27 May 2002

1. "Ban on PKK in Germany will be extended to KADEK: Schily", Radical Islamist groups in Germany are also coming under increased scrutiny.

2. "Kurdish conditions for helping America to change Iraq’s regime", from his compound overlooking Arbil, Massoud Barzani, leader of the stronger of the two Kurdish factions running northern Iraq, feels the weight of an approaching, and crucial, decision.

3. "Turkey keen to join EU but reforms meet resistance", more than four in five Turks want to join the European Union but around half want to do so without making concessions on sensitive issues, according to a survey published on Friday.

4. "Turkey: Secular Country Encourages Women To Take Greater Part In Religious Life", reversing centuries of tradition, Turkish authorities have decided that women will be allowed to participate more actively in the country's public religious life, arguing they should be granted responsibilities equal to those of men before Islam.

5. "Turkish prime minister target of calls for change", but some see Ecevit as only force of unity.

6. "HADEP complains about increasing pressure after election rumors", the People's Democracy Party (HADEP) claimed that oppressions over their party and party officials have been increased after the election rumors came to agenda.

1. - NTV / NSNBC -"Ban on PKK in Germany will be extended to KADEK: Schily":

Radical Islamist groups in Germany are also coming under increased scrutiny

24 May 2002

The ban on the activities of the PKK in Germany will be extended to its successor, the German Interior Minister said on Friday.

Berlin’s Interior Minister Otto Schily said that ban on the PKK would also be expanded to cover KADEK the new name given to the organisation after a recent decision taken by the outlawed Organisation’s leadership.

Schily made the announcement at the presentation of Germany’s Constitution Protection Report for 2001, which documented the activities of foreign rightwing or leftist radical groups active in Germany. In reference to PKK Schily said, “There are PKK efforts to become a political party. However, its armed struggle continues within Turkey borders. This is why the ban here will stay in place.”

The PKK was continuing to make concerted efforts to have the ban lifted and was still collecting financial donations, according to the document. The report also stated that PKK, through the MEDYA TV network and the newspaper Özgür Politika, was spreading its political views.

The reports also cited the radical Islamist groups active in Germany and said they were trying to implement the Islamic Sharia code even in Germany. These groups were also under tight monitoring and some had been banned, the report said.

2. - The Economist - "Kurdish conditions for helping America to change Iraq’s regime":

ARBIL / 25 May 2002

FROM his compound overlooking Arbil, Massoud Barzani, leader of the stronger of the two Kurdish factions running northern Iraq, feels the weight of an approaching, and crucial, decision. He and his arch-rival, Jalal Talabani, who controls the eastern part of the Kurdish enclave, had just returned from meeting American officials in Germany to discuss the Kurds’ possible contribution to an Iraqi “regime-changing” operation. Mr Barzani is determined not to take his people into anything “that fails to guarantee their security and their rights as equal citizens in a federal, democratic Iraq.”

With some 50,000 men under arms and controlling an area roughly the size of Switzerland, the Iraqi Kurds are the strongest opposition group inside Iraq. But, unlike the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, they lack sophisticated weaponry and they are encircled by unremittingly hostile neighbours. With Iraqi tanks parked just ten kilometres outside Arbil, it is easy to understand why Mr Barzani and many of Iraq’s 3.6m Kurds are jittery.

They remember what happened when George Bush senior exhorted them to rebel against Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf war and then failed to support them. They have far more to lose today. Protected by American and British air power, and to the consternation of Turkey and Iran (both of which have bigger Kurdish minorities than Iraq), the Iraqi Kurds are in the process of building a modern country.

From various sources of income, including a share of Iraq’s oil-for-food deal and revenue from Iraq’s illicit border trade with Turkey, dirt roads have been transformed into silky highways, hundreds of schools and hospitals have been renovated, and others have been built from scratch. Iran, Turkey and Syria keep physical access to the enclave under strict control, but the Internet and satellite communications are helping the Kurds to overcome their forced isolation.

“We are experiencing a Kurdish renaissance,” boasts Saeed Barzinji, a French-trained law professor who runs Salahaddin University in Arbil. But Barham Saleh, a senior official working for Mr Talabani, knows that “We cannot envisage a free Kurdistan...it is our fate to live within the borders of Iraq. Unless we have a democratic government in Baghdad, our hard-earned gains will be destroyed.”

