29
November 2002
2. "Kurds Say a Turkish Crackdown on an Illegal Fuel Trade With Iraq Is Aimed at Them", for years, this clamorous outpost on the Iraqi border thrived on the illegal trade in diesel fuel that is still formally prohibited by the United Nations.
3. "Greece says Cyprus solution key to Turkey's EU hopes", Greek Premier Costas Simitis on Thursday said Turkey should do its utmost to help reunite Cyprus if it wants to improve its own chances of joining the European Union.
4. "Erdogan says EU has yet to decide on date for talks", but reforms will continue, pledges the AK Party leader, even though the Copenhagen summit will produce a "date for a date," instead of a date for talks
5. "Future of Iraqi Kurds Still Uncertain", despite carving out a relatively prosperous, liberal enclave in Iraq's far north, many Kurds believe their self-rule experiment will die if America does not oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
6. “Keskin: The Turkish General Staff is the responsible", the trial of the lawyer Eren Keskin was held in Istanbul State Security Court (DGM) number 3, yesterday. She is adjudicated on the claim of "driving the society to animosity and hostility" during her speech in a panel in Koln in Germany. According to the statement Keskin made after the trial, she declared that the Turkish General Staff is responsible for her punishment of banning her to do her profession for a year.
7. "Legitimacy of recent Turkish elections in serious doubt", KHRP A recent mission to the south-east of Turkey undertaken by the Kurdish Human Rights Project has uncovered serious allegations of malfeasance by the army and state in the recent parliamentary elections.
8. "Turkey ends 15-year-old state of emergency in Kurdish regions", a 15-year state of emergency, which once covered 11 war-torn provinces in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, is due to end this weekend in line with the country's efforts to meet European Union norms.
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1. - Daily Star (Beirut) - "Turkey’s AKP wins perfunctory vote of confidence in Parliament":
New government pledges to pass reforms to satisfy EU requirements
ANKARA / 29 November 2002
ANKARA: Turkey’s new government formed by an Islamic-rooted party easily won a vote of confidence Thursday, paving the way for reforms aimed at winning membership in the European Union and improving the crisis-ridden economy.
The Justice and Development Party, which swept Nov. 3 elections, last week formed Turkey’s first majority government in more than a decade.
Prime Minister Abdullah Gul’s government won a 346-170 vote in the 550-member chamber on Thursday. The remaining 34 MPs were absent.
Parliament’s vote approved the formation of the government and its program.
The government’s success in the confidence vote had been expected, due to the ruling party’s overwhelming majority in the legislature.
“Our duty is to improve the condition of all Turkish people and elevate them to the point they deserve,” Gul told Parliament after the vote.
The new government promised to maintain an economic reform program, backed by $16 billion in International Monetary Fund loans, and reverse an economic downturn that has left 2 million people jobless. The government also pledged to repair the country’s battered human rights record, strengthen democracy and wipe out torture requirements for Turkey to join the EU.
According to a document obtained by Agence France Presse on Thursday, the government’s reform bill aims to make it easier to prosecute police officers accused of torture. It also scraps the statute of limitations for cases of torture, which had led to many lawsuits been thrown out and drawn EU criticism. Another proposal allows prisoners under certain conditions to ask for retrial if the European Court of Human Rights speaks out against their sentences.
Several former Kurdish MPs jailed in 1994 for aiding armed Kurdish rebels are expected to benefit from the amendment. Among them is Leyla Zana, who won the EU Parliament’s 1995 human rights award.
About 300 cases could be reviewed under the amendment, MP Prime Minister Ertugrul Yalcinbayir said.
The bill would also make it more difficult to ban political parties. This would help the AKP, which is itself under the threat of being banned.
Turkey’s chief prosecutor has asked the Constitutional Court to outlaw the AKP on the grounds that its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, cannot be party chairman due to a past conviction for Islamist sedition.
Erdogan, meanwhile, has been touring Europe to drum up support for Ankara’s EU aspirations. On Wednesday he met French President Jacques Chirac in Paris, where he said the Ankara government would revise its constitution and impose measures to help its stalled bid to join the EU.
“The constitution will be revised in order to meet the (EU) criteria, and that will affect in particular the electoral law and the law on political parties,” Erdogan said. “We are going to reinforce freedom of expression and of NGOs, and the electoral laws will be revised.”
