19
February 2004
2. "EU membership, nothing less", Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed an offer of a "special relationship" with the European Union, and insists that only full membership of the EU will do.
3. "Tempting Cyprus to hope again", Cyprus is making headlines today, because its people are daring to hope again.
4. "Cyprus reunification talks begin hours after bombing of Turkish Cypriot official's home", Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders began talks Thursday that have been hailed as the best opportunity to reunify the island in decades. Hours earlier, a small bomb exploded outside the home of the prime minister of the self-declared Turkish Cypriot state.
5. "No sense of excitement on the streets or among politicians for the upcoming elections", 'For the first time in the history of modern Turkey's political life, the opposition party of the Parliament is losing the support of the voters while the vote capacity of the ruling party is increasing,' said Karayalcin, warning this trend could lead to a democracy-threatening, single-party dominance in Turkey.
6. "Shiite Vote Plan Would Exclude 'Sunni Triangle'", Shiites and Kurds back plan for partial elections.
1. - Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany) - "Turkish membership is a matter of life or death for the European Union":
19 February 2004 / Editorial
Turkish membership is a matter of life or death for the European Union.
The EU could perish in two ways. Scenario 1: It overstretches itself
and, with the Turkish millstone around its neck, goes down in history
as an enlarged free-trade OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe. Scenario 2: The EU fails to deal with the central conflict
of the Western world with Islam. It could then one day rue the failure
of accession negotiations with Turkey as a missed opportunity to build
a bridge and transport its values into an enlightened Islam.... Both
scenarios highlight the major risk involved in making the wrong decision.
It is therefore not wrong to gain some time until the alternatives are
less dramatic. Those people who try to force a decision on Turkey today
force Europe into a make-or-break test and risk domestic political tension
which, in Germany, for example, could dangerously dampen the public's
enthusiasm for Europe. 
2. - Radio Netherlands - "EU membership, nothing less":
17 February 2004
Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed an offer of a "special relationship" with the European Union, and insists that only full membership of the EU will do.
The offer came from Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany's main opposition party the Christian Democrat CDU, during what was supposed to be a friendly get-together with her fellow "conservative" leader in Turkey. But Mr Erdogan was swift and sharp in rejecting it totally.
Radio Netherlands' Turkey correspondent, Dorian Jones, describes Ms Merkel's reaction:
"Ms Merkel does have a reputation for speaking in blunt terms, and I don't think she was that surprised by the reaction. It's been very clear right from the beginning of this trip that Turkey would not accept her proposal, wouldn't even consider putting it on the agenda as the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said. And Ms Merkel said she's going to stick by what she believes in. She said that friends – as they are both conservative parties – can have differences but remain as friends. But we shall see whether that is the case."
RN: "And Mr Erdogan has, of course, broached a very hot topic by accusing the Christian Democrats of seeing the EU as a Christian club."
"That really seems to be the root of the matter. Mr Erdogan's party, and members of it, have for many years pointed out that they believe that there are people within the EU who, basically, will never admit Turkey because it is a Muslim country. But, having said that, Ms Merkel's argument does really resonate quite strongly in this country because not only this party, but many other people in Turkey are very suspicious of the European Union over whether it is a Christian club."
"And, it has to be said, Ms Merkel really did touch a very sensitive point when she said I'm only saying what many other European Union leaders are saying behind the scenes. They come to Turkey and they say one thing, but when they speak to us and other people they are saying another thing. And that really did resonate quite strongly in Turkey because many people are quite suspicious that some European Union leaders are two-faced and [that] they are playing two different games."
RN: "But at the same time she did say that her party doesn't see the EU as a Christian club and that - as far as she's concerned - this whole offer of a special relationship is more about limiting Turkey's access to the EU's internal market."
"That's right. She was very clear about saying that this isn't a question of Turkey being a Muslim country, this is purely about economics. She points out that Turkey is a massive country of sixty million. Half of its population is under the age of 25, and there is great fear that if Turkey joined it would flood Europe – in her words – with mass migration which Europe could not deal with. And also, she pointed out, that Turkish farmers would be knocking on the door asking for subsidies which would bankrupt Europe. […] she says that – leaving aside this question of Christian and Muslim – this is about hard economics."
