16
June 2003
2. "Turkish army should toe European Union line, EU official says", Turkey's EU-inspired democracy reforms will be incomplete if the country fails to curb the influence its powerful army wields in politics, Anatolia news agency quoted the European Union envoy to Turkey as saying Saturday.
3. "Athens Claims Military Controls Turkey", Turkish-Greek relations are still shaky, with a series of strongly worded communiqués coming out of Athens lately.
4. "EU official says aid to Turkey might triple / Sixth EU reform package in Parliament this week", a European Commission official said the European Union's financial assistance for Turkey would double, even triple during 2004-2006, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday.
5. "End Of The Line", the infamous "green line" dividing Cyprus is finally breaking down. Meet the man who made it happen
6. "The Future Of Iraq", the U.S. administration is split between different political visions of the new Iraq.
1.
- AFP - "Hundreds of Turkish civic groups call for amnesty
for Kurdish rebels":
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey / June 14, 2003
Hundreds of civic groups from Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast
urged the government Saturday to declare a general amnesty for Kurdish
rebels to establish lasting peace in their conflict-torn region.
In Istanbul, meanwhile, police detained about 50 women who shouted
solgans in favor of the amnesty.
"A conditionless, limitless amnesty is the only way of overcoming
social conflict and tensions," said a statement signed and by
340 non-governmental organizations, including pro-Kurdish parties
as well as rights groups, trade unions and professional organizations.
Ankara is drafting an amnesty bill aimed at encouraging rebels from
the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who have been largely
dormant since 1999 following a bloody 15-year campaign for self-rule,
to lay down their arms for good.
The government says the bill would be more inclusive than similar
legislation adopted in the past, which required militants to express
remorse and to supply authorities with information about the PKK.
Commanders of the group were also excluded from their scope.
"Demanding people to express remorse will not resolve the problems,
but will create the ground for their proliferation," said the
statement, which was read out at a press conference in Diyarbakir,
the main city of the southeast.
About 50 women who belonged to the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's
Party (DEHAP) attempted to draw attention to the amnesty appeal by
offering flowers to passers-by at a square in downtown Istanbul.
Police, who apparently considered the initiative an illegal demonstration,
detained the women after they disobeyed orders to disperse and began
shouting slogans, Anatolia news agency reported.
Intensive fighting in Turkey's southeast has significantly abated
since September 1999 when the PKK -- heeding an appeal by its jailed
leader Abdullah Ocalan -- said it was laying down its arms in favor
of a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish question and withdrawing from
Turkish territory.
Ankara says about 5,000 armed militants have found refuge in mountainous
northern Iraq, which has been outside Baghdad's control since the
1991 Gulf War.
Following the end of the war in Iraq, US officials have said that
Washington, which considers the PKK a terrorist organization, will
not tolerate the presence of the rebels in the region.
The PKK's violent campaign, which started in 1984, triggered an equally
harsh response from the Turkish army, with the conflict claiming about
36,500 lives.
Turkey has only recently began to grant the Kurds cultural freedoms
as part of efforts to boost its struggling bid to join the European
Union.
2.
- AFP - "Turkish army should toe European Union line, EU official
says":
ANKARA / June 14, 2003
Turkey's EU-inspired democracy reforms will be incomplete if the
country fails to curb the influence its powerful army wields in politics,
Anatolia news agency quoted the European Union envoy to Turkey as
saying Saturday.
"If the relations between civilians and the military in Turkey
do not take place in the way they are in EU countries, this points
to a deficiency and a gap in democracy," Ambassador Hansjorg
Kretschmer told reporters during a visit to the southern city of Antalya,
according to the report.
The Turkish army influences political decisions through senior generals'
membership in the National Security Council (MGK), the country's top
policy-making body.
"The status of the military, the MGK... the freedom the armed
forced have regarding their budget, the way they express their opinions
and observations is something that we are not accustomed to in the
European Union," Kretschmer was quoted as saying.
He stressed that the government of the ruling Justice and Development
Party (AKP) had an overwhelming parliamentary majority, and could
easily pass the required reforms on the issue.
But any such reform could prove painful for the AKP government as
it is already viewed with suspicion by the secularist establishment
and by the army because of its Islamist roots.
The EU will assess Turkey's democratization progress in December 2004
before deciding whether to open accession talks with the predominantly
Muslim country, the only candidate among the 13 hopefuls that is yet
to start membership negotiations.
The government during the last week submitted a new draft of EU-oriented
reforms to parliament aimed mainly at expanding the rights of the
Kurdish minority and freedom of expression.
Officials have remained silent in the face of insistent inquiries
by the press about when the government will gave the go-ahead to amendments
that will bring the Turkish army in line with EU norms.