“Priority will be given to ratification of international conventions” by Turkey, he added.
Erdogan is pushing for EU leaders to set a firm start
date for Turkey’s accession talks when they meet next month in
Copenhagen. Chirac said the decision at the meeting should be “as
acceptable as possible to Turkey,” spokeswoman Catherine Colonna
said. 
2. - The New York Times - "Kurds Say a Turkish Crackdown on an Illegal Fuel Trade With Iraq Is Aimed at Them":
HABUR / TURKEY / 29 November 2002 / by Dexter Filkins
For years, this clamorous outpost on the Iraqi border thrived on the illegal trade in diesel fuel that is still formally prohibited by the United Nations.
But now, row after row of fuel trucks stand empty on the roadside, while throngs of young men mill about, puzzling over the mysterious turnabout by Turkey's leaders, who long had allowed the illegal trade to flourish.
"This was a decision taken by governments above our own heads," said Tahir Yuce, an idled truck driver who once supported his 9 children and 21 other members of his extended family on the money his trips into Iraq brought home. "We really can't know what is the reason for this."
With the threat of war in the region looming, the Turkish government reversed its longstanding policy, throwing hundreds of local drivers out of work. Turkish officials said they had decided to stanch the flow of cheap Iraqi diesel fuel because of an oversupply at home that was hurting local suppliers.
But Iraqi Kurdish leaders and local businessmen contend that Turkish officials had something else in mind. The diesel sales were enriching the leaders of the Kurdish Democratic Party inside Iraq, providing millions of dollars to set up a functioning public administration through large stretches of northern Iraq.
The Kurdish group is one of the most formidable opponents of Saddam Hussein. But it also poses a potential nightmare for Turkish officials, who fear that Mr. Hussein's overthrow could prompt Iraqi Kurds to declare independence and revive similar desires among Kurds in Turkey. The Turks battled their own Kurdish insurgency in the 1990's, and they are wary of anything that might revive those passions inside the country.
So, Kurdish leaders say, Turkish officials ordered the trade halted, depriving the Kurdish party of millions in revenue for its fledgling government. One Kurdish leader said that Turkish officials cracked down on the diesel exports when the Kurdish group refused to limit its political demands in the event that Mr. Hussein is overthrown.
"Already we are politically independent, and I think the Turkish government is worried that we are becoming economically independent as well," the Kurdish official said.
A Western diplomat in Ankara, while declining to discuss the matter publicly, suggested that the Kurdish concerns were well founded.
The decision by the Turks to ban diesel imports, which has been in place for months, appears to have been motivated almost entirely by political self-interest: at the same border crossing point, the Turkish government allows dozens of tankers to import Iraqi crude oil each day, despite the fact that it is also banned under the sanctions imposed by the United Nations from the Persian Gulf war era. Kurdish officials say the Kurdish party earns only a small amount of revenue from crude.
Indeed, Turkey's decision to cut off the flow of diesel fuel parts the curtains, if only for a moment, on the extraordinary diplomatic maneuvering that is unfolding across the region as leaders prepare for a possible American-led attack on Iraq. It also highlights the erratic approach of the countries in the region toward enforcing the sanctions, even though these governments claim to support the American-led effort to stop Mr. Hussein from acquiring nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
In the decade after the United Nations imposed economic penalties on Iraq at the close of the gulf war, the border crossing at Habur often enjoyed boom times. Turkey may have been a member of the coalition that defeated Mr. Hussein, and it may be a member of NATO, but there was oil to be sold and money to be made. Like other governments in the region, Turkey averted its gaze as its tankers drove in and out of Iraq. At Habur, Turkey's lone crossing point into Iraq, the trade in illegal crude oil and diesel fuel was once worth as much as $600 million a year.
The illegal oil trade on the Turkish border was thought to be putting as much as $120 million a year into the hands of Mr. Hussein, who might be expected to use the money to support his efforts to acquire unconventional weapons.
The Americans raised objections, a Western diplomat said, but did not try to force the issue. Turkey is an important American ally, and its leaders often point out that the sanctions have punished it disproportionately.
The diesel truckers say that they have not been able to drive their trucks across the border for a year, but Turkish officials say they did not formally impose the ban on diesel imports until September.