"And she argues that many people in Europe also share her view that Europe cannot cope with Turkey in the near or medium or possible even long-term future. Especially as it is about to deal with a mass introduction of ten new countries, which are set to join the European Union. And, it has to be said, speaking to Turks after what she said they were saying she may be right [in] what she's saying, this is the reality that is facing Turkey."
RN: "But at the same time, once again, Mr Erdogan had his response ready, saying Turkey will not be a burden in the EU, and even that, on some points, it's ahead of some of the Eastern European countries that are already on the way to joining."
"Turkey's main priority for joining the European Union […] is the security and stability that it will give Turkey. They're quite prepared to reach a deal over migration, saying that Turkey could be like Spain and Portugal when [they] joined, where there was a cooling period of something in the region of ten years, while at the same time there could be deals over the question of farming subsidies."
"Turkey's really prepared to negotiate on anything
to meet all these concerns, and that raises the point […] that
Europe knows this, but the real reason why they are raising these issues
is because they are using it as a fig leaf to hide their belief that
Turkey is a Muslim country and they don't want Muslims in Europe on
that scale."
3. - Toronto Star - "Tempting Cyprus to hope again":
19 February 2004 / by Gordon Barthos
Cyprus is making headlines today, because its people are daring to hope again.
For decades, the bitterly divided Mediterranean backwater of 700,000 Greek Cypriots and 200,000 Turks has been caught in a political time warp. The island has been partitioned for 30 years. Unlike Berlin, it has yet to tear down its wall of mistrust.
But Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash hold talks today that tempt hope by aiming to meld the two communities back into a single country, with a referendum in April.
Canadians, who served as United Nations peacekeepers in Cyprus from 1964 to 1993, can only wish them well.
"We can live together as one," Omer Ahmed told the Cyprus Mail newspaper this week. "We did before the invasion (by Turkish troops in 1974) and can do so again. "We are all Cypriots."
That said, Papadopoulos and Denktash are mutually mistrustful Cypriots, and unlikely unifiers. Aged hardliners, they typify the give-no-quarter obduracy of decades past.
But under pressure from Athens and Ankara, they have reluctantly bowed to a U.N. plan to strip away their naysaying vetoes, by going past them directly to the people in a referendum.
If U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan gets his way, Cyprus will join the European Union on May 1 as a single country again. If he fails, the affluent Greek enclave will join the EU by itself. And the world will then be forced to consider recognizing the poorer Turkish enclave as a state in its own right.
What happens in Cyprus matters elsewhere because it might serve as a template for dealing with other obtuse feuds: The India/Pakistan standoff in Kashmir, the Israeli/Palestinian wrangle, the Sri Lankan/Tamil struggle. The players in these interminable conflicts equally need rescuing from themselves.
The Cyprus "breakthrough" came about because political leaders in Greece and Turkey no longer see any compelling reason to fight over the island. Greece knows that Greek Cypriots will soon be tied to Europe, under its protection. And Turkey is eager to join the EU. If Turkish Cypriots are members, can Europe deny the mainland?
So there's ample reason to defuse Cyprus as a flashpoint.
Annan's proposal builds on that healthy evolution in thinking.
After gaining independence from Britain in 1960, under a deal that forbade union with Greece or partition, Cyprus was wracked by communal fighting that led to U.N. peacekeeping in 1964. In 1974, militant Greek Cypriots tried to force the island into enosis, or union with Greece, and Turkey invaded and occupied part of the island.
Greek Cypriots now control the affluent southern two-thirds, which is internationally recognized. The northern Turkish "republic" is small, poor and recognized only by Ankara. The island is divided by a "Green Line" patrolled by the U.N.
If talks go well, the U.N. proposes to refederate Cyprus along Swiss lines, with a weak central government presiding over a demilitarized, two-state republic. The presidency would rotate, and parliamentary voting rules would give the Turkish minority a veto over decisions, safeguarding minority rights.
While Papadopoulos and Denktash will run the talks, if they can't agree by March 22 Annan will bring in Greek and Turkish officials to knock heads.
And if there's still no deal by March 29, Annan will try to bridge the remaining differences himself by ruling on issues and submitting his proposals to Cypriots in two referenda on April 21.