As speculation about American intervention grows, Kurds living in America and Europe, who have helped spearhead the region’s construction boom, are shying away from further investment. And aid agencies give warning that beneath the veneer of budding prosperity, the Kurdish economy remains very fragile, largely dependent on UN handouts. Military action of any kind could result in a humanitarian crisis for which no one is prepared.

Kurdish leaders seem to be convinced that sooner or later the Bush administration will remove the Hussein regime, and that they themselves will go along with the plans. But apart from the renovation of a few old Iraqi military airfields, there are no signs of any preparation. The Kurds are more interested in extracting a high price from America, including support for a future federal arrangement as the condition for any help they might give.

Turkey sees things differently American officials have held off from making any such pledge. They have two reasons. First, the Iraqi Kurds will have to work out their future status with their fellow Iraqis. Second, Turkey, America’s good ally, has given warning that any hint of Kurdish independence in northern Iraq would be met with a military response.

Over the past decade, America has looked the other way as Turkish troops made regular forays into the Kurdish enclave in pursuit of Turkey’s Kurdish rebels from the now supposedly defunct Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Some 250 Turkish military men are permanently stationed in the enclave, partly in order to arm and train a Turcomen militia based in Mr Barzani’s area. The presence of Turcomens—there is anything between 800,000 and 2m in Iraq—serves as a pretext for Turkey’s intervention to “protect” its Turkic cousins.

Relations between the Turks and Mr Barzani have sharply deteriorated in recent months, mainly over the latter’s refusal to continue to collaborate in military operations. Turkey has hit back by more or less halting the illegal import of Iraqi diesel through Kurdish-controlled areas since February, a move that has had a severe impact on the local economy. In addition, Turkey has been providing modest aid to Mr Talabani in a bid to dilute Mr Barzani’s strength. This, in turn, has prompted Iran, another difficult neighbour, to indulge in its own trouble-making by allowing a murderous Islamic group, Ansar al-Islam, to operate in the impenetrable mountain terrain near the Iranian border.

The encouraging news is that the rival Kurdish factions appear to be resisting attempts by external powers to pitch them back into fratricidal fighting. This came to an end in 1996, after Mr Barzani invited Mr Hussein’s troops to drive out Mr Talabani’s forces from Arbil. While they were at it, the Iraqis also killed hundreds of Iraqi Arabs linked to a CIA-backed opposition group. While there is little likelihood of the Kurdish leaders returning to the power-sharing agreement sealed by their first and only parliamentary election in 1992, co-operation between them is growing.

They are speaking to the Americans largely with one voice. “We Kurds have never been this strong,” said Hoshyar Zebari, an aide to Mr Barzani. “It is time to stop being pawns in other people’s games, to stand united and think big.”

3. - Reuters - "Turkey keen to join EU but reforms meet resistance":

ANKARA / 25 May 2002 / by Claudia Parsons

More than four in five Turks want to join the European Union but around half want to do so without making concessions on sensitive issues, according to a survey published on Friday.

The EU made Turkey a candidate in 1999 but has said it must meet strict conditions on human rights and democracy.

Key issues are abolishing the death penalty and improving rights for the some 12 million Kurds in Turkey by lifting bans on education and broadcasting in the Kurdish language.

A survey published in Friday's Sabah newspaper showed that in response to the question of whether Turkey should join the EU, 32.4 percent said "Yes" while 49.8 percent said "Yes, but without making concessions".

Asked whether Turkey should scrap the death penalty, 39.8 percent said it should be abolished completely, 14.1 percent said crimes of "terrorism" should be excluded and 13.5 percent said only jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan should be excluded.

Asked about lifting restrictions on the Kurdish language, 50.1 percent said Kurdish broadcasting should remain banned and 39.4 percent said the ban on education in Kurdish should stay.

The nationalist wing of Turkey's three party coalition government has never been comfortable with moves to ease the bans and to abolish the death penalty, which it sees as threatening the unity of the state and caving in to separatists of the outlawed PKK.

The split came to the fore again this week with reports that Nationalist Action Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli was blocking plans to accelerate reforms to meet the EU criteria so that a date can be set for negotiations later this year.

