25 November 2003

1. "Turkish Suspects Tied to Guerrillas", Government's Backing of Islamic Group Arouses Scrutiny After Blasts.

2. "Turkish army warns government", the Turkish army has warned the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the country's police force has to be "cleaned up" to prevent further terrorist violence.

3. "For Turks, EU ties offer uncertain alternative", Turkey has campaigned to become a part of Europe ever since the European Economic Community was created in 1958. But its efforts have continually been found wanting, even as other nations - notably those from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union - have been ushered ahead into the club.

4. "Time running out for Cyprus talks: Papadopoulos", time is running out for concluding Cyprus reunification talks before the Greek Cypriot part of the island joins the European Union in May 2004, Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos said, blaming Turkey.

5. "Norway still plans to expel ex-head of Ansar al-Islam to Iraq", Norway is still planning to expel Mullah Krekar, the founder of the radical Muslim group Ansar al-Islam, to Iraq, the government said Tuesday, a day after refusing to extradite him to Jordan.

6. "Germany urges Turkey to speed up EU reforms", German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer urged Turkey on Monday to speed up democracy reforms, but pledged support for its bid to join the EU and in the fight against terror after a week of carnage in Istanbul.

1. - Washington Post - "Turkish Suspects Tied to Guerrillas":

Government's Backing of Islamic Group Arouses Scrutiny After Blasts

BINGOL / 24 November 2003 / by Karl Vick

The family of Gokhan Elaltuntas buried him in the dead of night, waiting until 2 a.m. Saturday to inter what bits remained of the soft-eyed young man after he detonated a truckload of fertilizer and petroleum outside an Istanbul synagogue seven days earlier.

"We want to cleanse our surname, because we don't want people to know us as terrorists," said his uncle, Rifat Elaltuntas.

Across town the mother of another suspected bomber, Azad Ekinci, moved out of the apartment where the family had lived for three decades. The family of Mesut Cabuk, whose passport was found in the wreckage outside a second synagogue, remained at home but indisposed. His mother tugged a smiling little boy -- the dead man's son -- through a door she then quietly closed on visiting reporters.

Of the four suspects named in the bombings that traumatized Istanbul, three hailed from this gritty mountain town about 1,000 miles away in Turkey's eastern mountains. Notably religious, each of the suspects bore the markers of Islamic militancy familiar in biographies of suicide bombers, including travel to Pakistan for "religious training."

But in Bingol, many people want answers, not from the shaken families of the accused, but from the government.

Until four years ago, Turkey, a Western-leaning, avowedly secular country, had tacitly encouraged Islamic extremism in this region, judging it a useful tool in a sometimes dirty war against Kurdish separatists. A brutal religious underground group known as Hezbollah received guns from government arsenals, according to official investigations, and several thousand killings widely attributed to the group were officially ignored.

Now, after four truck bombs in six days have made Turkey what President Bush called "a new front" in the war on terrorism, residents are raising fresh questions about the consequences of allowing extremism to flourish in the name of expediency. The three men from Bingol accused in the bombings had all been detained in their home town on suspicions of membership in Hezbollah, Turkish officials said. The Turkish underground organization has no relation to similarly named groups in Lebanon and elsewhere.

"People around here knew they were from the Hezbollah organization," said Yusuf Aydin, 65. "We are upset with the National Intelligence Organization for letting them travel abroad and do these things," he said, referring to Turkey's intelligence service.

Ridvan Kizgin, director of the Bingol office of the Turkish Human Rights Association, drew parallels between Turkey's experience with Hezbollah and the U.S. relationship with the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "Now the American government can't do anything to stop them," said Kizgin, referring to the religious warriors funded by Osama bin Laden that the United States once regarded as useful allies. "Turkey is in the same position." Al Qaeda has asserted responsibility for the Istanbul blasts, as have more obscure Turkish groups that are not believed to have the resources to carry out attacks on such a scale.

"We have some evidence which indicates there are religious motives behind this, but is this an al Qaeda conglomerate function, or is this some other terrorist organization? We are not sure at this point," the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Sunday in Istanbul.

In Bingol, officials emphasized their belief that even if the city of 70,000 provided the manpower, the plots were hatched elsewhere in Turkey, or "probably in foreign countries," said Huseyin Oner, a deputy governor of Bingol province. He said one of the three from Bingol -- he declined to say which -- had also traveled to Saudi Arabia.

"I don't think they relied on telephones or e-mail," Oner said. "They were speaking face to face in planning these events. Later they went to Istanbul to carry them out."

