18 February 2004

1. "Turkey condemned over army raid on Kurdish village", Turkey was condemned on Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights for rights violations during an army operation on an ethnic Kurdish village.

2. "Sweden pushes Turkey on EU reforms; Cyprus settlement", Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson urged Turkey Tuesday to continue on the path of reform required for European Union membership, adding that a settlement of the long-standing Cyprus conflict would have a "tremendous" international impact.

3. "Schröder to visit Turkey to back its reform efforts", Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany will travel to Turkey this weekend with a message of support for Ankara's efforts to ready itself for European Union membership, a senior government official said Tuesday.

4. "Berlin expects membership talks with Turkey", the German government is expecting Brussels to begin negotiations with Turkey on joining the EU, according to media reports.

5. "How a reunited Cyprus would join the EU", the European Union, using the model of Germany's reunification, stands ready to embrace the impoverished Turkish zone of Cyprus if the island overcomes its division in time for EU membership on May 1.

6. "Iraqi Kurds reject coalition’s call to disband militia", Kurdish leaders in the northern autonomous area are refusing to disband their military forces, the peshmerga, and are pushing for a veto over any deployment of the Iraqi army in their region.

7. "Kurds Moot Future Status", the extreme option is secession – but many Kurds say this is a bargaining ploy to get the best possible status as part of Iraq.

8. "Kurds Keep Their Chins Up Over Reunification With Iraq", amid U.S. pressure, many in the thriving autonomous region have accepted that their fate is entwined with Baghdad's.

1. - AFP - "Turkey condemned over army raid on Kurdish village":

STRASBOURG / 17 January 2004

Turkey was condemned on Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights for rights violations during an army operation on an ethnic Kurdish village.

The court ordered Turkey to pay nearly 70,500 euros (90,100 dollars) in damages to a 61-year old Turkish man, whose two sons disappeared during the army raid on the hamlet in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir in May 1994.

The court said Turkey had committed serious violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular its articles upholding the right to life and banning inhuman treatment.

It said the right to life had been violated "on account of the presumed death of the applicants two sons". A 15-year armed campaign for self-rule for the sizeable Kurdish population in Turkey's restive southeast left tens of thousands dead between 1984 and 1999.

2. - AFP - "Sweden pushes Turkey on EU reforms; Cyprus settlement":

17 February 2004

Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson urged Turkey Tuesday to continue on the path of reform required for European Union membership, adding that a settlement of the long-standing Cyprus conflict would have a "tremendous" international impact.

Persson, whose country has been one of the harshest critics of Turkey's human rights record, praised the democratization reforms Ankara has undertaken to align itself with EU norms, but warned that it should not take for granted a decision on opening accession talks in December.

"I appreciate very much the attitude and the program presented by the prime minister on how Turkey will fulfill the Copenhagen criteria. They have our support," Persson told reporters after talks with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Ankara.

But "don't expect that we will automatically say Turkey has lived up to the Copenhagen criteria. It is a scrutiny process," he added.

The "Copenhagen criteria" refers to a 1993 EU summit in the Danish capital that agreed on the criteria to judge when nations would be ready to join the European Union.

EU leaders will assess in December Turkey's progress and decide whether to open accession talks with the Muslim nation, the sole membership candidate that has so far failed to do so.

Erdogan argued that Turkey had gone beyond "the critical threshold" in adopting EU political norms.

"We are determined to put into action fully and efficiently all reforms we have passed," he said in reference to widespread criticism that Ankara's reforms are failing on the ground.

"We want Turkey to start accession negotiations as of December 2004," he added.

The Swedish leader praised efforts made by Turkey for the resumption of peace talks between the long-divided Turkish and Greek communities of Cyprus.

The parties will return to the negotiating table on Thursday in a bid to end their three-decade partition by May 1, when the Mediterranean island is set to join the EU along with nine other newcomers.

"It will have a tremendous international political effect if we were able to find a peaceful political solution to the Cyprus issue and do it by this spring," Persson said.

A settlement in Cyprus can set an example for the warring parties in the Middle East, he added.

The EU has warned Turkey, which has occupied the Turkish Cypriot north of the island since 1974, that its membership bid will suffer if the island is not reunified in time for its accession to the pan-European bloc.

3. - The International Herald Tribune - "Schröder to visit Turkey to back its reform efforts":

BERLIN / 18 February 2004

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany will travel to Turkey this weekend with a message of support for Ankara's efforts to ready itself for European Union membership, a senior government official said Tuesday.