3. - Zaman (Turkey) - "Athens Claims Military Controls Turkey":
June 15, 2003
Turkish-Greek relations are still shaky, with a series of strongly worded communiqués coming out of Athens lately. The latest communication has Greek Defence Minister Yannos Papandoniu claiming that it is the military generals in Turkey that holds the real power, not Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Athens intensified the already strained relations between the two countries recently by claiming the existence of civilian and military elitism in Ankara. Quarrels began with a claim from Athens that Turkish war planes had disturbed a civilian Greek aircraft.
In a statement to Flash, a privately owned Greek radio station, Papandoniu said, "The real power in Turkey is not in the hands of the government and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan." In a rude manner reminiscent of Greek Foreign Affairs Minister Teodoros Pangalos, Papandoniu said, "Generals [in Turkey] have the power. This [Aegean] event proves it. This is not a good situation. I fear that we are entering a new period or tension with Turkey. I hope this tension does not climb to points of the extreme. We definitely want to refrain from this type of development, the kind that will jeopardize Turkey's European ambitions and will create problems for both of our countries."
Papandoniu stated that it was absolutely necessary to communicate to
Turkey what the Greek perspective will be. He warned that if the
"groundless demands and aggressive attitudes" were not ceased,
they [Athens]would block Turkey during the discussion period with
the European Union (EU).
4. - Turkish Daily News - "EU official says aid to Turkey might triple / Sixth EU reform package in Parliament this week":
ANKARA / 16 June 2003
A European Commission official said the European Union's financial assistance for Turkey would double, even triple during 2004-2006, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday.
European Commission's Didier Bouteiller said December 2004 was a critical date for Turkey's bid to join the European Union. "Turkey must first prepare for this date and pass this test," he said in remarks quoted by the Anatolia news agency.
"There's major progress in reforms but this momentum should definitely be maintained," he added.
The official said it would become clear in December 2004 whether Turkey has satisfied the Copenhagen political criteria. The EU is expected to decide on a date for starting accession talks with Turkey in December 2004.
"We are expecting accession talks to start in early 2005 provided that Turkey continues reforms in this fashion and meet political criteria. But let me say that technical preparation takes a long time," Bouteiller said.
Sixth EU reform package in Parliament this week
Government made the package be discussed publicly especially to overcome resistance from the Turkish military, despite not having much time to enact reforms that will be indicated in Turkey's National Program to be presented to the EU before June 15
The Turkish Parliament will discuss the controversial sixth EU reform package comprising enactment of important laws in harmonization with the EU Copenhagen criteria which draws the preconditions of EU membership that Turkey's ruling party attaches great importance.
The draft legislation at first will be worked through at Parliament's Justice Commission on Tuesday, before it comes to the assembly for eventual voting.
Some changes in the sixth reform package faced resistance from the military that sees itself as the guardian of the country's secular system and fears that the radical changes especially regarding Turkey's Kurds may harm the struggle against the separatist terrorist organization the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The package includes a range of reforms such as allowing parents to give their children Kurdish names and allowing private broadcasters to use Kurdish. Only a planned measure that would have allowed places of worship to be set up in private homes was left out of the package by the government.
However, the Turkish government wants to pass all the reforms needed to meet the political standard for membership this year so it can prove to the bloc that it can implement them in time for a review of progress in late 2004.
The EU has welcomed a series of Turkish reform packages but stresses the changes must be implemented before Turkey can hope to win a start to membership negotiations at the 2004 review.
The government made the package be discussed publicly especially to overcome resistance from the Turkish military despite not having much time to enact reforms that will be indicated in Turkey's National Program which will be presented to the EU before June 15.
The sixth package will be followed by other reform packages. The
government and Turkish officials have started to work on the seventh
reform package.
++++++++++
5. - Time Magazine - "End Of The Line":
The infamous "green line" dividing Cyprus is finally breaking down. Meet the man who made it happen
NICOSIA (Cyprus) / 23 June 2003
by Andrew Purvis
Growing up the son of a famous man can be traumatic, particularly on an island of less than a million people. Take Serdar Denktash, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Democrat Party in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Despite the fancy job titles, to most residents of the divided island he is far better known as the son of Rauf Denktash, the rotund septuagenarian President who has dominated Turkish Cypriot politics for nearly half a century.
Rauf is still the most important Denktash on Cyprus, but the son may be rising. Serdar, 44, worked behind the scenes this spring to secure the opening of the heavily fortified "green line" that has split the island since 1974 — the most significant breakthrough in Cyprus in years. The April decision came with the backing of the government and Turkey, but Serdar was its architect — persuading his father and the Turkish government in Ankara. "We wanted to show that we mean business, that we are in search of a solution," he says, sitting beneath a portrait of his beaming father in his office a stone's throw from the green line. "And that despite what certain Greek Cypriot leaders say, we are not living in tents and caves."