Still, the three knew one another here, in a city named for the fresh water that quenched the thirst of the forces of Kemal Ataturk, the military officer who transformed Turkey into a modern state devoted to emulating the West in the 1920s.

The young men from Bingol mixed the two worlds. They wore beards in a country that for years barred any facial hair beyond mustaches. When two of them returned from Pakistan, they had traded their jeans for shalwarkameez, loose-fitting, knee-length cotton shirts and baggy pants that denote male modesty.

But all three were fixtures at Internet cafes, two of which they or their families owned.

Elaltuntas, whose remains were buried at night, managed the Bingol Internet Merkezi Cafe on the city's busy main street. The two-story cafe, co-owned by his father and a brother of Ekinci's, shudders with the stuttering sound of machine guns of the point-of-view video games played by boys.

"He taught us so much about computers and games," said Musa Cetim, 17. "He spent all his free time here. . . . But he didn't say anything about religious things to us."

An earthquake on May 1 in Bingol killed 176 people and damaged many buildings, including the Internet cafe. In the five months the cafe was closed, Elaltuntas moved to Istanbul, saying he planned to open a computer store with a friend. The friend was Ekinci, who sold his share of another Internet cafe he owned with his brother. Elaltuntas' family insisted that he was no terrorist when he left.

"In four months they deceived Gokhan!" cried a female cousin, at the door of the family apartment where female mourners had come to pay their respects.

Azad Ekinci grew up oddly, according to relatives. He was only a year old when his father was killed in a political feud, shot dead by members of an ultranationalist party that then controlled Turkey. His mother responded to the trauma by trying to protect her sons from all risk. Azad and his brother were rarely allowed to leave their apartment, said Huseyin Sagdic, an uncle whose family of 11 lived one flight down.

Azad "had no friends," the uncle said. "He had no environment. If he were socialized, he wouldn't do such a thing."

From his sheltered upbringing in Bingol, Ekinci went to a university in Istanbul, a city of 12 million. Relatives said he dropped out after a year and returned home wearing a beard.
In Bingol, Ekinci began spending time with other young men who were serious about religion. One was Mesut Cabuk, who had grown up talking righteously about Islam.

"He would ask people, 'Why don't you pray? Why don't you follow religious practices?' " said Ibrahim Karaaslan, a classmate of Ekinci's through high school.

Karaaslan, an architect, said he thought Cabuk, who also lost his father at a young age, was "looking for love through religion." He also said Cabuk appeared to be "searching for an organization to put his religious thoughts into action."

In the early 1990s, when Cabuk left high school, Hezbollah was such an organization. Formed as an underground militant movement in the early 1980s, the group enjoyed virtual impunity in eastern Turkey because it directed its fire chiefly at the Kurdistan Worker's Party, or PKK. The Islamic organization was officially banned, and after the PKK retreated in 1999, Turkish authorities began to aggressively pursue Hezbollah.

But when the war was at its peak, the Turkish government, which relied heavily on proxy forces to battle the PKK, at best turned a blind eye to Hezbollah, according to a parliamentary report and other independent investigations.

In Bingol, the group's reputation was so fierce that Cabuk appeared frightened when Karaaslan asked if he was a member. But in 1991, at age 18, Cabuk had found a community. Karaaslan said that Cabuk summoned him that year to a bookstore to meet "my friends." They all wore beards. Before them, Cabuk again challenged Karaaslan to live a strict Muslim life.

When the architect saw Cabuk last year, he and Ekinci were inseparable. They had spent two years together in Pakistan.

"They were religious before, but not like after Pakistan," Karaaslan said.

Elaltuntas moved to Istanbul first. Cabuk followed, and Ekinci left Bingol shortly before Ramadan, the holy month that ends this week. He had sold the Internet cafe he owned with his brother, but between them, their relatives say, none of the men had enough money to buy the four trucks that carried the explosives that killed 58 people and injured 750.

Two of the vehicles reportedly were purchased by the fourth suspect in the case, Feridun Ugurlu, a native of Eskisehir. The town, midway between Ankara and Istanbul, is hundreds of miles from Bingol. But Ugurlu had also studied in Pakistan. Turkish newspapers quoted a neighbor as saying that Arabic-speaking men were staying with him in the days before the first two bombs were detonated outside the synagogues. The remains and ID cards found in the wreckage pointed to Elaltuntas and Cabuk.

Five days later, the other two vehicles blew up outside the British Consulate and the HSBC Bank building. Officials suggested that they were driven by Ugurlu and Ekinci.
Earlier reports had indicated that they had fled the country.

