30
July 2002
2. “Turkish MPs demand early poll”, the Turkish parliament has lodged a formal request for early elections after a string of resignations plunged the government into crisis.
3. “Local elections reveal Turkey's political picture”, local elections held in the Marmara region town of Eregli on Sunday, revealed the political panorama of the Turkish political scene, while the country has already entered an election mood.
4. “Deputy Speaker of the Turkish Parliament warns that Cyprus will have the fate of Hatay if Cyprus accedes to the EU”, there is no doubt that regardless of which government is in power, Turkey's policies on the Cyprus issue will never change.
5. “Kurds Savour a New, and Endangered, Golden Age”, in the northern territory, a Switzerland-size crescent covering about a tenth of Iraq, the Kurds have come as close as ever to their centuries-old dream of building their own nation.
6. “Turk Faces Jail for Kicking Flag Balloons”, a Turkish singer and chat-show hostess faces up to six months in jail for kicking a balloon decorated with the Turkish flag.
Dear reader,
Due to the holiday time our "Flash Bulletin" will not be forwarded to email addresses from August 1, 2002 until August 25, 2002. It can be viewed, however, in the internet at www.flash-bulletin.de as usual.
1. – Reuters – “Turkey's Kurdish party sees no ban before polls”:
ANKARA / 29 July 2002
The head of Turkey's only legal Kurdish party says a top court will
put off a ruling on whether to ban the group to ensure free and fair
elections likely to be held in November.
"Shutting down a party in the middle of an election period would overshadow the whole process," Murat Bozlak, chairman of the People's Democracy Party, or HADEP, told Reuters.
"The Constitutional Court must agree to postpone a decision in our case until after elections to avoid the possibility of injustice."
The court is weighing charges that HADEP acts as a front for the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), blamed by Ankara for the deaths of more than 30,000 people in its 17-year-long fight for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey.
The case nears a verdict as Turkey gears up for snap polls.
Parliament began debate on Monday on holding elections in November after the fragile three-party coalition was frayed by sensitive human rights reforms, including greater cultural rights for Kurds, needed to fulfil European Union criteria.
A ban on HADEP would damage efforts to begin entry talks with the EU, which has called on Turkey to drop the case.
Turkey bars political parties from setting up along ethnic or religious lines and has shut down more than 20 parties since the 1960s. In a drive to meet some EU standards, Turkey amended its constitution last year to limit the grounds for closure.
"Our case is the first test of the constitutional amendment that has made party closures extremely difficult," Bozlak said in the Friday interview.
"Regardless of elections, we don't expect the (court) to ban us.
THOUGHT BAN?
If HADEP is banned, members will still push for wider rights for the country's 12 million Kurds, said Bozlak, who faces up to 22 years in prison on charges related to the closure case.
"Why are we closing parties that have millions of people behind them? This amounts to banning the thoughts of millions."
HADEP won less than the 10 percent of the vote needed to enter parliament in 1999, despite drawing as much as 70 percent of votes in parts of the predominantly Kurdish southeast and clinching several mayoral offices there.
It appears set to fare better in the coming polls, and Bozlak said his leftist party hasn't ruled out aligning with another party to clear the vote threshold.
HADEP's ascendancy has also roused fear in some circles.
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has repeatedly warned HADEP is a "separatist" group that threatens stability.
"HADEP has been set up according to the law and is as legal as the prime minister's party," Bozlak said.
The powerful military, which sometimes lends a "guiding hand" in Turkey's often fractious politics, has also expressed worry over HADEP's popularity in the southeast.
But with fighting between the PKK and Turkish soldiers all but over, Bozlak said he has seen curbs relaxed in the southeast, allowing HADEP to campaign in towns and cities where they weren't allowed to organise in previous elections.
Ankara has said it will lift emergency rule in two southeastern provinces by the end of the month and renew it for a last four months in two other provinces.
Parliament could debate the EU reforms, including changes to restrictions on the Kurdish language, this week after voting on snap polls.
"It's a major step. The language issue is even on
the agenda ...Compared to yesterday there are amazing changes in Turkey,
and we think it's going to continue getting better," he said. 
2. – BBC – “Turkish MPs demand early poll”:
ISTANBUL / 29 July 2002
The Turkish parliament has lodged a formal request for early elections
after a string of resignations plunged the government into crisis.
A constitutional commission has now two days to respond to the motion - backed by a clear majority of MPs.
The driving force behind the call has been Devlet Bahceli, leader of right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) - the largest party in parliament following the mass defections from Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's party.