He's done more than that. The rush of Greek and Turkish Cypriots to cross the line has stunned politicians on both sides, as has the calm with which longtime enemies have greeted each other. Relaxed trade embargoes and the lifting of visa restrictions for Greek Cypriots in Turkey soon followed, raising hopes that a political settlement was at least thinkable before the Greek part of the island is formally admitted to the European Union next May. And for Serdar, there may be a payoff. His political party, which shares power with his father's National Unity Party, is facing a hard fight in parliamentary elections this December. Analysts were predicting an easy win for the opposition, thus ending the Denktash dominance of Cypriot affairs, but Serdar's role in opening the line has stolen some of that fire.
Serdar Denktash was drafted late into the family business. A slimmer version of his father, he studied electrical engineering at the University of Wales, Cardiff. Returning to Cyprus he dabbled in banking (working for his father-in-law) and switched to politics in 1985 after his older brother, Raif, the heir apparent, was killed in a road accident. His generation has a different view of the Cyprus problem: "I did not fight with a gun," he says. "I did not watch friends die beside me. My father is from that generation. I am not." Which is one reason why he, not Rauf, championed opening the green line.
To push through his plan, Serdar needed the assent not just of his father, whose personal prestige and contacts in Ankara make him a dominant voice, but the Turkish government itself and the Turkish military, which keeps more than 40,000 troops on the island. Serdar says he brought up the idea of "opening the gates" four years ago, but only began pressing the idea in Nicosia and Ankara this January, after U.N. talks aimed at reuniting the island failed. "I was going to the President, to the Turkish government, day by day to convince them," he said. Opening the line, he argued, would show ordinary Greeks that Turkish Cyprus was not an economically backward province laboring under military rule. Ankara was receptive, says Serdar, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "was particularly encouraging." Rauf Denktash — who, to the displeasure of many of his own people, has fiercely resisted the U.N. effort to find a solution — agreed to go along as an "experiment."
Analysts say Turkey's support for the measure may be a step in the new, pro-Islamic government's long-term campaign to win E.U. membership. Alternatively, it could simply be an effort to buy time and ease political pressure that had been building on the island since massive anti- government protests broke out last year. Mehmet Ali Talat, head of the opposition Republican Turkish Party, which helped organize the protests, takes the latter view. "The government had run out of ideas," he says. "They had to do something." Serdar's tone may be more moderate than his father's, says Talat, but his policies amount to the same thing — keeping Cyprus divided. On the other side of the green line, Greek Cypriot leaders are equally dismissive. "The new Denktash and the old one are the same package," says government spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides. Serdar concedes that, like his father, he opposes much of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plan for reunifying the island. But he genuinely wants a deal, he claims. "Failure would not be the end of the world," he says, "but we want to build a new future."
Serdar rejects the notion that he is being groomed to take his father's spot. "He has a lot of respect for his dad, and the history of Cyprus that he represents," says Kudret Akay, a childhood friend and sociologist. "But he doesn't compare himself to him." Serdar is more relaxed (he's a diver and race-car fan) and less rigid, but ambitious nevertheless. "It is no coincidence that he has been way out front on the issue of opening the border," says one senior Western diplomat.
The two men have a close, if formal, relationship. At the Denktash dinner table, talk of politics is banned. To discuss business matters, Serdar makes an appointment with his dad. "He knows what he is talking about and he is the only one with the power to deal with the Turkish government," says the son. "It's just luck that we have him." The opposition, if it prevails, has sworn to throw Rauf out.
A full-fledged political settlement may still be far off. But ordinary
Cypriots, Greeks and Turks alike, seem ready for change, and the opening
of the green line may be the first irrevocable step toward it. "I
was expecting maybe 2,000 to cross the line a day for a short time,"
recalls Serdar. But as of last week, up to a third of the island's
population had taken advantage of the quiet revolution, including
25,000 Turkish Cypriots who have applied for Cypriot (soon to be E.U.)
passports and thousands of elderly Greek Cypriots who visited old
homes for the first time since 1974. Greeks and Turks treat each other
with studied civility, welcoming strangers into their homes and sending
them away with gifts of lemons and flowers. "It really is unprecedented,"
says Thomas Weston, U.S. special envoy to the island. "There
is a tremendous amount of goodwill." Serdar agrees that the opening
is a "success for the people of Cyprus." And, he hopes,
for him too.
