4 March 2002

1. "Deputy PM accuses EU of "planting mines" on Turkey's road to membership", Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Devlet Bahceli, the head of the ruling coalition's far-right wing, accused the European Union on Saturday of deliberately impeding Turkey's road to membership.

2. "Kurdish party leader in court to argue against possible ban on party", the chairman of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party appeared before the constitutional court on Friday to counter state efforts to close the movement for alleged links with armed separatist Kurdish rebels.

3. "President Sezer favors abolition of the death penalty", as the controversy over the death penalty continues among the coalition partners, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer took a stance in favor of the abolition of death penalty, which is one of Turkey's midterm targets in its National Program for the European Union.

4. "MHP stance more consistent... ", in the quarrel over whether the death penalty should be retained or abolished, the MHP is reiterating what it had said on the very first day. It is the DYP approach that is appalling.

5. "Iraqi Kurdish leader expected in Ankara with Saddam on agenda", a prominent leader of the Iraqi Kurds, who have been in control of northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, is to hold talks in Ankara next week amid speculation that Iraq could face US military action, a Turkish diplomat said on Saturday. Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was expected to meet with Turkish officials either on Monday or Tuesday "to discuss recent developments in the region," the diplomat told AFP.

6. "Turkey bans award-winning film on Kurdish issue", Turkey has banned an award-winning film about the life of a Kurdish orphan on the grounds that it highlights Kurdish nationalism and draws a negative picture of Turkish police, Culture Minister Istemihan Talay said on Sunday.

1. - AFP - "Deputy PM accuses EU of "planting mines" on Turkey's road to membership":

ANKARA / March 2

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Devlet Bahceli, the head of the ruling coalition's far-right wing, accused the European Union on Saturday of deliberately impeding Turkey's road to membership.

Bahceli, who heads the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), criticized a resolution passed on Thursday by the European Parliament which urged Ankara to acknowledge as genocide the killings of Armenians under the Ottoman empire in the early 1900s.

Bahceli told a party gathering in Ankara that the resolution was "a new reflection of the prejudice and the racist approach towards Turkey," the Anatolia news agency reported.

"At the same time it is a stance that displays their genuine approach towards the Turkish people and shows that various mines are constantly being planted on Turkey's road to EU membership," Bahceli said.

Bahceli's MHP is a major partner of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP) in the coalition government, which also includes the center-right Motherland Party (ANAP).

The partners, often at loggerheads on political and economic reforms, have recently wrangled over key EU membership criteria such as the need to abolish the death penalty and grant cultural freedoms to Turkey's Kurdish minority. The MHP opposes such reforms, arguing that they would play into the hands of separatist-minded Kurds, who have waged a 15-year armed struggle for self-rule in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.

The intra-government disputes have raised concerns that Turkey, already lagging behind the 12 other membership candidates, will fail to fulfill the criteria for the opening of accession talks with Brussels.

Bahceli also accused Brussels of hypocricy for not including far-left Turkish and Kurdish groups with a history of violent acts on the EU list of terrorist organizations.

"The methods of the Union leadership are wrong and ugly. The Union leadership is not only building walls in front of Turkey, but -- either deliberately or non-deliberately -- is preventing the 21st century from becoming a century of tolerence, dialogue and solidarity," he said.

Turkey was declared a candidate for EU membership in December 1999. It has undertaken a series of reforms to improve its crippled democracy and troubled human rights record, but the EU has said they fall short of meeting EU standards.

2. - AFP - "Kurdish party leader in court to argue against possible ban on party":

ANKARA / March 1

The chairman of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party appeared before the constitutional court on Friday to counter state efforts to close the movement for alleged links with armed separatist Kurdish rebels.

Murat Bozlak, who heads the People's Democracy Party (HADEP), and six other leading party members attended the hearing, which began at 1200 GMT and was closed to the press.

The HADEP leader emerged upbeat from his 60-minute presentation to the panel of judges telling reporters that the final verdict of the trial would be in favour of his party.

"The trial was launched three years ago without a sound legal basis when there was an atmosphere of intense conflict" between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish army, Bozlak said.

"We believe the court will reject the prosecution's demand to ban our party," he added.In the trial, which began in January 1999, HADEP is charged with having links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which fought a 15-year armed campaign against Turkey for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey's southeast.

In mid-January, the constitutional court heard the arguments of Turkey's chief prosecutor, Sabih Kanadoglu, who accused HADEP of activities aimed at harming Turkish unity.

"I asked the court to ban the said party in view of the gravity, scope and nature of their activities," Kanadoglu told reporters at the time. In the 1999 indictment, HADEP was accused of acting under PKK orders and serving as a propaganda tool for the rebels.

HADEP, which campaigns for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question and greater cultural rights for Turkey's Kurds, denies the charges. Turkish authorities regularly crack down on HADEP, detaining or jailing its members for separatism or links with the PKK, whose campaign and counter-measures by the powerful Turkish army have left some 36,500 dead.