Turkish newspapers reported on Friday that President Ahmet Necdet Sezer had decided to call a meeting of party leaders to try to broker an agreement to push ahead with the reforms.

This year is seen as crucial for Turkey's candidacy as the EU is due to decide by the end of the year on accepting a wave of Eastern European candidates, probably in 2004.

Turkey has no chance of being among the first wave of new EU members but diplomats say that if it does not make enough progress to at least start negotiations, the process may break down.

"Not only the president, but many people agree that the EU issue has reached a very critical point," columnist Murat Yetkin wrote in Radikal newspaper.

Bahceli insisted this week that he was not opposed to European Union membership. However, he reiterated that the EU should listen to Turkey's concerns on sensitive issues.

He said Turkey had fulfilled its pledge to abolish the death penalty for all but crimes of "terrorism, war or near war".

4. - Radio Free Europe - "Turkey: Secular Country Encourages Women To Take Greater Part In Religious Life":

Reversing centuries of tradition, Turkish authorities have decided that women will be allowed to participate more actively in the country's public religious life, arguing they should be granted responsibilities equal to those of men before Islam. The move appears to be an attempt on the part of religious authorities in the predominantly Muslim but strictly secular country to catch up with transformations that have been stirring in society for many years. It could also serve as a test for Turkey's social cohesiveness.

PRAGUE / 24 May 2002 / by Jean-Christophe Peuch

Religious authorities in predominantly Sunni Muslim Turkey have taken an unprecedented step by ruling that women should be allowed to participate in public religious life in the same way as men.

The decision was made at a four-day seminar earlier this month in Istanbul attended by religious clerics and university scholars. The Directorate for Religious Affairs, the state-controlled body that monitors Muslim communities in this secular country, made it public on 19 May.

Provisions of the new religious code state that women should be allowed to attend regular prayers in mosques along with men, although they will be required to stay in separate rooms. Likewise, the new regulation says women should be allowed to attend funeral services, but only if they stand behind men.

Although the public participation of women in Turkey's religious life has never been governed by written rules, female believers have been customarily kept from mosques and regular prayer meetings, effectively forced to perform religious rites at home.

Reversing centuries of tradition under which women were considered unfit to perform sacred rites during menstruation, the clerics and scholars also decided that women should be allowed to pray and read from the Koran during these times.

In comments published in the "Hurriyet" daily newspaper on 19 May, the head of the Directorate for Religious Affairs, Mehmet Nuri Yilmaz, said believers will remain free to follow the new rules or ignore them, but that clerics and priests will have to abide by them and answer all questions they might raise among the public.

Participants at the conference justified their decision by saying that "there is no legal, moral or social differences" between men and women and that Islam should grant them equal responsibilities. Such an assessment invalidates the traditional belief that the testimony given by one man to a religious court equals that of two women.

"Hurriyet" quoted Yasar Nuri Ozturk, the dean of the faculty of theology at Istanbul University, as describing some of the new provisions as revolutionary.

Nilufer Gole is a Turkish scholar who teaches sociology at the Paris-based School for Higher Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). She is the author of many books on women and religion in Middle Eastern societies, including "The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling."

Gole says that, if the decision to open mosque doors to women may be seen as revolutionary, it also meets a social demand: "This reform follows practices that have already been taking place and that have sometimes stirred public outcry, such as women reading prayers at funerals. Such practices are seen as illicit. They are banned under Islam, rather under Islamic rites. [This reform movement] began with women demanding the right to read funeral prayers on the front row, alongside men. This public debate on how to reform Islam has been going on for two or three years now."

Semih Vaner is a Turkish researcher at the Paris-based Center for International Studies and Research (CERI). He told RFE/RL that he, too, believes the Directorate for Religious Affairs decided to catch up with ongoing social changes that were most noticeable in urban areas: "I think there was a push in that direction which, to some extent, was limited to Istanbul, Ankara, and other major cities. But the Directorate [for Religious Affairs] did not seem to be shocked by such practices. In my view, [it] has simply decided to accompany this movement, but I doubt it was the initiator of the process. I believe there was a process in the making, that things were changing and that, simply, the Directorate for Religious Affairs chose not to oppose them."