Issues in dispute include the amount of additional land the Greek state would have, repatriation of refugees and compensation for people uprooted from their homes.
A referendum Yes is far from assured.
The Greek side can vote No, knowing it will join the EU anyway. But if the Turks vote Yes, pressure would build to have the U.N. recognize their side as a country in its own right. The Greeks would be ill-placed to object.
Much will depend on how the deal is sold to the two communities.
Still, Annan's strategy wrenches Cyprus' future away from obdurate politicians and puts it where it belongs: Squarely in the hands of the people, who must live with the result.
4. - Associated Press - "Cyprus reunification talks begin hours after bombing of Turkish Cypriot official's home":
19 February 2004 / by Louis Meixler
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders began talks Thursday that have been hailed as the best opportunity to reunify the island in decades. Hours earlier, a small bomb exploded outside the home of the prime minister of the self-declared Turkish Cypriot state.
The blast, which broke the front door and windows, raised fears that extremists could try to disrupt the U.N.-sponsored talks, which aim to reunite the island before it enters the European Union on May 1.
Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat said the bomb was "a futile effort to scare us," Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported. A neighbor was slightly cut by flying glass from the explosion.
"In this process, there may be some people who are disturbed by the two communities coming closer, but such acts will not make us return from this path," he told reporters outside his home.
U.N. envoy Alvaro de Soto greeted chief Turkish Cypriot negotiator Rauf Denktash and his Greek Cypriot counterpart, President Tassos Papadopoulos, as they arrived at the United Nations conference center in the abandoned Nicosia airport in the buffer zone that divides Cyprus.
U.N. police from Australia and Ireland patrolled outside the conference center. A bombed-out passenger jet stood in a field near the airport and buildings in the buffer zone were pockmarked with gunfire from the 1974 fighting. Cyprus has been divided since the Turkish army invaded that year after supporters of union with Greece staged a coup.
Newspapers on both sides of the island held out hope that these talks, which have strict deadlines, could succeed after decades of failures.
"The historic process is beginning today," headlined Kibris, the largest newspaper on the Turkish side.
"Beginning of the end," said the Greek Cypriot paper Politis.
The United States and the European Union have put pressure on Turkey and Greece to press their ethnic communities on the island to reach a settlement by May 1. Cyprus then joins the EU -- either as a united country or one with U.N. peacekeepers patrolling the buffer zone.
For Turkey, Cyprus' entry as a split country could be a disaster for its own EU bid. Turkey has 40,000 troops on the north of the island and EU leaders have made it clear that those soldiers could be considered as occupying EU territory after May 1.
In an address to parliament on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul spoke of the possibility that without a solution, some EU officials who visit aspiring member Turkey in the future could be Cypriots.
For EU and Greek Cypriot leaders, a divided Cyprus after May 1 raises the possibility of an EU member that controls only two-thirds of its territory. EU laws would only apply on the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south of the island.
"We are now closer than ever to finding a solution," EU Expansion Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said earlier this week.
The last round of talks collapsed in April when Denktash rejected the reunification plan proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Denktash has long said that uniting the Turkish Cypriot north with the Greek Cypriot south would lead to Greek Cypriot domination. The south, with a population of 600,000, has three times as many people as the north and about five times the per capita income.
But the EU accession has become increasingly popular in northern Cyprus and a quick look at the divided city shows why.
Southern Nicosia is a bustling city with fancy shops selling brand-name goods, crowded, well-lit streets and high rise buildings housing major international companies.
Across the barbed wire and cement filled barrels that mark the border is northern Nicosia, which has the look of a forgotten town, with narrow, poorly lit streets and stores selling cheap Turkish goods. An international embargo has stunted the economic growth of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state that is recognized only by Turkey.
The popularity of the EU has put intense pressure on Denktash, especially after fellow hard-liners lost control of parliament in the January elections.
At the same time, Denktash faces pressure from Turkey.
"It is just suicidal for any (Turkish) political force to appear as if they are standing between Turkey and the EU," said Soner Cagaptay, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
According to the timetable for the talks, the two sides have five weeks to work out an agreement using the Annan plan as their basis.
If they fail, Greece and Turkish leaders will enter the talks. And if that fails, Annan has the right to fill in the blanks and put the agreement to a referendum on each side of the island on April 21.