The ailing prime minister would like the poll to be held as scheduled in 2004, warning that anything earlier will harm the economy and slow Turkey's bid for European Union membership.
It is very unclear what kind of political constellation the autumn polls would produce.
After 18 months of economic slump, the three-party governing coalition is deeply unpopular and could be wiped out.
Stubborn resistance
If the request for an early poll is approved by the commission, the issue will be brought to a parliamentary vote.
But there is no guarantee that it will be formally passed by the house.
Two parties want to tie a vote on early elections into a vote on reforms designed to facilitate Turkey's negotiations for EU membership.
The reforms include replacing the death penalty with life in prison and granting greater rights to the country's estimated 12 million Kurds.
The MHP is opposed to both of these.
Western fears
However early elections are widely seen by the deputies as an exit from the political turmoil which started in early May when Ecevit began to skip his official duties due to his ill health - effectively paralysing the government.
A string of MPs and ministers - including some of his closest allies - left the party and the cabinet in protest at his refusal to stand down and make way for a successor.
The turmoil in Ankara - a key Western ally - has led to unease in Europe and the United States at a time when Washington is reported to be preparing a military strike against Turkey's southern neighbour, Iraq.
There is some speculation that the next set of polls could
benefit the pro-Islamic Justice and Development party, which regularly
tops opinion polls.
3. - Turkish Daily News – “Local elections reveal Turkey's political picture”:
ISTANBUL / 30 July 2002
Local elections held in the Marmara region town of Eregli on Sunday,
revealed the political panorama of the Turkish political scene, while
the country has already entered an election mood.
According to the unofficial results of the local elections, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came in first with 605 votes, while the Republican People's Party (CHP) ranked second with 449 votes.
Junior coalition partner, the Motherland Party (ANAP), and main coalition partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), followed.
Meanwhile, the other coalition partner, the Democratic Left Party (DSP), was only able to get 52 votes.
Recent public opinion polls have revealed that the AKP would emerge from the ballot box as the number one party, while the CHP would be the number two party, if elections were held today.
Turkey has been debating snap polls for months, but after the prime minister and leader of the DSP fell ill in May, debates reached a peak. After MHP leader Devlet Bahceli called for early elections to be held on Nov. 3, to end the political uncertainty caused by the premier's poor health and the divisions within the government that have weakened the country's fragile economy, elections became inevitable.
However, according to the public opinion polls, there is a slim chance that the members of the three-way coalition government will pass the 10 percent national threshold necessary for a political party to enter Parliament.
Meanwhile, the DSP, which was the party with the largest grouping in Parliament, witnessed a split, decreasing its chances of success in the elections.
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, on Monday, repeated his warnings that the polls could throw the crisis-hit country into greater turmoil.
Earlier this month, the 77-year-old leader agreed with his two coalition partners to hold snap polls, but he has since insisted that general elections on Nov. 3 could damage the economy, impede a European Union-inspired reform effort and bring pro-Islamist and Kurdish parties to power.
Ecevit has also expressed concerns about a power vacuum in Ankara, as speculation mounts that the United States could launch an offensive against neighboring Iraq with the aim of ousting President Saddam Hussein.
Meanwhile, the MHP has been trying to regain the support of its grassroots, which in the 1999 elections carried the party to Parliament as the senior coalition partner. Currently, the MHP has the largest group in Parliament.
The MHP has set its election strategy on an anti-EU policy.
According to various public opinion polls conducted by various institutions, some 40 percent are against Turkey's membership to the 15-member bloc.
The MHP has been eying this 40 percent in order to increase its vote capacity.
In contrast to the MHP, junior coalition partner ANAP is playing the EU card to increase its vote capacity. ANAP, in previous elections, has always successfully entered Parliament and has served as either a coalition partner or as the main opposition. For the first time in its history, it faces the risk of not being able to enter Parliament. Supporting Turkey's EU bid is their strongest card in the upcoming elections.
AKP and CHP
Despite the fact that the majority of the existing political parties are facing the risk of staying outside Parliament after the elections, it is almost certain that both the AKP and the CHP will be the winners in the election.
AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces judicial hardships and it is still uncertain if he will be able to enter the elections due to his political ban. There are currently two ongoing cases against him regarding his assets. However, the AKP grassroots seem to be unaffected by Erdogan's judicial problems.
Meanwhile, the CHP, which was not successful in entering
Parliament in the 1999 elections, is increasing its vote capacity. It
is rumored that it will be the only center-left party in the next Parliament.