Turkey has been a secular state since the proclamation of the republic in October 1923 and the subsequent abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Fearing a backlash by supporters of the Shariah, or Islamic law, Ataturk chose to give secularism a strong anticlerical character, banning religion from public life. His objective was not to abolish religion but rather to free his fellow countrymen from what he considered Islam's sometimes oppressive and backward-looking influence.

The democratization of Turkey's political life in the late 1940s allowed for some infringements on Ataturk's staunch secularist principles. That softening paved the way for a lift of a ban on religious education and the opening of training courses for preachers.

The rise of the leftist movement in the 1970s resulted in the political and military establishments becoming increasingly influenced by the so-called "Turkish-Islamic synthesis," an ideology that imparted to the Turkish nation a quasi-messianic mission against socialism and communism. This ideology, which culminated after the 1980 military coup, materialized in the opening of new mosques and religious schools throughout the country.

By contrast, the Turkish military -- which wields considerable influence on domestic policies -- adopted a radically different attitude over the past decade, pushing for a further "secularization" of Islam to counter the growing influence of Islamic parties.

CERI's Vaner believes the decision announced last week, which would not have been possible without the blessing of secular authorities, can also be seen as part of a strategy "to involve women further in politics through religion."

Yet, Gole argues that, even though the new regulation may appear to be a bid to force changes on society, it still meets the expectations of many Turkish women: "In my opinion, this reform represents a kind of unexpected convergence between secular women, who have always wanted to be allowed into mosques and occasionally join men for prayers; educated Islamic women who have made similar demands; and traditional women who, too, have strong religious feelings. There is here a new, previously unknown, convergence between these three different figures of [Turkish] woman."

Turkey's Islamic parties have not reacted yet to the publication of the new religious code -- a delay that could be explained by a political agenda focused on internal divisions and the prospect of early parliamentary elections following Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's recent illnesses.

Gole believes the way Islamic circles respond to the proposed religious liberalization will show whether the convergence she anticipates between the different types of Turkish women could help consolidate society. Otherwise, she argues, the consequences might be dramatic for the country: "Today we witness a tendency, among secular women, to respond to the rise of political Islam by showing that they can go to mosques and behave in a 'secular' way. To some extent, the religious space is having its sacred character taken away. On the other hand, Islamic women have started appropriating secular spaces such as parliament or universities, also sparking public outcry. So we will see whether the religious reform [adopted last week] will bring those two milieus closer or whether, on the contrary, it will create a gap between them and spark a new social conflict."

Participants at the Istanbul seminar chose not to address the sensitive issue of head scarves, which they said will be debated later.

Controversy over veils and Islamic head scarves have stirred Turkish society for most of the past two decades and culminated three years ago when Merve Kavakci, a deputy for the moderate Islamic Virtue Party, was evicted from parliament after a failed attempt to take her oath wearing a head scarf. Last year (22 June), the Constitutional Court cited the outcry she had caused when it ruled to ban Virtue for alleged antisecular activities.

Last December, prosecutors charged Kavakci with insulting the state and the military by publicly stating that Turkish women who wear head scarves and female students who demand the right to adorn Islamic headgear in classrooms are persecuted.

In the late 1920s, Ataturk announced the abolition of veils and head scarves as he was proceeding with plans to emancipate Turkish women from the semi-slavery he argued they had been kept under by centuries of Ottoman rule. Yet no legal action was taken to enforce women's dress codes until the early 1980s when, to counter the rise of political Islam, the government imposed a ban on head scarves in universities and other public institutions.

In Gole's opinion, the Islamic head scarf should not be regarded as a symbol of Turkish women's submission to tradition. On the contrary, she writes in "Forbidden Modern," veiling conveys a political statement and should be regarded "as an active re-appropriation on the behalf of women of Islamic religiosity and way of life rather than its reproduction by established traditions."

The sociologist says she is anxious to see how Islamic women will react to the liberalization of the religious code. But she cautions against the temptation to politicize the Directorate for Religious Affairs' decision, saying it might not only provoke a rift within society but also put Turkey in an uncertain position toward its Muslim neighbors: "If this issue is examined only from a political viewpoint, Turkey might be, as has often happened in the past, perceived by Islamic militants -- within the country as well as among the rest of the world Islamic community -- as a country that goes against Islam and against its Muslim identity. But if one puts the emphasis on women, if the analysis focuses on the gender issue, then the convergence of demands made by Islamic, secular and other women will become obvious."