Schröder sets off Sunday evening for a two-day visit - closely following a trip to Ankara by the leader of Germany's opposition, Angela Merkel, who got a frosty response Monday because of her suggestion that Turkey should be granted a special partnership with the EU, not full membership.

In contrast, Schröder has expressed support for Turkey's campaign to join the EU. "The aim of his visit is to stimulate and encourage the reform policies" of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, said a senior official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

Turkey is hoping that by the end of the year, European leaders will set a date for the start of EU membership negotiations. It has enacted reforms to advance its chances, abolishing the death penalty and granting greater rights for Turkey's estimated 12 million Kurds.

Germany's conservative opposition says the center-left government is backing Turkey's EU bid for domestic reasons - Germany is home to around 2.5 million ethnic Turks. The opposition conservatives want Turkey left out of the EU and have instead proposed a "special relationship" - an offer that Erdogan publicly rejected after talks with Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union.

Besides meeting with government leaders, Schröder will attend an economic forum in Istanbul and visit a German-owned power station in Iskenderun, near the Syrian border. He will travel with a 13-member industry delegation that includes representatives from the engineering giant Siemens and the steelmaker ThyssenKrupp.

German officials say Cyprus will also be on Schröder's agenda, following talks this week that the EU hopes will bring about an end to the island's 30-year division, in time for a reunited nation to enter the EU on May 1. Schröder also will discuss the possibility of cooperating with Turkey in civilian efforts to rebuild neighboring Iraq, the official said, without elaborating.

"There is a common interest in stabilizing Iraq," the official said. Germany, which is overseeing a plan to train Iraqi police officers, has already agreed to coordinate aid efforts with France and Japan. Schröder will travel Tuesday from Turkey to Malta, which is scheduled to join the EU on May 1.

4. - Reuters - "Berlin expects membership talks with Turkey":

BERLIN / 18 February 2004

The German government is expecting Brussels to begin negotiations with Turkey on joining the EU, according to media reports.

Officials told Reuters in Berlin yesterday (17 February) that positive signs on Turkish accession were coming from the Commission, but that it was harder to find a date on which talks could begin.

The German government says that economic reforms being carried out in Turkey to join the EU are almost complete but that some work remains to be done on issues such as control of the military and freedom of the press.

The subject of entry into the EU will dominate German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's trip to Turkey which begins on Sunday.

And Turkey continues to affect German domestic politics.

Opposition leader Angela Merkel is firmly opposed to Turkish entry into the EU and says that it will be a crucial issue in the forthcoming European elections.

The European Commission will decide by the end of the year whether to begin talks with Ankara.

5. - AFP - "How a reunited Cyprus would join the EU":

18 February 2004

The European Union, using the model of Germany's reunification, stands ready to embrace the impoverished Turkish zone of Cyprus if the island overcomes its division in time for EU membership on May 1.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen will be in Nicosia on Thursday for the resumption of UN-brokered talks between the Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot leaders, accompanied by a team of EU legal experts.

The lawyers' role will be to examine any peace accord closely to ensure it is broadly compatible with EU legislation, in particular that it will guarantee Cyprus a unified voice in Union affairs, officials said.

The accord would also have to comply with EU banking and tax laws. But the rest of the hefty EU legislative obligations facing the Turkish zone of Cyprus would be left until later.

Without a settlement, only the internationally recognised Greek-Cypriot government will join the EU in May, along with nine other states, leaving the Turkish Cypriots in the cold.

Such an outcome would present a legal minefield.

Turkey, which is itself striving to join the EU and which alone recognises the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), would be in the position of illegally maintaining troops on the territory of an EU member state.

To encourage a peace settlement, the EU has dangled the carrot of 259 million euros in development aid over 2004-2006 for the TRNC, which is much poorer than its Greek rival.

But while the Greek-Cypriot state has successfully completed the arduous process of transposing thousands of pages of EU legislation onto its statute books, the TRNC has done next to nothing in this regard.

To get around that problem, northern Cyprus would be given several years to implement the body of EU law -- the "acquis communautaire" in EU-speak -- after it joins the bloc.

"The commission still remembers the precedent of East Germany, which progressively integrated the acquis communautaire after Germany's reunification (in 1990)," an EU official said.

"We would adapt Cyprus' accession treaty as necessary and work out how the acquis could be applied. Obviously it could not be done overnight, but it would be done progressively for the TRNC," he said.

The old East Germany also benefited from large cash handouts from the EU to aid its development towards the norms enjoyed by the West.

Should the pieces fall into place for Cyprus before May 1, the EU would adopt Turkish as an official language. That would undoubtedly help Turkey's own EU bid, in practical as well as symbolic terms.