6. - Al Hayat - "The Future Of Iraq":
by Selim Nassar / 14 June 2003
The U.S. administration is split between different political visions of the new Iraq. While all members agree that a new system should be established, they differ on the needed period for the American troops to remain in the country in order to supervise the creation of this system. Colin Powell sees that Iraq no longer constitutes a threat to the U.S. and Israel, and that it would be better to entrust the UN with supervising the building of new institutions in it. And while only a handful within the administration agree with such perception, it has convinced a majority within the Congress who believe that rebuilding Iraq will be long and costly. They believe that periods of stability in Iraq were secured by strong and tyrannical rulers like Saddam Hussein and not by weak rulers like King Feisal II. Consequently, Powell says that the American troops will not succeed in enforcing law and order unless they turn into an occupying force, which would expose them to armed resistance.
Those who oppose this view maintain that an American withdrawal before the establishment of law and order would create confusion and may allow the return of the Baath Party to fill in the security vacuum. They also expect a civil war to break out on sectarian and ethnic grounds, which may lead to Turkish, Iranian and Syrian involvement with the aim of preventing its spread into their own countries.
Consequently, those who oppose an early withdrawal believe that it is unfair to accuse the Iraqis of rejecting democracy. They argue that the margin of freedom that the Iraqis were allowed between 1921 and 1958 was quite important compared to other Arab countries. During that period, Iraq had a lively opposition supported by a free press, which allowed its diverse ethnic and sectarian groups to play a role in policy making, thus providing 37 years of relative stability.
In light of the above facts, Paul Bremer, the American civil administrator of Iraq, says that the program to rebuild Iraq depends mainly on the human element and on the people's readiness to revive the political institutions. He expects the transitory period to last no longer than three years, since it took Japan and Germany five years to recover following World War II. And while he admitted that it was wrong of him to get rid of all the government employees and to dismantle the ministries of defense and information. These measures drove the expelled employees to secretly collaborate with the remnants of the Baath Party, which increased the looting and made the occupation forces targets for snipers in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. In defending his decision, he says that most people had refused to cooperate with the former regime, and that those who suffered began to take revenge at random, which added to the chaotic situation. For that reason and others, he was forced to deplete the official institutions of their staff in order to replace them with qualified persons. However, he faced a problem because he realized that most qualified Iraqis had escaped the country during the Baathist regime, and they refuse to return before democratic institutions had been established. This is similar to the one million Lebanese who had escaped their country during the civil war and refuse to return until Lebanon is free and sovereign again.
The question remains as to the vision of the American administration regarding the new system in Iraq. This vision is being prepared by a number of experts in the fields of administration and law, with the help of a few Iraqi lawyers living outside the country. Two main features emerge:
First: Creating a federal rule
The study is based on the experience of the Kurds in the North and how their secession from the central authority in Baghdad enabled them to benefit from the no-fly-zone area to build a liberal, richer and diverse society. The study emphasizes the significance of creating a system that includes the different ethnic groups. The theorists expect to utilize such social and cultural mosaic in order to establish a constitution inspired by such diversity.
This system involves having a federation based on equal shares for 18 districts, whereby each district elects its own local council who are to be represented in a council of notables. This means discounting the notion of a three-way federation that was propagated in 1991 and aimed at creating a federation that involves the Shiites in the south, the Sunnis in the center and the Kurds in the north. The study notes that this federation would reinforce sectarianism in the country and would involve sectarian cleansing, massive deportations and divisions. And as was the case in the federal rule in Germany and Russia, a federal court will be established the functions of which will be limited to supervising the division of wealth between the capital and the districts. Any change in the mission of the court would require the approval of the head of state and the majority of the council of notables.
Second: The Presidency and Premiership
The study points to differing opinions among the people who are preparing a draft for the new system.
One group demands the return of the monarch, provided it is symbolic and subject to constitutional restraints, similar to the prevailing system in Britain. They argue that the monarchy would reassure the Sunnites, who are now outnumbered by the Shiites, and that the monarchy would reassure the Gulf rulers. Yet this proposal has not been well received because the monarchy in Iraq has failed to be a rallying factor for all Iraqis. And while it is true that the return of Sherif Hasan Bin Ali was cheered, it is also true that the absence of the monarchy for 35 years has made the Sherif an old symbol, similar to the Afghan King Zaher Shah.
The other team endorsed the proposition used in Bosnia to end the civil war. This proposal involves electing a three-member presidential council representing the different ethnic groups. The group proposed electing a three-man council representing the Sunnites, Kurds and Shiites. The study maintains that the council should be elected by a parliament, and that executive powers be centered in the hands of the prime minister who will be elected directly by the people. The reason behind reducing the powers of the three-man council is fear from seeking outside support, such as having the Shiite president extend bridges with Iran, or the Kurdish president seeking help from Turkey, Iran or Syria. The American administration believes that the new system may be able to allow a democratic system to function.
It is unfortunate that such a simplistic solution ignores a most complex problem.