The plan calls for a single state with Greek and Turkish Cypriot federal regions linked through a weak central government. But many details, such as how many Turkish troops would remain on the island and how many refugees could return to their homes, are sharply contested.
Sunnis represent about 20 percent of Iraq's population, but they were a ruling minority for much of its modern history until Saddam Hussein was unseated.
"Maybe this is their dream," said Adnan Pachachi, a Governing Council member and a Sunni. "But it doesn't make any sense, only the north and the south voting. If the center of Iraq is not involved, how could Iraq be considered a sovereign power?"
He also said the Governing Council had "discarded" American plans for a caucus-style selection process for a transitional government. Instead, Council members want to hold on to power though the transition period but double the number of seats on the Council from 25 to 50 to make it more representative.
Both those developments are complicating American intentions for the handover of power. American administrators in Iraq say direct elections are not feasible before the June 30 deadline but they support elections sometime in 2005. American officials were hoping to organize caucuses to select a transitional government that would have more legitimacy than the Governing Council, whose members were hand-picked by American officials.
In a news conference this week, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here, insisted that the central elements of the November agreement could be carried out — that an Iraqi national assembly could be chosen in nationwide caucuses and that the Americans could hand over power by June 30.
But while all sides are sticking to the June 30 deadline, the clamor for direct elections is only growing louder. A United Nations team was in Iraq last week assessing when and how elections could be held. On Tuesday, Secretary General Kofi Annan said he hoped to make his recommendation on Iraq before departing for a trip to Japan on Friday.
The proposal being discussed by Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish leaders is a sign of the enormousness of the task they are facing in choosing a representative government while a guerrilla war is raging over large swaths of the country.
Ayatollah Muhammad al-Yaqobi, a cleric and part of the inner circle of Shiite leadership, called the partial election plan, "the lesser of two evils."
"There is no perfect solution," he said in an interview in Najaf. "But we have 10 stable provinces south of Baghdad where it's possible to have elections right now, and the Kurdistan areas have had their own government for 12 years. As for the Sunni areas, they can do what suits them best."
Another Shiite official, Ali Atishan, the deputy mayor of Najaf, said the Sunni areas could select leaders through a caucus system. "They can appoint some people now and have elections later," he said.
Mr. Rubaie said the partial election plan should not be considered anti-Sunni. "There may be some Sunni areas that are ready for elections," he said. "If Falluja wants to hold elections, it's up to them."
Falluja, a small city in the Sunni triangle, has been one of the most violent areas of Iraq since the insurgency began. However, any plan to divide the country into stable and unstable zones would be difficult because many areas, like Baghdad, are a mix.
Mr. Salih said he favored elections soon but "adequate preparations must be carried out to ensure genuine democratic elections."
He added, "We have discussed, however, elections in the Kurdistan region for our Kurdistan National Assembly."
While Shiite clerics have been pushing for early elections, Kurdish leaders have been pushing to keep the autonomy their region has enjoyed since 1991.
But until now, each of the three main groups in Iraq — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds — had been pursuing its own agenda. The Shiites and Kurds make up 75 to 80 percent of the population, and even if the partial election plan never materializes, the prospect of an alliance between the two groups is terrifying to many Sunnis.
After the meeting on Sunday in Najaf, Abdul Aziz al-Hakima, a confidant of Ayatollah Sistani, celebrated the new relationship between the Kurds and Shiites.
"This strong relationship between us and Kurds is
to serve all Iraq," he said.
5. - Turkish Daily News - "No sense of excitement on the streets or among politicians for the upcoming elections":
'For the first time in the history of modern Turkey's political life, the opposition party of the Parliament is losing the support of the voters while the vote capacity of the ruling party is increasing,' said Karayalcin, warning this trend could lead to a democracy-threatening, single-party dominance in Turkey
ANKARA / 19 February 2004 / by Esra Erduran
There is no sense of excitement in Turkey about the upcoming local elections. No enthusiasm, no election campaigns. The only party making preparations for for the March 28 elections is the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
"In the other local elections that were held since 1980, the candidates in the elections would have announced and they should have started their campaigns months before," said Murat Karayalcin, former mayor of Ankara and current leader of the Social Democratic People's Party (SHP).