4. – Cyprus Press and Information Office – “Deputy Speaker of the Turkish Parliament warns that Cyprus will have the fate of Hatay if Cyprus accedes to the EU”:
Istanbul ORTADOGU newspaper (25.07.02) publishes the following commentary by the Deputy Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, Mr. Murat Sokmenoglu, under the title: "Cyprus on the anniversary of Hatay's joining Turkey":
"Certain expansionist and colonialist states once tried to use their divide and rule strategy against [the Turkish province of] Hatay, yet thanks to Ataturk's diplomatic genius and the patriotism and heroism of the people of Hatay, these states' efforts came to naught. Despite all pressures and intrigues, Hatay joined Turkey as a result of a decision made by the National Assembly of the State of Hatay on June 23, 1939 after a struggle that lasted some 20 years. Just as France and the French-controlled Syria cherished hopes of annexing Hatay in the 1920s, so the EU today hankers after an arrangement in Cyprus involving its domination by the Greek Cypriots.
Moreover, the EU is accusing a hero like Rauf Denktas, who has devoted his entire life to the cause of freedom and independence for the Turkish Cypriots, of displaying an uncompromising stance in the Cyprus negotiations. It should not be forgotten that the Turkish people, who won their War of Independence thanks to their sense of national solidarity, are powerful and adamant enough not to consent to a de facto solution in Cyprus. This has been emphasized several times in declarations issued by the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the President's Office, and the higher echelons of the Turkish military.
There is no doubt that regardless of which government is in power, Turkey's policies on the Cyprus issue will never change. Turkey has repeatedly and clearly expressed its determination to protect its interests in Cyprus, as witness Commander of the Land Forces Hilmi Ozkok's remark at the Peace 2002 Seminar held in Cyprus recently that the Turkish army is ready to deal with possible developments concerning Cyprus notwithstanding its support for peace initiatives and efforts to introduce a solution and Former Commander of the War Academy Nahit Senogul's statement that Turkey regards Cyprus as its "windpipe" in the Mediterranean and that it will not allow anyone to "squeeze" it.
In spite of this, the EU administration and particularly [EU Enlargement Commissioner Gunter] Verheugen are virtually trying to blackmail Turkey by continuously talking about admitting the Greek Cypriot side to EU membership. This indicates that it is not realistic to maintain that the Cyprus issue should be treated separately from our relations with the EU. Turkey is under pressure from the EU to step in to introduce a solution to the Cyprus issue, to give up the arguments and policies it has used till now, and to consent to the Greek Cypriots' demands. The EU simply does not understand that no lasting solutions can ever be achieved without an arrangement where it is recognized that there are two different communities on the island, the Turkish Cypriots are given a guarantee of security and acknowledged as politically equal to the Greek side.
The EU is pretending not to be aware of `TRNC President/
Rauf Denktas' sincere efforts to effect a settlement. It is brazen and
hypocritical enough to pretend to be unaware of the Greek Cypriot administration's
uncompromising attitude and to try to create discord among the Turkish
Cypriots and manipulate the Cypriot youth into believing that Denktas
is obstructing the negotiations. The EU simply has to give up this attitude.
Otherwise, it will have to face the possibility of developments similar
to those that happened in Hatay in 1939. "
5. - The New York Times – “Kurds Savour a New, and Endangered, Golden Age”:
ESHKHABOR - IRAQ / 28 July 2002 / by JOHN F. BURNS
"Welcome to free Kurdistan, my friend!" cried the grinning
boatman, Adnan, as he pulled away from the Syrian side of the Tigris
River in the converted rowboat that serves as the ferry to the other
Iraq, the one outside the dismal grip of Saddam Hussein.
The boat itself, powered by a spluttering engine and clearing the water by only inches, serves as a metaphor for the self-governing domain the Kurds have established in northern Iraq. The craft's patched-together fragility, as well as the pervasive geniality of the boatman and his assistants, captures much of what the Kurds have accomplished in the past 10 years.
The Iraqi Kurds' domain, at the meeting point of Syria, Iraq and Turkey, is a far cry from the Iraq controlled by Mr. Hussein. To enter that Iraq, south of the no-flight zone patrolled by American and British warplanes that have kept Iraqi troops and authority from the Kurdish region since 1991, is to encounter sullen warnings, the menace of border officials and the darkness that Mr. Hussein's 23-year rule has cast across the rest of the country.