"Azad said, 'I'm going to Istanbul because I'll go to work in a foreign country,' " recalled his uncle, Sagdic. "He said, 'I'm going to be a translator.' "

2. - The Washington Times - "Turkish army warns government":

NICOSIA / 25 November 2003 / by Andrew Borowiec

The Turkish army has warned the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the country's police force has to be "cleaned up" to prevent further terrorist violence.

Diplomats interpret the warning as a sign of major concern by the military after the recent suicide bomb attacks that left at least 52 persons dead and about 800 injured, shattering the country's precarious peace and putting an exceptional burden on the government.

Senior Turkish generals fear that Mr. Erdogan's Cabinet is ill-equipped to resist the pressure of Islamic fundamentalists, who apparently consider Turkey "an ideal venue" for terrorist attacks.

According to one report, the military is worried about the possibility of "leaks" by Islamic policemen to terrorist organizations, ranging from Islamic fanatics to Kurdish nationalists. An unnamed senior general has been quoted as saying "the police needs to be cleaned up."

Apparently, Gen. Sukru Sariisik, chairman of the powerful National Security Council, also suggested that some antiterrorist laws scrapped recently to conform to European Union requirements, should be restored to make the security apparatus more effective.

The bombings of two synagogues, a British bank and the British Consulate in Istanbul have caused concern about the future of Turkey's application for EU membership. Turkey first applied to join the predominantly Christian-nation club in 1999, but talks on its application are due next year, so far without a date.

Despite hardly veiled opposition of some of its members, the European Union has assured the Turkish government that, at least at this stage, its candidacy has not been affected.

"The process [of application] should be further pursued and enforced," said EU spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori. "The EU will do everything possible to support Turkey in that endeavor."

Only 5 percent of Turkey's territory and 10 percent of its population of 66 million are on the European side of the Bosporus, the strait separating Europe from Asia. Politically, Turkey has been considered a European power since the beginning of the 20th century.

The Turkish army considers itself to be the guardian of the Turkish republic established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The last major military intervention against the political system took place in 1980, after years of terror that paralyzed much of the country's life. In 1997, the military pressured into resignation a pro-Islamic government headed by Necmettin Erbakan.

According to diplomatic assessments, the recent explosion of terror threatens Turkey's economic-recovery program, damaging lucrative tourism and causing withdrawal of some foreign companies working in the country.

The military appeared particularly concerned about the porous frontiers with Iran and Iraq and the state of the country's restive Kurdish minority.

Western reports describe the Kurdish areas in the country's south as "an ideal ground for suicide recruits ready to die for Islam."

3. - The New York Times - "For Turks, EU ties offer uncertain alternative":

ISTANBUL / 24 November 2003 / by Craig S. Smith

Serra Bayburt raised her voice over the thumping strains of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" in a fashionable bar beside the Bosporus and expressed her views on Turkey's future.

"Most of us want the economic advantages of being part of the West, but we don't want to be their slaves," said Bayburt, 34, a Muslim in a tight black dress drinking Campari and soda at the Memek bar.

Like many people in this city shaken by terrorist bombs, Bayburt has conflicting feelings about Turkey's relationship with Europe and the United States, even as the country recovers from the violence of Islamic extremism. While past opinion polls show that a vast majority of Turks aspire to become part of Europe, conversations with many people here in recent days suggest there is a limit to those ambitions.

The four deadly bombings over five days have once again energized talk of Turkey joining the European Union, with some European leaders urging that it be brought more quickly and firmly into the Western fold. The violence, said the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, "strengthens our will and determination to do everything we can to ensure Turkey becomes a full member as soon as possible."

But many Europeans oppose the membership of Turkey, a Muslim country, both on cultural and political grounds, and there remain huge obstacles to the country's further integration into the continent on which it has but a geographic toehold. The longer Turkey waits, the less its people are inclined to beg for membership in an organization that many think does not really want them.

"We've done everything they wanted, and they still haven't accepted us," said a man in a blue track suit last week at the funeral of a friend killed in the bombings on Thursday.

Turkey has campaigned to become a part of Europe ever since the European Economic Community was created in 1958. But its efforts have continually been found wanting, even as other nations - notably those from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union - have been ushered ahead into the club.

It took until 1999 for the EU to accept Turkey as a formal candidate, and it still has not set a date to begin negotiations on the country's application. The union's heads of government have promised to review Turkey's bid in December next year and make a decision "without delay" on when negotiations will begin.

Turkey has worked hard to meet the union's expectations, passing legislation that allows Kurdish-language broadcasts, for example, and reducing the role of the military in the day-to-day management of the country.

But the union's November progress report said more needed to be done, and it raised the bar higher again by suggesting that Turkey's application was tied to the intractable Cyprus problem.

