25
November 2002
2. "Turks Plan Troop Incursion into Iraq", during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, more than a million Iraqi Kurds poured into Turkey and Iran fleeing the Iraqi Army. Now, Turkey, in an apparent move to preempt a reprise of the refugee crisis if the U.S. attacks anew, is readying to insert troops into northern Iraq as a refugee blocking force, says a report in the New York
3. "Turkey President Warns Government on Headscarf Ban", President Ahmet Necdet Sezer on Sunday warned Turkey's new government against lifting a ban on wearing the Islamic-style headscarf in public offices, saying such a move would threaten the country's secularism.
4. "Turkey: A Stabilizer or a Menace for Europe?", the resounding victory of the Islamic-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey's recent elections will be a big challenge for the country. Since 1923, the country has been a declared secular state and the only previous experience with an Islamic-oriented government ended with the military forcing it to leave power in 1997.
5. "Turkey demands EU talks date, questions EU sincerity", Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said on Friday he did not think European Union leaders were being totally sincere with him during a series of meetings he held to press for Turkey's membership of the 15-nation bloc.
6. "The Europeans are being insincere", after meeting with a great many leaders in Prague last week, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said, ‘All the Europeans that I met with personally say that they want to give Turkey a date for European Union membership negotiations. They say that it is others who are hindering our getting a date.
1. - Turkish Daily News - "New government welcomes Cyprus plan, says ready to work for EU":
ANKARA / 25 November 2002
Prime Minister Gul says the new government foresees a negotiation phase based on the plan for a solution in Cyprus, provided that it guarantees Turkish interests and existence of Turkish people in the island
The new Turkish government welcomes a solution plan drafted by the United Nations for Cyprus and is determined to fully meet criteria for accession into the European Union, Prime Minister Abdullah Gul declared Saturday.
But an acceptable solution in the island should ensure that Turkish national interests and rights of the Turkish Cypriots be guaranteed, Gul told Parliament while reading out his government's program.
"Our government believes that a solution must definitely be found to the Cyprus issue," Gul said, adding, "Our government welcomes U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's undertaking to bring peace to Cyprus, and we foresee a negotiating phase for a lasting solution that guarantees our national interests and the Turkish people's existence and sovereignty on the island."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's November 18 deadline to accept his plan, which proposes two partner states reunited under a single central government, as a basis for negotiations passed without agreement from Ankara or Turkish Cyprus.
Gul's remarks at the weekend indicated that negotiations based on the plan were still possible.
Greece and Greek Cyprus have agreed to negotiate Annan's plan that seeks a broad agreement by December 12, when the European Union meets in Copenhagen to set a date for Cyprus' entry to the bloc.
Although Turkey has still not officially endorsed Annan's blueprint, Gul's remarks to parliament indicated Turkey could agree to discuss the plan, presented earlier this month.
Officials from Gul's Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which swept to power in an election earlier this month, have broken with previous governments by saying Turkey's own EU aspirations would be boosted if the decades-long stalemate on Cyprus were solved.
Brussels has said it will take in Greek Cyprus, a frontrunner in the bloc's enlargement plans, with or without a settlement.
Turkey hopes to win a date to begin membership talks with the bloc at the Copenhagen summit, and European leaders have said Turkey would improve its chances of winning a date if it cooperates on Cyprus.
EU top priority
Gul said the government regarded Turkey's eventual accession into the union as a top foreign policy priority and that it was determined to fully meet membership criteria through further political reforms.
AK Party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan finished the first part of his tour to EU capitals last week and lobbied union leaders for support to Turkey's membership bid.
He is scheduled to start the second part of his tour this week.
"EU membership of Turkey is one of our government's top priorities. Conducive to this end, efforts will be taken to start accession talks with the EU after convincing the union that Turkey's membership is an essential element of the enlargement process," Gul said.
Gul also expressed willingness to continue in existing cooperation with the United States in the defense field and to extend the scope of the cooperation to cover economy, science and technology. Cooperation-based ties with Russia will be maintained, he added.
As for Greece, Gul said the economic cooperation with this country would be furthered in an attempt to create an atmosphere of trust that would help the resolution of more complicated problems faced in the political area.
The prime minister also pledged to take steps to improve long-ignored ties with Turkic republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as the Arabic world.
Turkey worried over uncertainty in Iraq
Gul said the government was worried over the uncertainty in neighboring
Iraq and added that it attached utmost importance to the preservation
of territorial integrity and political unity of Iraq.
"Disintegration of Iraq would change balances in the Middle
East," he said and called on the Iraqi administration to fully
abide by the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and
disarm. 