While a deal on Cyprus is not a precondition for the country's long-running membership application, EU leaders have made clear that they expect Turkey to do all it can to bring about a settlement.

The reunification of Cyprus would then remove one of the biggest hurdles standing in the way of a favourable decision by EU leaders when they meet in December to discuss whether to open accession talks with Turkey.

6. - The Guardian - "Iraqi Kurds reject coalition’s call to disband militia":

SULAIMANIYA / 18 Februar 2004 / by Michael Howard

Kurdish leaders in the northern autonomous area are refusing to disband their military forces, the peshmerga, and are pushing for a veto over any deployment of the Iraqi army in their region.
Kurdish officials are proposing that the 50,000-60,000 fighters controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic party, both of which have a seat on the Iraqi governing council, should be transformed into a regional self-defence force similar to the US national guard.

The proposal comes amid alarm in the Kurdish areas at the suicide bombings in Irbil, and the violence in neighbouring Sunni Arab areas. It also highlights the problems faced by US and British administrators trying to find common ground among the country’s ethnic and sectarian groups.

Mustafa Sayid Qadir, the deputy commander of the PUK’s peshmerga, said: "After the Irbil attacks, security has become our number one concern. Our history has taught us the risks of leaving ourselves defenceless."

The new force would be recruited, trained and commanded locally. It would not be deployed outside the Kurdistan federal region, the boundary of which still has to be decided, without the approval of the Kurdish parliament.

Kurds want a provision for the new force in the interim constitution which must be finalised by the end of the month. They are also insisting on the inclusion of a federal state under which they will retain many of the powers of self-rule they have had for the past 13 years.

Their plans for more autonomy are opposed by Sunni and Shia Arab leaders as well as by Turkey, Iran and Syria, which believe any advance by Iraq’s Kurds will agitate their own Kurdish populations.

The Kurds’ stance has also unsettled US and British officials, who have said they want to dismantle Iraq’s various militias. Paul Bremer, the American chief administrator, and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Tony Blair’s special envoy to Iraq, flew to the town of Salaheddin on Sunday to persuade Kurdish leaders to tone down their demands.

Iraq’s major militias are attached to Kurdish and Shia parties. Both were excluded from power by the Sunni Arab elite, who now fear retribution. Kurds say that the new force, and their desired federal state, would be multi-ethnic and multireligious.

"The national guard would be representative of all the peoples of the Kurdistan region including Kurds, Turkomans, Christians, and Arabs," said Barham Salih, the Kurdish prime minister.

If the Kurds are allowed to retain the peshmerga, it could cause other armed groups, few of them as pro-American, to demand the same treatment.

The Shia Badr brigade, thought to number about 10,000, is the best organised after the Kurds. Though opposed to US forces, it has not confronted them. More worrying for the US and Britain is the Al Mahdi army, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia cleric and vehement opponent of the western presence in Iraq.

7. - Institute For War And Peace Reporting - "Kurds Moot Future Status":

The extreme option is secession – but many Kurds say this is a bargaining ploy to get the best possible status as part of Iraq.

SULEYMANIYA / 17 February 2004 / by Twana Osman

For Hawre Karim, 32, putting his signature on a piece of paper was like a dream come true. "I never imagined that one day we’d be rid of the Baath regime and that the Kurds would be able to speak so easily and freely about their destiny."

A petition has been circulating across northern Iraq since late January demanding a referendum in which Kurds can say what kind of future relationship they want with the Iraqi state. On February 21, demonstrations are scheduled in all major Kurdish cities to pursue the demand for a ballot.

The petition’s organisers, the Committee for a Referendum in Kurdistan, say any decision on the future structure of government for the Kurdish region should be based on the will of the people. The campaign petition drive will end soon, and the organisers believe they have collected nearly two million signatures in cities, towns and remote villages.

"The Kurds have been struggling for years for the right of self-determination," said Karim, a volunteer collecting signatures in Sulimaniyah. "Today, with Saddam gone, it is time for us to determine our future."

Most Kurds understand that the referendum will offer them three basic choices: full independence as a sovereign state; a US-style federalism based on the existing Iraqi governorates – the preferred format of the Coalition Provisional Authority – and third, what the Kurds are calling “geographical federalism” that makes the whole of Kurdistan a single federal unit.

Kurds say they have a right to vote on their own status, saying that as a nation – a people joined by common culture and language – they should be able to determine their own future.

Historians cite the Treaty of Sèvres, signed after the First World War by the defeated Ottoman government and the victorious western powers. Article 64 of that 1920 agreement allowed for the possibility of a Kurdish state. But the treaty was replaced three years later by the Treaty of Lausanne, which deleted the earlier provisions allowing for a move toward an independent Kurdistan.