The Turkish officials said the decision was entirely an economic one, motivated by Turkey's depressed economy, which is mired in its worst slump in years. The gray market diesel fuel that entered the country through Habur was undercutting suppliers at home, officials said, and they pressured the Turkish government to end the trade.
"The decision was made purely for commercial reasons," said Yusuf Buluc, deputy under secretary for foreign affairs. "There is an excess of diesel fuel in Turkey. There is no point in allowing that material to come in."
But the decision appears to have been rather selective, in that the Turkish government continues to allow the importation of crude oil at the same border crossing.
A Turkish official said that as much as 6,000 tons of crude oil come out of Iraq at Habur every day, and insisted that the crude oil trade was allowed under the United Nations penalties. But a United Nations official charged with monitoring the sanctions noted that there were only two ports where Iraqi oil may be sold legally: Al Bakr in the Persian Gulf and Ceyhan in Turkey, where the oil comes in by pipeline.
The flow of oil out of Iraq in violation of the sanctions has long been a frustration to American officials. Even now, with a possible war on the horizon, Iraqi oil is flowing into Syria, where a pipeline is believed to carry as much as 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude across the border each day.
On a recent afternoon in Habur, the line of trucks waiting to go into Iraq to pick up crude oil stretched for two miles.
"This isn't legal but I'm obliged to do it for my family," said Mehmet Ozgun, a 29-year-old and father of seven.
Kurdish leaders contend that Turkey continues to allow the trade in crude oil and not in diesel fuel because the Kurds earned millions of dollars off the sale and resale of the diesel fuel in the territory they control. The crude oil, by contrast, is shipped directly from Baghdad through an arrangement with the Turkish government that limits what the Kurds can collect.
"The ban on diesel trade is an economic and social embargo of Turkey on Northern Iraq," said Bedrettin Karaboga, chairman of the Southeastern Anatolia Industrialists and Businessmen Association. The diesel trade "is linked to preparations to establish a Kurdish state."
The Kurdish official said that the cutoff of diesel fuel has cost the Kurdish party a large chunk of its annual $150 million budget.
In the years since the United States has helped to seal off northern Iraq from Mr. Hussein's forces, Kurdish leaders have built a bustling local administration there. The Kurdish Democratic Party, one of the two main Kurdish parties, employs 50,000 people and maintains pensions for another 150,000, a party official said.
Kurdish leaders say they have established a model for the way an Iraq without Mr. Hussein might be governed. Despite the fears of Turkish officials, the Kurdish leaders insist they are not laying the groundwork for a Kurdish state. They say the cutoff in diesel fuel could ultimately hamper efforts to bring stability and democracy to Iraq.
"It is not in the interest of the West for democracy to fail in Iraq," the Kurdish leader said.
Meanwhile, near Habur, the truck drivers gather along the highway known as the Silk Road, looking for odd jobs and listening for any news that the gates may open again. One of them was Nusrettin Zorlu, a 32-year-old father of two. Mr. Zorlu said he had not driven his truck into Iraq for more than a year.
Mr. Zorlu was a haggard man, and he wore worried look. After scrounging through the pockets of his worn pin-striped suit, he produced all the money he had left in the world, a handful of Turkish notes worth about 75 cents.
"This is all about politics," Mr. Zorlu said,
and a crowd of his friends nodded in agreement. "We just want it
to end as soon as possible."
3. - Associated Press - "Greece says Cyprus solution key to Turkey's EU hopes":
ATHENS / 28 November 2002 / By Patrick Quinn
Greek Premier Costas Simitis on Thursday said Turkey should do its utmost to help reunite Cyprus if it wants to improve its own chances of joining the European Union.
Simitis said he hoped a solution to the 28-year division of the eastern Mediterranean will be found ahead of a summit on Dec. 12, where EU leaders are due to invite Cyprus and nine other candidates to join by 2004.
"Failure by Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots to keep to this timetable can't weaken (Cyprus') effort for entry," Simitis said. "Accession does not require a solution of the political problem."
United Nations (news - web sites) Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) earlier this month proposed a 137-page plan to reunify Cyprus into a single country with two equal states in a loose federal government with a rotating presidency. Annan is pushing for a deal before the EU summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Cyprus has been divided into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish-occupied north since Turkey invaded the island in 1974 after a short-lived coup by supporters of union with Greece. A breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains 40,000 troops there. Cyprus is divided along a U.N. monitored buffer zone known as the "green line."