2. - NewsMax - "Turks Plan Troop Incursion into Iraq":
November 25, 2002
During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, more than a million Iraqi Kurds
poured into Turkey and Iran fleeing the Iraqi Army. Now, Turkey, in
an apparent move to preempt a reprise of the refugee crisis if the
U.S. attacks anew, is readying to insert troops into northern Iraq
as a refugee blocking force, says a report in the New York Times.
The 60–mile incursion, described in a plan making the rounds
among top Turkish officials, however, is seen by some analysts as
a screen to the real purpose of the military evolution: to prevent
the establishment of an independent Kurdish state during the uproar
of war.
Turkey, which is battling its own Kurdish insurgency, does not want an independent Kurdish state on its border, and its apprehensions are seen as but part of the region’s general case of nerves as leaders fear the war’s perhaps unintentional effects.
Although supporting the American effort to oust Saddam Hussein, the Turks also picture a scenario in which Iraq's Kurds, fired by Hussein's defeat, rise up. In 1991, the revolting Kurds were savaged by Hussein’s loyal forces and wound up perishing on the borders at the rate of thousands per day.
According to the Times, the incursion and refugee control plan calls for the establishment of 18 camps, 12 of them in Iraq, designed to hold about 275,000 refugees.
The camps in Iraq would be filled first, and foreigners trying to enter Turkey before the first 12 camps were filled would be turned back. Meanwhile, camps in Turkey would be made available only after the ones in Iraq were occupied to capacity.
The plan as outlined in the documents says, "The main principle will be to send foreigners settled in the camps either back to their region of origin or to third countries."
Meanwhile, human rights workers in Turkey fear the worst.
"The Turkish Army would do its best to eliminate the possibility of a Kurdish entity in northern Iraq, through military means," Selahattin Demitas, of the Turkish Human Rights Association told the Times. "The only law that will be applied in that area would be the law of war."
Others criticize the plan because it is inconsistent with the general principle under international law that countries are obliged to grant entrance to people fleeing persecution from other countries.
However, Turkish leaders say their country is already engaged in
a heated war against illegal immigrants from Asia. In the first 10
months of this year, for example, more than 13,000 people were detained
trying to cross into Turkey from Iraq.
3. - Reuters - "Turkey President Warns Government on Headscarf Ban":
ANKARA / 24 November 2002
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer on Sunday warned Turkey's new government against lifting a ban on wearing the Islamic-style headscarf in public offices, saying such a move would threaten the country's secularism.
The remarks highlighted friction between Sezer and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which traces its roots to two parties banned for Islamic fundamentalism, in a Muslim nation that strictly separates state and religion.
Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, whose wife covers her hair, has said he would work to lift a ban on women wearing headscarves in universities and state offices, but that it was not a top priority for the new administration.
"It benefits no one for the headscarf issue, which has reappeared on the agenda, to create problems again," Sezer said in comments carried by local television.
"Allowing the headscarf in public-sector areas is impossible because it is unconstitutional... (Wearing) the headscarf in the private sphere is a freedom, but Constitutional Court decisions have already solved the issue of whether it is acceptable or not in the public sphere," he said.
Secularists like Sezer and the influential military see the headscarf as an Islamist challenge in Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership as well as being a NATO member and close ally of the United States.
Turkey's generals, self-proclaimed guardians of the secular order, pressured the first Islamist-led government to quit in 1997 for what they saw as a dangerous tilt toward religious law.
The AKP, which won a landslide victory in November 3 elections, has fought off the Islamist label and says it is a conservative and secular party.
Gul has said he sees the headscarf issue as a matter of religious
freedom. His government has pledged to expand political and human
rights in order to meet EU criteria.
4. - zenit.org (Rome) - "Turkey: A Stabilizer or a Menace for Europe?":
Bid to Join the EU Sparks a Debate over Values
ANKARA / November 23, 2002
The resounding victory of the Islamic-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey's recent elections will be a big challenge for the country. Since 1923, the country has been a declared secular state and the only previous experience with an Islamic-oriented government ended with the military forcing it to leave power in 1997, the New York Times noted Nov. 17.
The AKP won just over a third of the popular vote, but will have an absolute majority in Parliament, the Washington Post reported Nov. 4. Under the electoral system, parties with less than 10% of the vote are not given seats in Parliament and so only two parties, the AKP and the Republican People's Party, will share all the seats.
AKP's chairman and former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, could not be named prime minister since he served a four-month prison term in 1999. He was convicted of inciting religious hatred for reading a religious poem in public.
On being named by Turkey's president as the next prime minister, Abdullah Gul expressed confidence that both the nation's democracy and its Western leanings would be safe under Islamic leadership. He also stated that one of his top priorities would be to obtain admission into the European Union.