Cyprus has been divided between Greek and Turkish administrations since 1974, when Turkey seized the northern third of the island in response to a Greek-engineered coup. Greece became a full EU member in 1981, and Greek Cyprus will join the organization in May, leaving the Turkish-held north outside the union. The EU said in its report that failure to find a solution in Cyprus would pose a "serious obstacle" to Turkey's membership bid.

"We're facing a very big dilemma and a huge double standard on the Cyprus question," said Egemen Bagis, foreign policy adviser to the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Bagis said the EU was applying a double standard by allowing Greek Cyprus to join but making resolution of the issue a prerequisite to Turkey's membership.

"Most people think Turkey will never be accepted and that these are delaying tactics to postpone making a decision," said Cigdem Nas, a professor at Marmara University's European Community Institute in Istanbul. "They are using membership as a carrot to try to make Turkey change for Europe's benefit, as in its Cyprus policy."

In fact, the EU's hesitation has less to do with Cyprus or Turkish reforms than with Europe's own identity as it undergoes demographic change.

European governments are already grappling with social tensions created by expanding Muslim immigrant communities. Shrinking populations across Europe mean more immigration is in store. Accepting Turkey as an EU member would quicken that trend.

At issue is Turkey's population of 70 million. In Europe only Germany is bigger, and birth trends suggest Turkey could be the leader by the time it is ready for admission. That would give it a major - to some Europeans, inordinate - voice in continental affairs.

There is also pervasive fear in Europe of accepting a Muslim country into its midst despite Turkey's strong secular tradition, in which many people practice their religion with the same moderation as European Catholics.

Back at the Memek bar, the crowd was gyrating to the voices of Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand singing "Enough Is Enough." Had it not been for the Turkish lira changing hands at the bar, the scene could have been in Italy, Germany or France.

"If the EU is happy with the way we are, O.K.," said Bayburt, "but I don't want to change for anyone."

4. - The News - "Time running out for Cyprus talks: Papadopoulos":

ATHENS / 24 November 2003

Time is running out for concluding Cyprus reunification talks before the Greek Cypriot part of the island joins the European Union in May 2004, Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos said, blaming Turkey.

Even if talks started again and there was an agreement, time was tight for the referendums stipulated by the United Nations peace plan, Papadopoulos told Greek daily Kathimerini in an interview published on Sunday. "But time can be found if there is political will from Ankara. Personally, I do not see any political will coming from Turkey," he claimed.

Papadopoulos said time pressures also came from Turkish Cypriot parliamentary elections on December 14, widely seen as a referendum on the role of veteran leader Rauf Denktash.

The 79-year-old leader is against the UN plan of a loose federal union between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, insisting instead on a two-state settlement. Papadopoulos added the vote was bound to be skewed by the many mainland Turkish immigrants, seen as less amenable to the UN plan than Turkish Cypriots, who have recently been granted citizenship and will be allowed to vote. "This vote rigging is not new, it started with the last elections when thousands of settlers were registered. They will now be voting in elections that will give us our future negotiation partner," he said.

Papadopoulos said he did not think Turkey would back down on Cyprus on the perspective of its own aspirations to join the European Union.

"No one thinks that Turkey will join the EU in five, 10 or 15 years, so some in Turkey will question giving up something on Cyprus, for something else that might not come," the Cypriot president claimed.

On the other hand, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder criticised an opposition leader on Saturday for saying the Istanbul bomb attacks hurt Turkey’s bid to join the EU, and sent his foreign minister to the country to show solidarity.

"In my opinion it shows a total lack of character to come forward and say something like that at a moment when the people in Turkey need all the solidarity they can get from us," Schroeder said in an interview with Der Spiegel.

"That exposes a way of thinking to exploit human suffering as a political instrument," Schroeder said in assailing with unusually harsh language Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy parliamentary floor leader for the opposition Christian Democrats.

Bosbach, whose party has long been opposed to Turkey’s bid to join the EU, had said in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper that Turkey’s EU membership could bring terrorism into the Western bloc.

On Sunday, Turkey’s deputy prime minister dismissed suggestions that the deadly bombings in Istanbul would distance the country from the EU but said the attacks may have some links with the situation in Iraq and the Middle East.

While some were wondering whether this incident will distance Turkey from the European Union, just the opposite reflex of rapprochement has emerged, Abdullatif Sener was quoted as saying.

5. - AFP - "Norway still plans to expel ex-head of Ansar al-Islam to Iraq":

OSLO / 25 November 2003

Norway is still planning to expel Mullah Krekar, the founder of the radical Muslim group Ansar al-Islam, to Iraq, the government said Tuesday, a day after refusing to extradite him to Jordan.