Athens is backing Turkish calls for Ankara to be given a starting date for its own EU entry talks in Copenhagen. In return, it wants Turkey to pressure ailing Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to negotiate along the lines of the Annan plan. Denktash finally accepted Wednesday.
"The green line in Nicosia separates Ankara from Brussels. The green line does not serve the interests of Turkey. The green line is not abolished with words and maneuvers, it is abolished with actions," Simitis said.
If Greek and Turkish Cypriots fail to reach an agreement, the EU is committed to admitting only the Greek Cypriot part of the country into the group. Turkey in the past has warned it would then annex the north.
Simitis said a united Cyprus joining the EU would bring about "cataclysmic changes" on the island in favor of the internationally isolated Turkish Cypriots.
"The cataclysmic change that entry will bring to
a united Cyprus fully cements the democratic and human rights of Turkish
Cypriots," Simitis said. "Today the conditions have been created
for us to overcome the last terrible pending issue in Europe after the
fall of the Berlin wall."
4. - Turkish Daily News - "Erdogan says EU has yet to decide on date for talks":
But reforms will continue, pledges the AK Party leader, even though the Copenhagen summit will produce a "date for a date," instead of a date for talks
29 November 2002
The leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Recep Tayyip Erdogan returned not fully satisfied from a European tour that took him most recently to Paris. He said that EU leaders were undecided on whether or not to give a date to Turkey at the forthcoming Copenhagen summit.
But he said the reform process will continue, even if the summit does not set a date for the start of entry talks but produces a "date for a date" instead.
"It seems it will take until the last minute for EU leaders to decide on whether or not to give Turkey a date for talks," said Erdogan to reporters en route to Turkey. He added that some EU leaders he met were divided, some favored Turkey's being given a date for the start of accession talks, while others advanced a "date for date" formula.
Erdogan has been pressing the EU to set a date for entry talks in the upcoming Copenhagen summit on Dec. 12-13 throughout his tour, which began last week. Meanwhile, the government is working on a 36-article reform package at home in an effort to bring Turkish laws into line with EU membership standards.
Erdogan said the AK Party government would continue to do its best until the summit because reforms are for the well-being of the Turkish people, not only for the sake of meeting the membership criteria.
Close contact with EU leaders will continue up until the critical summit, said Erdogan to reporters en route to Turkey on Wednesday night.
Erdogan's pledge of continuing the reform drive came after Gunter Verheugen, the EU commissioner responsible for enlargement, claimed Turkey has not met the political and economic criteria fulfilled by other candidates.
But still, it is up to EU leaders to decide whether Turkey deserves to be given a date for the beginning of accession talks with the union in the Copenhagen summit, Verheugen told a group of French parliamentarians in Paris.
The Financial Times Deutschland on Wednesday quoted EU sources as saying it was likely EU leaders in Copenhagen would give Turkey a conditional agreement to begin entry talks.
This would mean accession talks could start in 2004, or 2005 at the latest, conditional on Brussels accepting Turkey had met economic and political standards for membership, the paper reported.
"We will carry on with reforms because reforms are for raising the living standards of our people," Erdogan said, when asked if an outcome other than a date for talks from the Copenhagen summit would lead to a revision of ties with the EU.
Chirac welcomes Turkish membership, undecided on date
In the latest stop of his European tour, Erdogan met French President Jacques Chirac, who received him like a government leader, greeting him personally on the steps of the presidential Elysee Palace and holding a half-hour tete-a-tete meeting.
Chirac reiterated to Erdogan that he believed Turkey had "a place fully within Europe".
"For France, Turkey should be treated on an equal footing and with the same rules that apply to all candidates," Chirac was quoted as saying by his spokeswoman Catherine Colonna.
France seeks a European consensus at the Dec. 12-13 EU summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, Colonna said and quoted Chirac as saying: "France hasn't set its position" on the kind of signal that could be given to Turkey at the summit.
Erdogan insisted on the "efforts already made by Turkey" to meet EU requirements, Colonna said, and he "underscored that his is a position that is unanimous in Turkey."
"The Turkish people want to enter the European Union," Erdogan said later at a news conference at the Turkish Embassy.
Erdogan also promised to implement human rights reforms that have lagged.