In Kurdish minds, though, the principle still stands.

While the idea of petitioning for a referendum came from private individuals, mostly intellectuals, the two main Kurdish political parties – the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - soon came on board. The two parties provided personnel and support for the referendum teams working in smaller towns and villages, including the use of their offices.

Both parties have stated clearly that they do not favour an independent state, since they see this as politically unattainable. Instead, they endorse the “geographic federalism” plan which would make the Kurdish region (rather than the individual provinces) the federal unit within Iraq. They are opposed to a federal system based on Iraq’s 18 existing governorates, because they feel it would allow them less distinct autonomy – certainly less than they enjoyed during their years of de facto separation from Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Some local observers suggest that the parties are backing a referendum in order to improve their bargaining power in negotiating a more robust version of federalism than the US currently favours. "They preferred that this demand come from the mouth of the people to strengthen their negotiation talks in Baghdad," said Sirwan Anwar, 35, a Kurdish journalist.

The fly in the ointment when it comes to “geographical federalism” is that the concept – as approved by the Kurdish parliament in 1992 – would include the city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that lies just outside the administrative boundary of the Kurdish region comprising the provinces of Arbil, Suleymaniya and Dahuk.

Kurds consider the city their own, for historical and geographical reasons, but it has always been home to sizable number of Turkoman and smaller numbers of Arabs and Christians. However, the Baath party's concerted campaign of "Arabisation" radically altered the population mix in the area, bringing in large numbers of Arab settlers from other parts of Iraq and pushing out some of the local people.

As a result, even if “geographical federalism” wins out as the most workable solution, it is doubtful that the federal entity would be granted Kirkuk.

At the same time, there is a growing movement for full independence, mostly among professionals and intellectuals. On February 14, Kurds in Suleymaniya staged a demonstration calling for secession. The main street through the city was jammed for miles by thousands of supporters.

Yet few people think secession is a serious possibility, and some suggest the demand is a tactical move which has the objective of putting a more realistic compromise on the table.

"When I was a child and I needed 20 dinars from my father, I used to ask for 50," said Zanist Osman, another of the people busy distributing petitions. "That's why the Kurds should be adamant about their right to separate – in order to guarantee a good form of federalism."

8. - The Los Angeles Times - "Kurds Keep Their Chins Up Over Reunification With Iraq":

Amid U.S. pressure, many in the thriving autonomous region have accepted that their fate is entwined with Baghdad's.

SULAYMANIYA / 18 February 2004 / by Jeffrey Fleishman

The streets flicker with commerce: flat-screen TVs, blenders, gold and diamonds. There are Italian suits, French wines and a free-for-all currency exchange where traders smelling of sheep and cologne speculate on dollars and euros.

Kurdistan is a curious, lively corner of Iraq. Protected from Saddam Hussein's grasp for more than a decade, the 3.5 million ethnic Kurds in this northern, mountainous area have embraced capitalism and thrived — at least in relation to the rest of the nation — in a quasi-democracy. They have grafted the West onto the East, creating an autonomous region where an Eminem riff may linger in the night air with the Muslim call to prayer.

Kurds wince at the insurgency and turmoil that for the most part still occur to the south. But the unified Iraq envisioned by the Bush administration is forcing Kurds to reattach themselves to a predominantly Arab nation in which they will be a minority. The Kurds fear that their strides in civil rights and a free-market economy may diminish if Islamic clerics seize the country's future.

"Our language and traditions are much different from the Arabs'," said Dlawar Hammid, a mechanical engineer who was sitting with friends in a teahouse here. "But we'll accept reunification so long as Iraq doesn't become a theocratic state."

Twin suicide bombings that killed more than 100 people at Kurdish political offices in Irbil early this month were a reminder of the volatility that can suddenly strike, even in the north. Since the end of the war to topple Hussein, Kurdistan has escaped much of the bloodletting that roils central and southern Iraq. In a posting on an Islamic website, a previously unknown group called Jaish Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the Irbil bombings.

Kurdistan is in a precarious part of the Middle East. Bordered by Syria, Turkey and Iran, its people have been denied independence for generations, and tens of thousands of them were killed by Iraqi security forces. Their predicament improved after the 1991 Persian Gulf War when a "no-fly" zone patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes kept Hussein's forces out of the north.

That glimmer of freedom has evolved into what is essentially an ethnic enclave that has little in common with the larger Iraq. But the Kurds — pressured by the U.S. to forgo independence because it would upset the political balance in the region — have reconciled to the fact that their fate is entwined with a new federal government based in Baghdad. They insist, however, that they retain much of their autonomy and cultural liberation, including Western-influenced universities and less strict attitudes about Islam.

