reached before republic accedes to EU - but it's not a prerequisite

Turkish-Cypriot women hold a banner urging Rauf Denktash to strike a deal with Cyprus President Glafcos Clerides during a protest in Turkish-held Nicosia on January 15.

By Miron Varouhakis Kathimerini English Edition

Europe's top rights body on Tuesday hailed the recent resumption of direct reunification talks between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot leaders, and urged both sides to hammer out an accord before Cyprus is granted membership to the European Union.

"Today Cyprus faces a new situation. The Republic of Cyprus is negotiating its accession to the European Union," the Council of Europe noted in a recommendation reached during a session of its Parliamentary Assembly. "The European Council declared that an overall settlement of the Cyprus problem was not a prerequisite to its accession. The assembly nevertheless believes that a political agreement between the two sides on the future of the island is possible and desirable before entry to the European Union."

Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides and Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash met yesterday afternoon, their third meeting since the resumption of face-to-face talks. Following a series of dinners and exchange visits across the Green Line, Clerides and Denktash agreed to hold three meetings per week in a renewed effort to broker an agreement, in the presence of a United Nations envoy.

Talks are held on neutral ground in the UN buffer zone at Nicosia's international airport, which has been abandoned since the Turkish invasion of 1974. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, is attending the talks.

For the Council of Europe, the talks signal a breakthrough in the island's longstanding division.

"Today there is an opportunity to achieve a breakthrough after almost three decades of stalemate. To do so, we need a clear commitment to a peaceful solution by both sides, we need support from the three guarantor powers - Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom - but above all, we need a historic reconciliation between the two communities. This is where the Council of Europe can help," declared Hungarian deputy Andras Barsony, who presented to the assembly a report on the Cyprus situation on Tuesday.

The resolution passed by the Council's assembly calls upon both sides to focus on finding a solution that could allow the whole population of Cyprus to benefit from EU membership, to refrain from using negative rhetoric, to ascertain the fate of missing persons and to seek to remove restrictions on the freedom of movement to either side of the island.

"The assembly is conscious that until there is a political settlement the Turkish-Cypriot community is not in a position to participate in the membership negotiations conducted between the European Union and the Republic of Cyprus," the resolution underlined. "However, it believes that the Turkish-Cypriot community should be urgently provided with all relevant information on the European Union and the potential benefits of accession."

According to the Council of Europe, the internal political situation in the northern part of the island is becoming increasingly uncertain and the Turkish-Cypriot community finds itself ever more isolated from the rest of the world and ignored by the international community.

Moreover, in its resolution the Council calls upon the leaders of both communities "to avoid getting stalled on the terminology to be used as regards the form of the future solution and to concentrate on concrete political issues; to refrain from using negative rhetoric when referring to the other community and from educating their children in a way that could increase hatred and distrust toward them; to cooperate in good faith in the efforts to ascertain the fate of missing persons; and to remove restrictions on the freedom of movement to either side of the island."

The Council's vision for a united European Cyprus laid out in its resolution in the form of steps that each side should take in their talks, could become a map for a Cyprus with a single European future.

For the Greek Cypriots the Council of Europe is calling them to continue their efforts to bring about the participation of the Turkish-Cypriot community in accession talks, and to refrain from sending political messages, in connection with the EU, which could be interpreted by people living in the northern part of the island as a provocation.

Turkish Cypriots, on the other hand, are urged "to adopt a more positive attitude toward the European Union and inform the public accordingly about the benefits membership can bring; remove restrictions on individual contacts with people living in the Republic of Cyprus and any other obstacles in the way of reconciliation, including contacts with political parties; and provide all non-governmental organizations and the media with unrestricted freedom to operate."

The resolution, adopted after the presentation of reports from the political and human rights committee representatives, also outlines a set of actions to be pursued by Greece, Turkey and Britain, identified as the three guarantor powers in Cyprus.

The governments of Athens, Ankara and London are called upon "to play a constructive role in ensuring that the efforts taken by the UN secretary-general lead to positive results in the months ahead; be instrumental in the creation of favorable conditions for the Turkish-Cypriot community to join the European Union accession negotiations; and to respect judgments of the European Court of Human Rights concerning Cyprus."