Gole concludes: "What we see in this reform is not an attempt to establish equality between sexes within religion. Rather, it is an attempt to redefine religious rites in the light of equality between the sexes."

5. - AP - "Turkish prime minister target of calls for change":

But some see Ecevit as only force of unity

ISTANBUL / 26 May 2002

An aging leader with health problems, seen as out of touch with a fast-changing society, is ousted by a young and ambitious politician impatient for reform. That was how Bulent Ecevit rose to the top of Turkish politics.

Three decades later, Ecevit risks finding himself on the other side of the equation. Hospitalized last week, the prime minister is the target of growing calls for change at the top - at a crucial time when Turkey is struggling to revive its economy and move closer to the European Union.

Gathered Tuesday at the Ankara hospital where Ecevit, 76, is being treated for a broken rib and a vein infection, leaders of his ruling coalition issued a firm statement ruling out a change of government before elections scheduled for 2004.

But the leaders' show of defiance might not be enough to silence those calling for new blood.

Some see Ecevit as irreplaceable. They say his personal authority is the only thing holding fractious coalition partners together, and his departure would make elections inevitable.

That's an alarming prospect for many Turks, with the economy in intensive care. It shrank 9.4 percent last year amid an economic crisis and is only now steadying under an International Monetary Fund-backed recovery program.

"An early election atmosphere would be the end of everything," wrote economist Gungor Uras in the daily Milliyet. "Stability would be gone, the exchange rate would be out of control, nobody would invest or spend money."

Polls show the likely winners of a snap election would be pro-Islamists, who could trigger new tensions with Turkey's fiercely secular military. Their leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Wednesday that Ecevit's hospitalization had left Turkey "one of the world's most unstable countries ... headless and without a premier."

However, many analysts believe Ecevit's departure would not force early elections because the coalition parties have a sizable majority in parliament and would be likely to delay a vote as long as possible. All three have seen their popularity plummet amid the economic crisis, and need time to secure improvements they can trumpet in an election campaign.

Others say the current coalition is holding back economic recovery. "The fact that Turkey has still not been able to overcome the crisis is due mainly to the existence of this very government," Sukru Elekdag, a former diplomat, wrote in the daily Sabah. "Under the circumstances, an early election becomes the way out, despite all the hazards involved."

Surprise backing for early elections has come from Kemal Dervis, the economy minister and chief author of Turkey's economic recovery program. He says there's no reason why an election campaign should destabilize the economy.

Dervis, who has his own political calculations to make as a popular independent wooed by several parties, has argued that setting an election date could help the economy by dispelling uncertainty.

Business leaders broadly support Dervis' policies, but they don't want an early vote.

"I don't believe an early election will help Turkey," said Tuncay Ozilhan, head of the country's most influential business group.

6. - Turkish Daily News - "HADEP complains about increasing pressure after election rumors":

ANKARA / 25 May 2002

The People's Democracy Party (HADEP) claimed that oppressions over their party and party officials have been increased after the election rumors came to agenda. According to written statement made by HADEP Deputy Chairman Hamid Geylani, these pressures have much more concentrated especially in certain regions and provinces like Mus.

According to information given Geylani, the chairman of HADEP's Mus branch Naif Erol and Secretary of Provincial Youth Branch of the party Ozgur Tanguc were arrested on April 26, with the accusation of giving support to the demand for a change in the article 42 of the Constitution which regulate the education in the mother tongue. Moreover, a further eight people were arrested in Malazgirt and Varto and these HADEP members are still under arrest.

Geylani also claimed that the HADEP building in Erentepe in Bulanik district of Mus province was arsoned on May 19. Andin May 23, the building of Erentepe branch of HADEP was also arsoned together with all documents and furnitures.

Geylani claimed that, "All these undemocratic and illegal oppressions were produced to curb the increase of HADEP in an atmosphere of inevitable election. However these oppressions will stengthen HADEP further. We call all officials to fulfil their duties against such oppressions."