Erdogan also said the constitution would be revised "within the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights" and opposition parties and nongovernmental organizations would be consulted in the process.
Earlier this month, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, chosen by the EU to draft its constitution, said that if Turkey joins, it will be "the end of the European Union."
Chirac has made clear he disagreed with remarks this month by former French President Giscard d'Estaing that Turkey's entry would spell "the end of the European Union."
Giscard toned down his remarks while addressing French lawmakers on Wednesday, cautioning against speedy enlargement of the EU in general. He said Europe should be reflecting on defense and foreign policy issues before thinking of expansion.
He also suggested a debate on the geographic contours of the EU, and said Turkey could be among nations with a privileged partnership with the EU.
Despite backing from some, many in the EU are still doubtful that the bloc can absorb Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim country of nearly 70 million stretching to Iraq and Iran.
Dismissing that Turkey is a European country, an editorial in Wednesday's French Le Figaro newspaper argued against Turkish membership. The paper also blamed the United States for forcing the EU to pay its own debt to Turkey for being a loyal supporter of the Western bloc during Cold War years.
But critics also spoke out. Pat Cox, head of the European Parliament, said he was not sharing the same perspective with the EU on Turkey and added that Turkey should be given a positive message in Copenhagen after meeting with Erdogan in Paris.
Cox, in a meeting with French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre
Raffarin, said the European Parliament favored Turkey's being given
a date at the Copenhagen summit.
5. - Associated Press - "Future of Iraqi Kurds Still Uncertain":
IRBIL / 29 November 2002 / by Borzou Daraghi
Despite carving out a relatively prosperous, liberal enclave in Iraq's far north, many Kurds believe their self-rule experiment will die if America does not oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
While President Bush (news - web sites) has persisted in threats to attack Iraq unless it fully cooperates with U.N. arms inspectors, some Kurds worry that the international, and American, stance has subtly shifted from eliminating Saddam's regime to simply eliminating its lethal arms.
"Some say if he disarms, he will still be in power," said Fowzi Hariri, a top official of the Kurdish Democratic Party. "What happens to us? Are we expected to continue to revolt? Or are we expected to live together with him?"
In the years since the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) and creation of the U.S.-Britain no-fly zone that helped establish an autonomous Kurdish enclave, the region's 3.7 million Kurds have achieved much.
Kurdish schools have been built, roads fixed and cultural institutions established in a bid to develop a Kurdish identity in the region.
With help from the United Nations (news - web sites) and the Iraqi oil-for-food program, Kurdish authorities have rebuilt from scratch many villages wiped out by Saddam's forces during his three decades of rule.
They have also laid aside political differences and achieved peace between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and its one-time rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
But a range of pressures — including Saddam's continuing rule and economic problems — have many Kurds fearful of the future. They are also worried about the role of neighboring Iran, Syria and Turkey, which oppose autonomy for Iraqi Kurds since it could feed the nationalist desires of their own Kurdish minorities.
Without a change in the Iraqi government, officials privately acknowledge that "Kurdistan" — which encompasses three of Iraq's 18 provinces and 3.7 million of its 22 million people — will remain an isolated backwater surrounded by distrustful neighbors.
One Kurdistan Democratic Party official said Kurdish forces would be crushed if they tried to attack Saddam outside a U.S.-led war. He said the situation was at a political dead end as well, since the Kurds were in no position to negotiate their future with Baghdad.
Kurdish-controlled Iraq has no internationally recognized status. It cannot issue passports to its citizens nor grant visas to visitors. It has no airport and visitors come and go by motor vehicle.
The transportation issue is particularly vexing as many guests invited to the Kurds' Oct. 4 parliament reconvening were unable to attend because they could not gain permission to enter northern Iraq across the Turkish, Iranian or Syrian borders.
The isolation and lack of opportunities in Iraq's Kurdish region are convincing many of its brightest young people to emigrate. Its leaders avoid nationalistic or civic gestures, wary of how Turkey, Iran or Syria would react if they were to make moves such as issuing Kurdistan license plates.
The region remains financially dependent on the U.N.'s oil-for-food program, under which Iraqi petroleum is sold and its revenues spent on humanitarian projects. But expenditures under the program must be approved by Baghdad.
Since its 1991 separation from Iraq and the 1998 end to the civil war between the Democratic Party and Patriotic Union, a nascent private sector has developed. Mobile phone services, Internet providers, building contractors and light industry have sprouted up.