He believes the candidates are already too late to promote themselves. He believes the main reason for the subdued elections mood is Parliament's two-party structure.
After the November general elections, only two parties, the AK Party and the Republican People's Party (CHP), successfully secured seats in the 550-member Parliament.
Only these two parties were able to pass the 10 percent national threshold needed for a political party to enter Parliament and as a result of the polls, the AK Party won an overwhelming majority in the Parliament.
Accepting defeat before the fight
With only one month to go for the elections, only a few parties have started their election campaigns.
According to recent public opinion polls, the ruling party, which has roots in Political Islam but claims to be the conservative democrat party of the country, will enjoy another victory at the local polls.
"The intention is to carry this two-party structure of the Parliament to the local elections. These two parties are trying to steal votes from each other by showing each other as a danger to the democratic structure of the country," stresses Karayalcin.
The last general elections changed the panorama of Turkish political life. The center-right parties collapsed and the CHP, Turkey's oldest political party, undertook the role of the protector of the secular system.
The strict secular parts of the state seem unconvinced by the AK Party's adamant claims that it has no hidden Islamist agenda.
In this light, the CHP uses the Islamist identity of the AK Party as the main tool of its opposition role.
Since the elections, the political atmosphere of the country has witnessed many "firsts."
"For the first time in the history of modern Turkey's political life, the opposition party of the Parliament is losing support of the voters while the vote capacity of the ruling party is increasing," said Karayalcin.
And he warns that this atmosphere may lead to single-party rule.
"This is a real threat to the democratic structure of the country," he stresses.
Turkey's big cities still wait for their mayoral candidates
Meanwhile, many parties have not yet announced their candidates for
mayor of Turkey's biggest cities -- capital city Ankara, Turkey's metropolitan
Istanbul and industrial heartlands Izmir and Izmit.
The real race will take place for these cities in this silent but important election.
These will be Turkey's first elections in the new century, a time when urban poverty has reached its highest levels in the history of the republic.
And it also will take place while the country's government
is expected to start negotiations with European Union officials as a
part of Turkey's goal to become a member of the bloc.
6. - The New York Times - "Shiite Vote Plan Would Exclude 'Sunni Triangle'":
Shiites and Kurds back plan for partial elections
18 February 2004 / by Jeffrey Gettleman and Dexter Filkins
Shiite leaders are pushing a new plan for the transfer of power in Iraq that calls for partial elections, with balloting in the relatively secure Shiite and Kurdish areas but not in the more turbulent "Sunni triangle."
The proposal, which has grown out of an emerging alliance between Kurdish and Shiite political parties, is part of the intensifying scramble for power among politicians before the United Nations announcement, expected this week, on whether election are feasible in Iraq.
But partial elections, American officials said, would further alienate the Sunnis, who are already generating most of the violence against the Americans and their Iraqi allies.
"Allowing citizens from some regions to vote and disenfranchising others certainly does not inspire credibility and legitimacy," a senior American official in Baghdad said.
Leaders of Iraq's Shiites, the country's largest single group, said their plan is the only feasible way to have any kind of elections while still allowing American administrators to transfer authority to the Iraqi people by June 30, the date set in an American-Iraqi agreement last November.
"Partial elections is one of the possibilities on the table," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a Shiite political leader and a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. "There are places secure enough where we can hold elections right now. Those places happen to be in the north and in the south."
Kurdish leaders would not comment specifically on the plan, but they did emphasize a new "strategic relationship" with Shiite clerics in their discussions.
Barham Salih, prime minister of the Partiotic Union of Kurdistan, a leading Kurdish party, said it was important to work with the Shiite leadership because "these two major communities in Iraq should share an interest in fundamental change in the politics of Iraq."
He added, "Both have been excluded from power for almost 83 years of the Iraqi state."
On Sunday, Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union and a member of the Governing Council, traveled to the holy Shiite city of Najaf, where he met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiites. After a two-and-a-half-hour meeting, Mr. Talabani said, "We have big hope in our Shia brothers."
The partial election plan calls for representatives in
the predominantly Sunni areas to be chosen in tightly guarded caucuses,
an idea vehemently opposed by members of the country's Sunni minority,
who say it is illegitimate and would further divide Iraq's people.