In the northern territory, a Switzerland-size crescent covering about a tenth of Iraq, the Kurds have come as close as ever to their centuries-old dream of building their own nation. Hemmed in by a longstanding resolve among Arabs, Persians and Turks to deny the 25 million Kurds of this region a state of their own, the Kurds of Iraq are savoring their freedoms, yet deeply uneasy about new political crosscurrents swirling across the territory.
Never truly secure as long as their domain exists outside international law and is unrecognized by the Iraqi Constitution, the Kurds are faced now with a new problem growing out of President Bush's vow to oust Mr. Hussein. In effect, the American plan proposes to upend the Iraqi chessboard, and many Kurds fear that, whatever happens, they may lose much of the autonomy they now enjoy.
For now, though, the trip that starts at Peshkhabor is relaxed in a way that Mr. Hussein's Iraq has never been. The only threat is a few miles downstream, where the Iraqi ruler's armored columns maintain a brooding vigil, broken occasionally by sniper fire and mortar shells that kill and maim Kurdish farmers, smugglers and others who enter the neutral zone between the Kurdish front-line fighters known as peshmergas (meaning "those who face death") and Iraqi troops.
In the territory, a mostly Kurdish population of 3.6 million people, about a sixth of Iraq's population, lives amid a landscape of stunning beauty: to the south, the ancient cities of Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaimaniya lying on the rim of the oil-rich desert; to the north, the great plain rising into folded foothills and soaring mountains, carpeted with golden wheat fields, dark woods and a blaze of wildflowers in red and blue and yellow.
It is a remarkable if improbable place, a sort of dreamland for the Kurds. Seeking precedents in their long history of repression, they cite Kurdish principalities that sprang up in this region between the 16th and 19th centuries, when Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by Turks. But even those distant times, the Kurds say, pale beside what exists today. Everywhere in the north, Kurds refer to the present as their golden age.
They rule a region that is 250 miles wide and at places 125 miles deep, bordered by Syria to the west, Turkey to the north, and Iran to the east. Within these boundaries, the Kurds say, they have created freedoms unknown in Iraq since the state's founding in 1921: the foundations for a civil society, that, they say, exists to the same degree nowhere else in the Arab-dominated world.
The closest parallel, these Kurds say, is Israel - a country many Kurds strongly support, even though they are mostly Muslims, because of a sense of affinity with the Jews' long quest for a homeland and because of a shared sense of the peril posed by Mr. Hussein. The parallel is extended to the Palestinians, who, many Kurds say, achieved much less with the autonomy granted to them after the Oslo accords of 1993 than Kurds have achieved here.
"An idea is born here: The Middle East could be different," said Barham Salih, 41, a British-educated Muslim who heads the government of one of the Kurds' political entities, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the territory's eastern half. To the west, a separate regional government operates under the control of a rival group, the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Carving Out a Free Zone
In both regions, there are opposition parties and dozens of free-ranging newspapers and satellite television channels, as well as international telephone calls and Internet cafes where people are free to visit any Web site they like. All this is banned or restricted in Mr. Hussein's Iraq, where, for example, Internet cafes are open only to those with police permits, and then only for access to approved Web sites.
In their "liberated territory," the ruling Kurdish groups allow even Mr. Hussein's state-controlled newspapers to be sold and Baghdad's television channels to be shown, on the principle, as one Kurdish official explained it, that "it gives our people a chance to laugh at Saddam's propaganda, where once they would have cried."
The Kurdish-controlled territory is notable, too, for the absence of the apparatus of repression that has turned Mr. Hussein's Iraq into a terror state. The old secret police buildings - testaments to the torture, rape and killing by Mr. Hussein's enforcers that have been chronicled in scores of Western human rights reports - sit abandoned now, or have been turned to benign uses.
The Kurds have no special courts, and claim to have no political prisoners.
In this Iraq, the United States and Britain are hailed as liberators, for the daily patrolling of Kurdish skies that has cost the two countries nearly $10 billion to maintain. When children here wave at aircraft tracing vapor trails high above, they are saluting the powers that banished, with the no-flight zone, the terrors of Mr. Hussein. But the Kurds also fear that they are powers now pushing them toward a new confrontation that could threaten all they have gained.
When President Bush began saying this year that Mr. Hussein "has got to go," because of intelligence reports that he continues to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that could be handed to terrorist groups, he effectively placed the Kurds on notice that the days of self-rule, or at least the days of operating outside Iraq's political structures, might be ending.