But the economy has slowed down because of a shortage of currency. Kurds still use the pre-1991 Iraqi dinar, not the Baghdad-issued dinar emblazoned with Saddam's face. Apparently, Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian speculators have been hoarding the pre-1991 dinars in hopes they'll make a killing on them should the U.S. remove Saddam.
As many Kurds are paid in U.S. dollars by international agencies, they have to use more dollars to buy goods. Those items are priced in old dinars, making them more expensive.
"If we could just print new money, we could get rid of this problem," said Adeham Karim Darvish, director of the Kurdistan Regional Bank, housed in an ultramodern, marble-tiled tower built a year ago.
"But because the (Kurdish) government is not the
government, we can't do anything about it," he said.
7. - Kurdish Observer - "Keskin: The Turkish General Staff is the responsible":
The trial of the lawyer Eren Keskin was held in Istanbul State Security Court (DGM) number 3, yesterday. She is adjudicated on the claim of "driving the society to animosity and hostility" during her speech in a panel in Koln in Germany. According to the statement Keskin made after the trial, she declared that the Turkish General Staff is responsible for her punishment of banning her to do her profession for a year.
DIHA / ISTANBUL / 28 November 2002
The trial of the lawyer Eren Keskin was held in Istanbul State Security Court (DGM) number 3, yesterday. She is adjudicated on the claim of “driving the society to animosity and hostility” during her speech in a panel in Koln in Germany. According to the statement Keskin made after the trial, she declared that the Turkish General Staff is responsible for her punishment of banning her to do her profession for a year.
Alongside Eren Keskin who joined to the trial undetained; Hurriyet Sener, member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Association Istanbul Branch was also present in the court as the witness.
Hurriyet Sener declared that she had also attended to the panel as a listener and Eren Keskin did not pronounce any statement that would provoke the society. She added, “The speech of Keskin did not embody any aspect of crime. She presented the reports and statistics of her court cases about the harassed and raped women during police supervision”
“All the audience stood applauding her”
Sener expressed that the people attending to the panel stood applauding for Keskin’s speech and added “Prof. Dr. Necla Arat, though she did not have her turn for speech, had the word saying that “I am speaking despite I am aware that I will be groaned down by the audience” and she pronounced provocative statements. Sener argued that the cassette recordings of the panel would demonstrate the reality. After her witness, the court of law postponed the case due to the flaws in the lawsuit.
“Objection against the ban on the practice of her profession”
Keskin’s lawyer Fatma Karakas in her report to the DIHA correspondent stated that they would apply to the Ankara Administrative Court on November 29 and open a case for disturbing the execution concerning the ban on the practice of her profession and the annulment of the verdict respectively. Karakas pronounced that Keskin was punished with a jail sentence of 1 year 1 month and 10 days due to an interview she undertook in 1995, yet the Supreme Court of Appeals judged this decision at law in 1999. After the finalization of the verdict, the law for Adjournment was vested on 3 September 1999 and Keskin’s penalty was adjourned. Therefore, there is no situation of conviction. Keskin underwent a trial because of the expression of her opinions. The expression of opinions is not a crime according to the law for Lawyers and not an abuse against the legal profession. Relying on these reasons, we will open a case for the disturbance of the execution and for the annulment of the verdict.”
“Press statement from Keskin”
After her trial in DGM, Eren Keskin made a press statement and declared that the Turkish General Staff is responsible for her punishment of banning her to do her profession for a year. Keskin stated that it was an anti-democratic decision and continued, “This is a punishment given by DGM. Besides, I received a penalty from the Bar Association for one year. But, I do not think that the bar Association took this decision by itself. The Ministry of Justice had exerted great pressure. Nor, I do not think that the Ministry of Justice took this decision by its own. I believe this decision was taken by the General Staff.”
Keskin stated that the underlying reason for this verdict
is the militarist domination over the civil politics, an issue of which
is never discussed. She continued as follows “The problem is the
struggle between the parties in favour of a democratic Turkey and the
parties disfavouring this ideal. This decision is a great injustice
to me. I expect that we will be able to disturb this sentence in the
execution”
6. - Kurdish Human Rights Project - "Legitimacy of recent Turkish elections in serious doubt":
28 November 2002
KHRP A recent mission to the south-east of Turkey undertaken by the Kurdish Human Rights Project has uncovered serious allegations of malfeasance by the army and state in the recent parliamentary elections.