Violence in Turkey's southeast has declined significantly since September 1999, when the PKK announced that it was abandoning its armed campaign following peace calls from its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Banning HADEP would almost certainly strain ties between Turkey, a candidate for EU membership, and the European Union, which has asked the country to clean up its human rights record and improve democracy as conditions for beginning formal accession talks.

3. - Turkish Daily News - "President Sezer favors abolition of the death penalty":

ANKARA / 2 March

As the controversy over the death penalty continues among the coalition partners, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer took a stance in favor of the abolition of death penalty, which is one of Turkey's midterm targets in its National Program for the European Union.

The president's foreign policy adviser and private secretary, Tacan Ildem, said yesterday that the National Program has put forth the necessity for a deep-rooted transformation and added that the president believed that the harmony of the quality, pace and period of the Turkish transformation to EU standards and the enlargement schedule would both make the transformation deep-rooted and speed up its process.

In a regular weekly press conference at Cankaya Palace, Ildem transmitted Sezer's views on the abolition of the death penalty. Noting that Sezer has voiced his opinions on the death penalty many times to date, Ildem recalled that Sezer had delivered a speech at the opening of Parliament on Oct. 1, 2000, where he said that there was no need for a constitutional amendment to abolish the death penalty in Turkey, since the death penalty might be replaced with life imprisonment for crimes in the Turkish Penal Code. Thus, the death penalty, which has not been executed in Turkey for many years, would be abolished in legal terms.

"The abolition of the death penalty is an issue which has come on the Turkish agenda during its EU membership process. The EU has developed a culture pertaining to the expansion of democracy and human rights within its historical development. In this scope, death penalty is not executed in the member states, and candidates are expected to abolish it legally on the way to full membership," Ildem noted.

Ildem also recalled that Sezer had touched on the importance of the fulfillment of the EU's political criteria in his address to Parliament on Oct. 1, 2001. Sezer had said that Turkey has been the sole country which could not start accession talks with the EU, and that the political criteria should first of all be met, in order to start talks. Sezer had noted that Turkey had been trying to remove its deficiencies in democracy and human rights issues.

4. - Hurriyet - "MHP stance more consistent... ":

Opinion by M. Ali Birand / 2 March

In the quarrel over whether the death penalty should be retained or abolished, the MHP is reiterating what it had said on the very first day. It is the DYP approach that is appalling

In the debate on whether the death penalty should be abolished totally without being tied to any conditions, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is, as far as I can see, acting in a manner that is quite consistent with its own policies, and it does not deserve this increasingly strong criticism.

Let us refresh our memories...

Unlike other parties, the MHP had pegged, in the 1990s especially, all its policies and strategies on the fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Other parties too had a negative reaction to the PKK, sternly criticizing it. But the MHP had turned the fight against the PKK into a "banner" for itself.

Ulkucu youths took part in the fight personally. They actually fought, some of them in the security forces and others by joining organized civilian groups.

The MHP rushed to the funeral of every martyr. At every funeral the slogan, "You will be avenged!" was chanted. It came to the aid of the martyrs' families. In short, the MHP became identified with the fight against the PKK. This "intertwining"" continued for years.

You may or may not like the MHP policies, but it is a fact that the MHP has not turned back from these policies, not at all.

In the first general election held after Ocalan's capture it managed to cash in greatly on its PKK policy. It became the country's second-biggest party.

In other words, the PKK and Ocalan issues are much more important for the MHP than for all the other parties. It has made the fight against the PKK and the punishment of Ocalan almost its sole raison d'etre.

Highly sensitized on these issues, the MHP was faced with the first test in the second half of 2000 when Ocalan was given the death sentence.

The MHP rank and file was at a boil with the excitement that came from finally getting what they had expected. Despite their reaction, Devlet Bahceli accepted the coalition government's stay of execution formula. For the leader of a party such as the MHP, that was an extremely great sacrifice.

The general public was told: "We are waiting for the decision to be taken by the European Court of Human Rights. We will decide later. Until then we are postponing the execution."

In reality, everybody knew that Ocalan could not possibly be executed later, that in practice that would not be feasible later.

Bahceli too was quite aware of that.

However, rather than having Ocalan hanged and plunging the country into blood once again, disrupting the tranquillity, he gave priority to Turkey's long-term interests over the party and leadership interests. He acted with common sense. Predicting that the MHP followers' excitement would die down in time, he put this issue in the freezer.

The same sensitivity continues today...

Less than two years have passed since then, and a constitutional amendment became necessary to comply with the EU's Copenhagen criteria. Once again the MHP came under strain on the death penalty issue. After a lengthy bargaining process, a formula has been found, a formula that gives the public the impression that Ocalan is not being saved from execution, that the changes being made do not concern him.