In recent months, groups of intelligence agents, military advisers and government officials from the United States and Britain have been making clandestine visits to the Kurdish-controlled territory. Many of those trips have been in the unmarked black helicopters that fly important visitors on secret flights from Turkey. At secret locations, Kurdish officials say, these shadowy visitors have been mapping out ways the Kurds can assist in the overthrow of Mr. Hussein.
So far, Kurdish officials say, they have been given no details of the Americans' plans beyond being told that there will be no attack before next year. This tallies with reports from Washington, where the Pentagon is said to have concluded that a military offensive, involving as many as 250,000 American troops along with bases in as many as eight neighboring countries, will take at least that long to prepare. At the same time, the Central Intelligence Agency is said to be exploring ways of toppling Mr. Hussein by a military coup.
Few people would have more reason than Iraqi Kurds to hail the demise of Mr. Hussein, who attacked them with poison gas when they allied themselves with Iran during the two nations' war in the 1980's, then killed thousands of other Kurds in the crackdown that followed a failed Kurdish uprising after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Few conversations here end without a tally of the family members and friends numbered among the dead.
The Enemy of Their Enemy
But as the Kurds see it, Mr. Bush is now asking them to bear the greatest risks. Concerns about an offensive have a personal edge: Many Kurds are deeply bitter that the first President Bush encouraged a Kurdish uprising against Mr. Hussein immediately after the gulf war, then failed to support it until a million Kurds had fled to Turkey. That exodus prompted the United Nations to declare a safe haven for the returning refugees, and the United States and Britain to impose the no-flight zone.
The fear is that a new American war could founder, leaving the Kurds exposed to the full might of Iraqi reprisals as American troops withdrew; or that Mr. Hussein might make a pre-emptive strike into the Kurdish-controlled areas to deny the Americans use of the Kurdish area as a base.
"Saddam is still the same; with Bush, only the `W' is different from the father," said Fadil Mirani, a member of a hard-line group within the leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party that is most wary of Washington's plans.
"We don't have the luxury of the policy wonks in Washington," said Mr. Salih, who last year completed 10 years as the Patriotic Union's representative in Washington, with close links to many of the C.I.A., Pentagon and State Department planners now working on Mr. Bush's strategy. "They can afford to make mistakes; we cannot. We live here; they do not."
Just as keenly, the Kurds fear that the very "regime change" that Mr. Bush advocates could replace one dictator with another. Washington has always favored a strongman government in Baghdad, Kurds say, as a counterweight to the Islamic radicalism of Iran's ayatollahs and as the kind of leadership capable of holding Iraq and its fractious Shiite, Kurdish and Arab populations together.
Kurds presume that a new Iraqi ruler would come from the same Sunni Arab minority as Mr. Hussein, Iraq's traditional ruling class, and would be far from certain to support the kind of autonomy the Kurds now enjoy. Leaders of the Arab-dominated opposition to Mr. Hussein, many of them living in Britain and the United States, have mostly been vague in response to the Kurds' demands that they commit themselves to Kurdish autonomy within a democratic federal system for a future Iraq.
So anguished have the Kurds become that they have subordinated some of the rivalry between the ruling parties and presented the Bush administration with what they say is a blunt message: guarantee our freedoms in a future Iraq, or count us out.
"Saddam is a man of infinite cruelty, he is an evil man," said Hamida Fandi, a 70-year-old veteran of Kurdish guerrilla campaigns who is the defense minister in Erbil. "But however evil he may be, the Kurdish people cannot be expected to sacrifice their freedoms to America's desire to eliminate him."
But other senior Kurdish leaders have argued for unequivocal support for the bid to topple Mr. Hussein, figuring it will go ahead with or without them. "What we have here is a bubble, a comfortable bubble to be sure, but still a bubble," one official in Sulaimaniya said. "We are utterly dependent for our survival on the United States and Britain. So if we have a chance to join the Americans in getting rid of Saddam and building a new, democratic Iraq, we must take it."
Most Kurds, however, seem to see the status quo - Mr. Hussein in power in Baghdad, Western air power keeping him at bay - as their best bet.
In private, most acknowledge, as do their leaders, that the age-old dream of a Kurdish state encompassing minorities in Syria, Turkey and Iran, as well as Iraq, is foreclosed by those states' implacable opposition and by an American veto. Failing that goal, they say that the freedoms of the past decade may be the most they can attain.
"Of course we wish we had a chance to have an independent state, but we have accepted our fate, that we are condemned to live as part of the state called Iraq," one top Kurdish leader said.