The allegations, which include torture, intimidation, unlawful detention and electoral fraud, centre around supposed efforts to diminish the level of popular support for DEHAP, the pro-Kurdish bloc of parties which dominated the voting in the Kurdish regions, tallying just under two million votes.
However, under the Turkish electoral system, parties must achieve at least 10% of the vote nationwide to be eligible for the allocation of parliamentary seats. DEHAP scored only 6.2% and thus, despite being the leading party in 12 Kurdish provinces, achieved no national representation.
DEHAP officials in Hakkari, near the Iraqi and Iranian borders, charged that in the surrounding villages the military held meetings warning villagers that if they voted for DEHAP, they would be displaced from their homes. This allegation was confirmed even by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the eventual election victors, which suggested that military officers had visited local villagers to offer “advice”.
DEHAP officials also alleged that they were frequently prevented from going into rural areas to campaign. In one village, shots were fired into the air as a warning to leave, and householders who had spoken to the DEHAP delegation were later taken to the military centre and detained for questioning. In another, Geçiple, although the vote was held as an illegal open ballot, the results were such that the army later detained and supposedly tortured thirty village guards, the state’s own local appointees.
Several tribal leaders were forced to stand as “independent candidates” in the Hakkari election, on the assumption that tribal loyalties would oblige their followers to vote for them. Many people arriving at polling stations found that false entries on the electoral register rendered them ineligible to vote. Police and military officials frequently oversaw the polling process armed with a list of people wanted for questioning, further deterring people from participating. It is estimated that altogether around 25,000 eligible people were unable to vote in the Hakkari region.
Furthermore, according to Goc-Der, the association for displaced peoples, perhaps only 30% of the almost 100,000 displaced people living in the town of Hakkari, who outnumber residents by an estimated 3 to 1, were eligible to take part in the elections due to problems with registration and polling location. A DEHAP petition listing these abuses was not accepted by the courts.
Similar stories were heard in Tunceli, where despite legal prohibitions to the contrary, the regional governor openly campaigned for the far-right MHP party. By law, a petition compiled by local people to protest his activities had to be submitted to the governor himself.
The mission met with numerous groups, including trade
unions, government and local officials, human rights organisations,
journalists and political parties. Several of the interviewees suggested
that there was a wider context to the reported electoral abuses, and
focused on the alleged desire of both the Turkish state and Western
interests to bring the Islamist AKP into government in order to pre-empt
Muslim protests over Turkey’s role in the imminent invasion of
Iraq.
8. - AFP - "Turkey ends 15-year-old state of emergency in Kurdish regions":
DIYARBAKIR / 28 November 2002
A 15-year state of emergency, which once covered 11 war-torn provinces in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, is due to end this weekend in line with the country's efforts to meet European Union norms.
Emergency rule, introduced in 1987 following the break-out of a Kurdish rebellion, will end in the two remaining provinces -- Diyarbakir and Sirnak -- on Saturday under a June decision by the Turkish parliament. The lifting of the state of emergency is among the steps the EU has asked Ankara to take as a condition for accession talks.
Turkey has been easing restrictions on its Kurdish minority since 1999 when the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) declared an end to its campaign for self-rule in favor of a democratic struggle for Kurdish rights. The decision followed a peace appeal by PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was captured and jailed the same year. Since then, the once daily clashes in the region have almost ended. The conflict has claimed some 36,500 lives since 1984 when the PKK launched attacks on security forces and civilians in the region, leading to the introduction of emergency rule in 1987.
A special law gave civilian and military authorities in the region enhanced powers to limit individual and press freedoms in the region, and exempted the decisions of the emergency rule governor from judicial scrutiny. Turkey's struggle against the PKK has led to accusations of gross human rights violations, including torture, disappearances and extra-judicial killings.
The bulk of complaints filed by Turks with the European
Court of Human Rights stem from human rights violations in the southeast.
In a taboo-breaking move to improve the rights of its Kurds, Turkey
legalized broadcasts and language courses in the Kurdish language last
August as part of a reform drive to catch up with EU democracy standards.
It also abolished capital punishment, which in turn, led to the commutation
of Ocalan's death sentence to life in prison.