"A different culture"
So far, the European Union has firmly rejected Turkey's long-standing attempts for membership. After AKP's election victory, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who now heads the body charged with drawing up an EU constitution, was quoted Nov. 8 by Reuters as declaring that Turkey is not part of the continent and that its entry would be "the end of the European Union."
Giscard said Turkey had "a different culture, a different approach, a different way of life" and its demographic dynamism would make it the biggest EU member state (it has 67 million people). The European Commission dissociated itself from the comments, but, noted Reuters, Giscard's comments "reflected in blunt language what many EU politicians whisper privately."
Reacting to Giscard's remarks, AKP leader Erdogan criticized the idea that the European Union was some sort of "Christian club."
"I find his statements unfortunate at this time," Erdogan was quoted as saying in an interview published Nov. 12 in the London Times. "The EU really shouldn't take any steps that would threaten intercultural dialogue, and in this attitude I see something that could spoil this dialogue."
In the interview, Erdogan said his country wanted to join the European Union because fulfilling its preconditions would extend to the Turkish people the guaranteed freedoms enjoyed by the West. Turkey would otherwise have trouble overcoming the present authoritarian state.
The AKP "is not based on religion" and "is not Islamic," Erdogan claimed in an interview in the Nov. 18 issue of Newsweek. He also affirmed that Turkey would continue with reforms in the area of human rights and democracy, including freedom of expression and religion and an end to torture of prisoners.
A number of opinion writers support Turkey's entrance into the Union. Soli Özel and Dani Rodrik, academics in the area of international relations, writing in the Financial Times on Aug. 15, noted that Turkey recently abolished the death penalty and passed legislation to allow broadcasting and education in all languages spoken in the country.
Continuing to reject Turkey's EU bid "would also be politically, strategically and ethically self-defeating," they affirmed. Turkey was a loyal partner of the West during the Cold War. And given the Mideast crisis, Turkey's role as an ally could be even more crucial in the future.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 12, Rosemary Righter, associate editor of the Times in London, noted that the AKP's election victory was not so much a vote for an Islamic party as it was a revolt against the gross economic mismanagement of Turkey by the other parties.
Righter explained that as Istanbul's mayor, Erdogan "ran an effective, socially liberal and above all clean administration." Doubts do remain, she admitted, as to the Islamic nature of the party and what this will mean for government policy. However, she called on the European Union to start serious negotiations on Turkey's entry. The campaign against Islamic terrorism, she claimed, "requires a pro-Western, modernizing Turkey, a stabilizer at the gates of Iran, Iraq and the Arab world."
Writing in the Nov. 14 issue of the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash observed that if Europe is mainly concerned about creating a strongly united political community, with aspirations to be a superpower, then Turkey would have to be excluded for another decade, while the current list of 10 new entrants are digested. But, if Europeans "think it is more urgent to promote democracy, respect for human rights, prosperity and therefore the chances for peace in the most dangerous region in the world," then Turkey should be allowed to enter the Union.
Christianity and Europe
Ironically, at the same time Turkey's entry into the European Union is opposed because it would be an Islamic state in a Christian continent, the real danger exists that the new EU constitution will impose a secularist blueprint, excluding any explicit reference to Christian values.
Preserving this Christian identity of Europe is a matter very much on the Pope's mind. John Paul II has made repeated calls for the European Union not to forget Christianity in the constitution being drawn up.
In his recent speech to the Italian Parliament, the Holy Father expressed his hope that "the new foundations of the European 'common house' will not lack the 'cement' of that extraordinary religious, cultural and civil patrimony which has given Europe its greatness down the centuries. ... If lasting stability is to be given to the new unity of Europe, there must be a commitment to ensuring that it is supported on those ethical foundations which were once its basis."
However, calling for recognition of Christian values does not mean the Pope wishes to exclude Muslims. "I wish to reaffirm the Catholic Church's respect for Islam, for authentic Islam: the Islam that prays, that is concerned for those in need," he stated in an address Sept. 24 last year, only days after the terror attacks.
Commenting on the polemic caused by Giscard's remarks, Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, former prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, said that it is a mistake to "demonize" Islam. In an interview with the Italian paper La Repubblica published Nov. 10, he noted that there are problems in the West's relations with Islamic countries, particularly regarding the freedom of religion and the treatment of women. The cardinal called upon Muslims to make more progress in these areas, in order to guarantee an Islam that is more open.
Faced with the prospect of living with greater numbers of Muslims within the continent, the most important thing for European Christians to do, Cardinal Silvestrini suggested, is to be more resolved to conserve their identity in their own faith and culture.
Respecting the specific Christian heritage in Europe, without demonizing
or excluding other faiths, is the challenge now facing the European
Union.
5.