Norway's justice ministry said Monday it had rejected Amman's request because there was insufficient evidence to prove allegations that Krekar smuggled heroin to fund terrorist activities.

But Erna Solberg, the minister of local government and regional development who is also in charge of immigration issues, told Norwegian television TV2 on Tuesday that "the questions raised in this case (the extradition request) have never been part of the expulsion dossier."

Solberg stressed that Jordan's extradition request was handled by the justice ministry and had nothing to do with her own ministry's decision in February to expel Krekar on the grounds that he represented "a threat to national security".

In an interview with AFP last week, Solberg said Krekar would be expelled to Iraq "as soon as conditions in that country permit".

However, Krekar's lawyer said that following the rejection of Jordan's extradition request, and the fact that Norwegian police have previously dropped an investigation into allegations of terrorism, there "was no longer any basis for expulsion".

US officials contend Ansar al-Islam has loose links to al-Qaeda, the Islamic extremists responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The group's stronghold in northern Iraq -- a cluster of some 16 villages -- was devastated by US air strikes in early April during the US invasion of Iraq.

But US commanders have said Ansar al-Islam has made a strong comeback, infiltrating Iraq from Iran and setting up operations in the Baghdad area.

The group is suspected of being behind in a series of unsolved car bombings and suicide attacks in the Iraqi capital that have targeted the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations headquarters, a hotel used by Iraqi and US security forces and the Turkish mission.

In an interview with AFP a month ago, Krekar said that it was very doubtful whether al-Qaeda had the means to carry out such attacks. Krekar, who has enjoyed refugee status in Norway since 1991, says he has not led Ansar al-Islam since May 2002.

Krekar was arrested in the Netherlands in September 2002 and detained for four months, where he was questioned by US FBI agents before being released and sent to Norway.

6. - Reuters - "Germany urges Turkey to speed up EU reforms":

ANKARA / 24 November 2003

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer urged Turkey on Monday to speed up democracy reforms, but pledged support for its bid to join the EU and in the fight against terror after a week of carnage in Istanbul.

"Reforms should be accelerated," Mr Fischer told Turkish television on a visit aimed at showing solidarity with Turkey after the four bombings in Istanbul that killed at least 53 people in less than a week.

"The government must put all its energy into reforms. Germany will, with all our determination, do what we can to help Turkey in its ambitions," Mr Fischer told reporters after talks with Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul. EU leaders are set to assess Turkey's progress in implementing human rights reforms in December next year and decide whether to open membership talks with Ankara.

"Terrorist attacks of this kind will never sway Turkey from its path and Turkey will continue reforms and progress on democracy," said Mr Gul, a member of the government that took power a year ago. In an interview with Turkish television, Fischer also said the two countries were cooperating closely in the "war on terrorism" following the worst week of peace-time violence in Turkey's modern history.

Some observers have suggested that Turkey was targeted because it is a pro-Western Muslim democracy and long-standing NATO member closely allied to the United States and Israel. "Turkey's successful progress towards EU membership will be a success not only for Turkey and Europe, but will also make a great contribution to security in the 21st century," Mr Fischer said.

During his four-hour trip Mr Fischer was also meeting German diplomatic staff to review security measures following the attacks that targeted two synagogues, a London-based bank and the British consulate in Istanbul. EU and Turkish leaders have insisted that the attacks would not knock Ankara's EU hopes off course.

"We don't see it as an address where civilisations clash. We don't see it as a Christian club," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with the BBC on Sunday, describing Turkey as "a model country" where Islam and democracy have merged.

"Once Turkey enters the European Union, the whole attitude of the Islamic world towards the West will change," he said. Germany, home to Europe's largest expatriate Turkish community, has called on the bloc to open its arms to Turkey to encourage greater democracy and stability in the country of 70 million.

The EU has demanded more progress on key reforms, notably involving human rights and the treatment of its ethnic Kurdish minority. Despite words of support from EU political leaders, the Enlargement Commissioner for the 15-member bloc Guenter Verheugen last week ruled out an early start to membership negotiations.

"The terrible attacks on a candidate country and a member country which we experienced Thursday must not influence Europe's view of Turkey," he said. Turkey has appealed for international aid to help combat terror and track down those who masterminded the attacks, which have been claimed by the Al Qaeda and a small Turkish group called the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders Front (IBDA-C).

However, the Cumhuriyet newspaper reported that Turkey had rejected a German offer to help crack down on radical underground groups such as the IBDA-C and Hezbollah, saying they had already been eradicated.