If few of the Kurds' old enemies in Baghdad, Tehran and Ankara are ready to believe that resignation, Washington evidently is, judging by remarks made in Istanbul two weeks ago by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the Bush administration's leading hawks on Iraq. While urging Turkey's support for Mr. Hussein's overthrow, Mr. Wolfowitz in effect argued that the country should abandon its suspicions about the Iraqi Kurds. "A separate Kurdish state in the north would be destabilizing to Turkey, and would be unacceptable to the United States," he said.
"Fortunately, the Kurds of northern Iraq increasingly seem to understand this fact," he said, "and understand the importance of thinking of themselves as Iraqis who will participate fully in the political life of a future democratic Iraq."
Still, many Kurds would prefer not to take on Mr. Hussein. Those who take this view cite an equilibrium - brittle, but surprisingly enduring through the past five years - that has developed between the Kurdish territory and Mr. Hussein's Iraq. The relationship has become as much one of cooperation as confrontation.
A Strange Coexistence
The proof is available at crossing points like Chamchamal, on the desert floor about 40 miles outside Sulaimaniya. Here, Kurds travel south to Baghdad or Kirkuk, an oil city, for medical treatment that is not available in the Kurdish region, or to trade truckloads of fresh fruit and vegetables. Northbound, traders in battered trucks and cars carry auto parts, furniture, toys, household equipment and a host of other products.
Both sides charge customs duties, and bribes are common. Kurdish officials check northbound Iraqi travelers against lists of known Iraqi agents. "We Kurds will never trust the Iraqis, as long as Saddam is in power," said Latif Hamid, a border guard checking and rechecking the identity cards of Arab Iraqis arriving at Chamchamal. "We can never forget what they have done."
But identity checks aside, it is mostly an open frontier for anybody on either side who dares to cross it.
To the west, tanker trucks loaded with Iraqi oil run north to Turkey, cutting through the Kurdish region. In one 15-minute period, a traveler counted more than 60 trucks heading up the highway from Mosul to the Turkish border, part of a traffic that United Nations officials estimate at 1,500 tankers a day. This traffic runs in defiance of United Nations sanctions that place all Iraqi oil sales under United Nations supervision, with the revenues to be spent on things like food, medicines and reparations to Kuwait.
For Mr. Hussein, the illicit oil yields huge sums - as much as $2 billion a year, by some estimates. The money sustains the pampered lifestyle of the Baghdad elite, and Western intelligence agencies believe that it also pays for some of Mr. Hussein's weapons programs.
But the oil traffic is no less a bonanza for the Kurds, who receive an Iraqi toll on every truck. Before Baghdad cut its oil production sharply this year as part of the dispute over the United Nations sanctions, the tolls brought Kurds as much as $1 million a day.
Some Kurdish officials believe it has suited Mr. Hussein to help the Kurdish territories survive. He has enough problems, they say, without having to govern the restive Kurds because he needs to concentrate on his power base - the Kirkuk oil fields just south of the Kurdish territory, the Iraqi heartland around Baghdad, and the rich oil fields of the south, around Basra. "He gave a part to save the whole," Mr. Abdurrahman said. "But if he'd foreseen how successful we've been, he wouldn't have done it."
Now, Kurds say, with almost two-thirds of the Kurdish population under the age of 25 and increasingly accustomed to their freedoms, any Iraqi government would have trouble curtailing them.
But sheltered as they are from Mr. Hussein, the Kurds seldom criticize him openly, wary that he might one day return. Although Mr. Hussein is loathed, said Mr. Salih, of the Patriotic Union, "he remains our constant shadow."
"When we turn around, he is always there," he
said. "The last thing we want to do is to provoke him, and invite
another onslaught against our people."
6. - Reuters - "Turk Faces Jail for Kicking Flag Balloons":
ISTANBUL / 29 July 2002
A Turkish singer and chat-show hostess faces up to six months in jail for kicking a balloon decorated with the Turkish flag.
Prosecutors charged Hulya Avsar and four others Friday with breaches of the Turkish Flag Law after she used scores of red balloons covered with the white star and crescent national emblem during an episode of her popular TV show.
The state-run Anatolian news agency said prosecutors were demanding between three and six months jail for the offence, deemed an insult to national pride. The trial has not started.
Not only does the law prohibit using the Turkish flag on clothing or objects -- clauses widely breached in practice -- it also says it must never be placed on the ground.
In video evidence used by prosecutors, Avsar kicks one
of the balloons out of her way as she strides across the stage.