- AFP - "Turkey demands EU talks date, questions EU sincerity":
PRAGUE / November 22, 2002
Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said on Friday he did not think
European Union leaders were being totally sincere with him during
a series of meetings he held to press for Turkey's membership of the
15-nation bloc.
Sezer held talks with the leaders of Britain, Denmark, France, Italy
and Spain as well as EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana at the
Prague NATO summit, which he has been using to campaign for support.
He said they had indicated that while they had no objections themselves
to Turkey joining the EU club, other countries had.
"Everybody says the same thing. I do not think they are 100-percent
sincere in their answers," Sezer told a press conference as the
summit here closed.
Ankara, a laggard among 13 states hoping for EU membership, has so
far not been given any date for the start of negotiations.
It wants EU leaders to set a date for the opening of accession talks
at the December 12-13 summit in Copenhagen, at which they are poised
to formally invite 10 countries -- but not Turkey -- to join.
Sezer said US President George W. Bush, whom he met in Prague on Wednesday
for the first time, was also pushing for Turkey's membership.
"I stated the support Turkey has been lending to the development
of European security and defence policy," Sezer said of his meetings
with European leaders.
"We will continue to display a constructive approach. If the
European Union also displays a similarly constructive approach, we
believe we can reach a satisfactory conclusion in a short time."
He said Britain, Italy and Spain had "expressed full support"
for the EU to set a date at the Copenhagen summit for Turkish membership
talks to begin.
"It is important that Turkey is given a date ... on December
12," he added.
"If this does not happen then this will create a continuing ...
uncertainty in Turkey-EU relations and ... new division within Europe,"
he predicted.
French President Jacques Chirac, in his closing remarks to the NATO
summit, said Turkey had "a rightful place" in Europe but
that accession talks could not start until Ankara had met key conditions,
notably on improving human rights and democracy.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who will meet Sezer on November
27 in Berlin, has already urged the EU to give Turkey a date for membership
as soon
as possible.
6. - Star - "The Europeans are being insincere":
ANKARA / 25 November 2002
by Zeynep Gurcanli
After meeting with a great many leaders in Prague last week, President
Ahmet Necdet Sezer said, ‘All the Europeans that I met with personally
say that they want to give Turkey a date for European Union membership
negotiations. They say that it is others who are hindering our getting
a date.
However, when we meet with the leaders said to be doing the hindering,
we always get the same response: “It is not us, but rather the
other countries who are creating obstacles to a date.”
I don’t think that the Europeans are acting sincerely. Actually
this situation reads like a summary of Turkey’s European misadventure
over the past 30 years. What’s more, just 20 days before the
Copenhagen summit, they spring new conditions on us. Now, a solution
to the Cyprus issue is a condition.
Sezer had this to say: ‘There’s no relation between Turkey’s
EU membership bid and the Cyprus problem. When the EU started negotiations
with the Greek Cypriots, who are a direct party to the problem, it
didn’t stipulate that the problem had to be solved. It’s
hypocritical for the EU to now stipulate that Turkey, which is an
indirect party, must solve this problem to get a date for negotiations.
The EU should end this sorry business.’
Sezer says that the Cyprus issue shouldn’t be a condition for
giving Turkey a date. However, Sezer’s words were drowned out
by Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
words implying that the Cyprus problem, the European Security and
Defense Policy (ESDP) and giving Turkey a date for membership negotiations
would be discussed as parts of a package.
Some three weeks before the Copenhagen summit, the atmosphere is as
follows: steps concerning democratization and human rights are priority
issues in the list of the things Turkey must address at home. Although
not as urgently, the list also says the role of the Turkish Armed
Forces (TSK) within Turkey’s government should be reduced. The
second list stipulates that Turkey will solve the Cyprus problem and
reach a consensus on the ESDP issue.
Actually the ESDP problem has been solved. However, the Cyprus issue
continues to stand as a kind of ‘diplomatic mountain’ in
front of Turkey. The European front is divided into three: on the
one hand, there is Britain, Italy and Spain, which favor giving Turkey
a date for membership negotiations. It’s possible to add Greece
to this group.
The countries that can be considered as ‘sitting on the fence’
are Denmark and Sweden. France has also given the signal that it might
enter this group, or even the group of supporters. The other EU member
countries are generally not in favor of giving Turkey a date for membership
negotiations. Germany leads this group. Austria is the most negative
member of this group. However, a change of decision in Germany could
cause a quick switch to another group. Against this background, Sezer’s
visit to Germany this week and his meeting with German Prime Minister
Gerhard Schroeder are very important.
After Erdogan’s visit to Germany last week, it will be Sezer’s
responsibility to bring around Germany, which has started to inch
over positively.’ If Sezer is successful in pushing Germany further,
the remaining responsibility will fall on Erdogan, who will go on
a tour of Europe this week.”