"We have enjoyed almost a state of independence," said Barham Salih, prime minister of the eastern part of the region, which is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK. "The irony is that now we are giving up power to join the state of Iraq. Our young have no concept of Baghdad, or that Iraq is their fate. The country must open up to the Kurds so we can feel part of Iraq."

Traders at the Sulaymaniya currency exchange are less wary than most Kurds about the prospect of integration. A unified Iraq conjures talk of wider markets and bigger profits. Crowded with men hanging over stairwells, barking out rates and shaking wads of U.S. dollars, British pounds and euros, the exchange is more evidence of the feisty capitalism that propels much of the north.

Satellite dishes track the gyrations of global stock markets. Kalashnikov rifles are checked at the door. There's no tote board, no slick veneer. Dress is rural casual — sneakers, boots and tattered coats — and the air is wispy with tea steam and cigarette smoke. Outside, traders stand amid Land Rovers and donkey carts, eating lunches of boiled turnips and walnuts and watching unveiled dark-haired women shop for baubles.

"To join Iraq will be good for us," said Faisal Mohammed, grimacing at the sliding dollar. "It means we can trade throughout the country. Before, we were in a kind of prison, not being able to trade with Baghdad or the rest of the nation."

"Our economy is better than all of Iraq," said Karzan Ahmed Najar, a trader who also runs a transportation business. "But it will be better and wiser for business if we join the new Iraq."

Sabah Mohammed had a clump of money in each fist, a calculator in his pocket and a smile on his face. "I was born in Baghdad," he said. "I have Arab friends. Can I live with Arabs? It depends on attitude. If the Arabs respect my rights as a Kurd, I can live with them."

Attitudes are more circumspect at the teahouse down the street. Amid sugar bowls and the clatter of backgammon, artists and intellectuals ponder what traders do not. The north is a delicate place. The two main Kurdish political camps — the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP — fought a civil war in the mid-1990s. Publicly they have resolved their differences and founded a joint parliament, but animosities run deep in this territory of tribes and clans.

Constituting only about 19% of Iraq's population, however, Kurds realize that if they are divided they might be marginalized by the majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs. Kurdish political leaders are already dismayed by what they see as U.S. catering to Arab demands. Many Kurds are also worried about the strong influence of Iraqi clerics such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Under the U.S. plan for Iraqi self-governance, the Kurds may enjoy some autonomy but still answer to authorities in Baghdad.

"We oppose a theocracy," said Hammid, sitting with a group of intense men in a corner of the teahouse. "You can see long beards and head scarves in Kurdistan, but this is not a heavily religious place. Everyone has the right to be himself. We don't want a Sistani or a person like Saddam Hussein to have control over us."

History has taught the Kurds that pragmatism tempers righteousness. Mohammed Nergiz, a folk singer and teahouse philosopher, believes there will be no better moment in history for the Kurds to declare independence. But he predicts geopolitics will trump Kurdish ambition, and the Kurds, as they have for more than a century, will again settle for half the prize.

"If they give us independence, I will dance for it," Nergiz said, "but the people understand what's behind the curtain." He paused and added: "All my life has been this last 10 years of freedom. We felt we were human, away from Hussein…. If this new federalism will respect Kurdistan and our rights, why not? I'd like to have a good relationship with the Arabs."

Silk pajamas and in-line skates are on sale on the second floor of the new shopping mall in Sulaymaniya. Such items represent the awkward and inconsistent affluence that has emerged in Kurdistan — a region marred by poverty where shepherds outnumber bankers. But the pajamas and the computer checkout stands at the mall's grocery are, symbolically at least, what Kurds aspire to these days.

"We want to have the same kind of development as Europeans," said Susan Shahab, the mall's manager whose father was a revered mountain fighter against Hussein's Baath Party decades ago. "We are not less than the European individual."

Shahab shares an Iraq with many Arabs who abhor European ideals. She is not deterred.

She fled Kurdistan's civil war in 1996 and moved to the Netherlands. She returned to Sulaymaniya several months ago, leaving her teenage children to finish their Dutch schooling. She keeps in touch with them through the Internet and the cellphone on her desk. Her children will join her in a few years, and she hopes they will attend an American-sponsored university that Kurdish leaders want to build in these mountains.

"Kurdistan has changed much from when I left," she said. "There are new buildings going up. The economy is better than before. Kids and everybody want more and more consumer products. It's the necessity of life."