The MHP was anxious to give the public the message, "Ocalan is not getting off the hook." Well aware of the MHP's sensitivity on this issue, Prime Minister Ecevit did not put pressure them. On the contrary, he was helpful.

Now, the total, unconditional abolition of the death penalty is on the agenda.

Everybody knows and accepts that in practice, due to domestic and external factors, it would not be possible to hang Ocalan. However, this is not being openly admitted.

The MHP is under strain once again.

But for Ocalan, it would vote for the abolition of the death penalty without any hesitation. The PKK leader's case is pushing the MHP, which has conditioned its rank and file all these years, into a corner.

Despite that, Bahceli, in order not to disrupt the coalition and not to play havoc with the country, has preferred to leave this issue to Parliament. What the party rank and file had expected from him was that he should fight like a hero inside the coalition and ensure that Ocalan gets executed.

Aware of the delicate nature of the situation, Bahceli is waiting, without making much ado, for this issue to be brought to a conclusion. He is maintaining a stance that is very much consistent with his own and his party's sensitivities and with the realities of the country.

Yet, political circles, the True Path Party (DYP) especially, have smelled blood in the air, and those who want to deliver a blow to the MHP at any cost, were immediately stirred into action.

Provocations along the lines of: "You had said you were going to hang him? What happened? Don't you dare do that?", and messages which boil down to: "We are more nationalistic than they are. Vote for us!" have caused tension in the MHP to grow.

If things continue in this manner it seems that we will be wounding ourselves. The DYP is preparing to make a new contribution (!) to the country...

5. - AFP - "Iraqi Kurdish leader expected in Ankara with Saddam on agenda":

ANKARA / March 2

A prominent leader of the Iraqi Kurds, who have been in control of northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, is to hold talks in

Ankara next week amid speculation that Iraq could face US military action, a Turkish diplomat said on Saturday. Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was expected to meet with Turkish officials either on Monday or Tuesday "to discuss recent developments in the region," the diplomat told AFP.

The PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani share control over northern Iraq, which has been outside Baghdad's control and under the protection of a no-fly zone enforced by US and British jets based in

Turkey since 1991. Talabani's visit to Turkey comes at a time when many believe Iraq will become the target of US military strikes or its resistance to the resumption of UN arms inspections.

Washington wants to get rid of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and has long tried to unite the Iraqi opposition for this purpose. Iraqi opposition figures are expected to gather in Washington this month with the blessing and financial assistance of the US administration to discuss ways of confronting the Baghdad regime. In remarks to Turkish television last month, both Talabani and Barzani, whose roles would be crucial in any move against Baghdad, voiced fears that

Iraq could be thrown into uncertainty if Saddam was toppled.

Talabani said the Saddam administration, in its current form, did not pose a threat to US interests in the region and said that he would not back a "project of change in which we cannot see the alternative." Turkey, a key Muslim ally of the United States, is opposed to a strike against its southern neighbor Iraq, fearing that regional turmoil could result

in the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in the area controlled by the PUK and KDP.

Such a state could fan separatist sentiment among Turkey's own Kurds, whose 15-year armed rebellion for self-rule has faded in recent years.

6. - AFP - "Turkey bans award-winning film on Kurdish issue":

ANKARA / March 3

Turkey has banned an award-winning film about the life of a Kurdish orphan on the grounds that it highlights Kurdish nationalism and draws a negative picture of Turkish police, Culture Minister Istemihan Talay said on Sunday.

A cinema supervision board of government officials and representatives of the entertainment sector banned the movie -- "Buyuk Adam, Kucuk Ask" (Big Man, Small Love) -- after evaluating an application by the police department, Anatolia news agency reported Talay told a press conference. The film, which tells about the unlikely friendship between a Kurdish girl and a retired Turkish judge who do not speak each other's language, was originally given the go-ahead last year.

The ban comes at a time when Turkish leaders wrangle over whether to grant cultural freedoms, including education in their mother tongue, to Turkey's Kurdish minority, as part of a reform drive to catch up with European Union democracy standards to boost the country's bid for EU membership.

The movie, which was released last October, won a series of awards at home, including best picture and four other trophies at Turkey's most prominent film festival, the Golden Orange, in 2001. The movie, directed by Handan Ipekci, had received financial support from the culture ministry, Talay said. The orphan in the film is looked after by a family friend, who is subsequently killed in a police raid on her flat along with two Kurdish rebels hiding there.

The girl survives the raid and is sheltered by a neighbor, the judge, who decides not to hand her over to authorities despite his nationalist sentiments. In its request for a revision of the film's licence, the police had said it promoted a "chauvinistic" approach towards Kurdish identity and created the impression that the Turkish police carry out extra-judicial killings and treat citizens rudely, Talay said.

The minister denied that the board had made its decision under political pressure.The film has also been shown in Germany under a different name, he added.