The Council took particular note of Ankara's recent threats to annex the breakaway state in northern Cyprus if the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus in the south became an EU member prior to an agreement on the division. The resolution comes to rebuff those threats and calls on Ankara to refrain from such threats in the future.

"Bearing in mind recent statements made by the Turkish authorities as regards the Republic of Cyprus's accession to the EU and Turkey's role as a guarantor power, calls upon the Turkish authorities to refrain from launching threats against the Republic of Cyprus in connection with the accession of Cyprus to the EU prior to a political settlement, and to persuade the Turkish-Cypriot leaders that future membership in the EU presents advantages for both communities," the Council declared.

5. - AFP - "France's Richard in Turkey to mend fences":

ANKARA

French Defense Minister Alain Richard arrived here on Thursday for a visit aimed at improving military ties, hit by a French law recognizing as genocide the massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

Richard is scheduled to have two meetings with his Turkish counterpart Sabahattin Cakmakoglu -- a dinner late Thursday and formal talks on Friday. He will also have meetings with Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and the chief of general staff, Huseyin Kivrikoglu, before leaving Ankara on Friday. Richard's visit comes a year after the French parliament recognized as genocide the controversial massacres of Armenians in the early 1900s during the dissolution years of Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. Turkey, a NATO ally, accused the French government of not doing enough to stop the legislation and retaliated by scrapping a number of joint projects, mainly in the lucrative defense industry sector, and recalling its ambassador from Paris.

Military officials here said the visit was designed to relaunch military cooperation between Paris and Ankara, but cautioned that this would happen only gradually. The two sides are also expected to discuss EU defense policies, which have met Turkish objections, as well as the situation in Afghanistan and in Iraq, which many see as a possible future target of the US anti-terrorism campaign. The ties between Turkey and France have already shown signs of improvement.

Turkey's ambassador returned to Paris in May and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine paid a visit to Ankara in July. But Vedrine was openly told that Turks remained bitter over the genocide law and that sanctions against French companies would continue. In December, however, Turkey opened talks with French defense company Thales Avionics -- formerly Thomson-CSF -- for the installation of electronic systems on Turkish army and police aircraft, in a sign that military cooperation was being restored.

Turkey categorically rejects claims of an Armenian genocide, saying that around 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in internal fighting in the dissolution years of the empire. Armenians, however, maintain that 1.5 million people died in orchestrated massacres.

6. - AFP - "Turkey urges Iraq to end arms stand-off to escape US wrath":

ANKARA

Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit called on neighbouring Iraq Thursday to comply with United Nations resolutions and allow the return of arms inspectors to evade the wrath of the United States. In a speech to his MPs in parliament, Ecevit said that during his official visit to Washington last week, US President George W. Bush had expressed his determination to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"President Bush clearly said that he cannot stand Saddam Hussein and would work to rescue Iraq from him," Ecevit said, according to Anatolia news agency. "I hope Saddam heeds this important message. There is no point in him (Saddam) pursuing his meaningless resistance against the world," Ecevit said. Baghad has consistently refused to allow the return of arms inspectors, who pulled out of the country on the eve of a joint US-British strike in December 1998, and rejected a 1999 UN resolution to lift the 11-year-old sanctions in return for such a move.

Last week, Bush issued his latest warning to Saddam to open his country to arms inspectors or face the consequences of his action. Ecevit said Thursday that the US administration did not have a definite plan to get rid of Saddam, but would first opt for "diplomatic means" rather

than a military operation. "The door is open to find a solution through diplomatic means. This is hope-inspiring," the prime minister added. Ecevit underlined that the US president had pledged to consult with Turkey over a decision involving Ankara's southern neighbour and avoid any moves which might harm Turkey.

"Due to Turkey's geographical position, it is not possible to carry out a military strike without our knowledge and our contribution," he said. "I have no doubt that the US will hold a very productive consultation process with us," he added. Since the September 11 attacks in the United States, Turkey, the only mainly-Muslim member of NATO, has opposed extending the anti-terrorist drive, especially to Iraq.

Turkey says destabilizing Iraq could create on its border an independent Kurdish state in mountainous northern Iraq, which has been under the control of two Kurdish factions since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. Such a state could in turn fan anti-Ankara sentiment among separatist-minded Kurds living mainly in Turkey's southeast, where Kurdish rebels have waged a 15-year armed campaign against Ankara.