25 February 2004

1. "France pulls Kurdish satellite TV channel off the air", the new Kurdish television channel Roj TV has begun broadcasting. It is now broadcasting from Denmark at the satellite station Hotbird 6 (13 E), 11585 V, 27500.

2. "Support for Turkey's EU bid on the rise", with the talks on Cyprus very much on track, momentum is building within the Commission to fully support Turkey's EU bid.

3. "Cyprus talks clear path for Turkey to start EU membership negotiations", the European Commission is moving towards backing Turkey's bid to start negotiations to join the EU, diplomats say.

4. "Turkey's Human Rights Record Is Taken to Task", Inge Genefke, a Danish neurologist and veteran human rights activist, testified on Monday before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and used the occasion to criticize the Turkish government for not doing more to stop torture in its country.

5. "Anti-U.S. Kurdish Militants Rebounding, Officials Say", Ali Hamaamin said he had been whipped with electrical cords, hung by his arms and kicked in the face. Because he was accused of not being religious, he was repeatedly tortured by men from the militant Islamic group Ansar al-Islam.

6. "Iraqi Turkmen leader says civil war possible", the Turkmen representative on Iraq’s Governing Council said in an interview published on Tuesday that she expected civil war in Iraq if any ethnic or religious group feels it has not received its due.

1. - AFP / Kurdish Media - "France pulls Kurdish satellite TV channel off the air":

PARIS / 23 February 2004

A Kurdish satellite channel based in Paris, Medya TV, has been taken off the air by French authorities because of suspected links with a Kurdish militant group banned in Turkey, the head of the station said
Tuesday.

A high court, the Council of State, ruled February 11 that the channel posed "risks to public order" and therefore could not obtain a broadcast licence required under a 2001 law, Medya TV chief executive Musa Kaval said.

The station, one of the more popular seen by the Kurdish population in Turkey, ceased operating the next day, he said, adding that it had existed for nearly five years without any problem.

The French court believed that the station had ties with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed group outlawed as a terrorist organisation in Turkey, according to documents giving the verdict.

The PKK was officially dissolved in 2002, but has continued under a succession of different names.

Asked about France's suspicions, Kaval said he "personally" had no links to the PKK, but noted that the group had been one of a few parties which had responded to the channel's invitations to air its views in front of the camera.

The court's decision meant the channel would now be wound up, with most of its 100 employees laid off, he said.

"The new Kurdish TV channel Roj TV is broadcasting"

25 February 2004 / posted by KurdishMedia.com

The new Kurdish television channel Roj TV has begun broadcasting. It is now broadcasting from Denmark at the satellite station Hotbird 6 (13 E), 11585 V, 27500.

The Roj TV emerged after the French authorities closed down Medya TV which was broadcasting from outside Brussels.

Medya TV started after the British authorities closed down Med TV in London.

2. - EurActiv - "Support for Turkey's EU bid on the rise":

With the talks on Cyprus very much on track, momentum is building within the Commission to fully support Turkey's EU bid.

25 February 2004

Momentum is building within the Commission for their full support of Turkey's bid to launch negotiations on the country's EU membership as there is growing confidence that the UN-brokered talks over Cyprus could lead to an agreement by 1 May 2004. Meanwhile, there is increasing appreciation within the EU of Turkey's commitment to reforms and its persistent campaign to join the Union. "There is no Plan B", the Financial Times quoted an EU official on 25 February. "It will be impossible to avoid starting negotiations".

The outcome of the ongoing talks on Cyprus would have a "practical impact" on the EU's relations with Turkey, Commission President Romano Prodi has said. However, in the opinion of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, Cyprus and Turkey's EU membership "do not have any connection".

The Commission is scheduled to publish its recommendations on Turkey's preparedness for opening membership talks in October, and the final decision rests with the EU summit in Brussels in December. Turkey has had an association treaty with the EU since 1963 and was given candidate status in 1999. The FT cited diplomats as saying that Turkey stands a fair chance of becoming an EU member by 2015.

Backing Turkey's EU membership bid are Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy. However, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden appear reluctant to throw their weight behind Ankara's candidacy, and several new Member States remain opposed to the EU giving Turkey a date.

On his first official trip to Ankara, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said on 23 February that he expected Turkey to be given the green light to open entry talks in December. "I believe Turkey is on the right path with its reform process," Mr Schröder said at a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

3. - The Financial Times - "Cyprus talks clear path for Turkey to start EU membership negotiations":

BRUSSELS / 25 February 2004 / by Judy Dempsey

The European Commission is moving towards backing Turkey's bid to start negotiations to join the EU, diplomats say.

The gradual shift in Turkey's favour reflects growing optimism inside the Commission that United Nations-brokered talks over Cyprus could lead to a deal by May 1 when the divided island - along with nine other countries - will join the European Union.

It also reflects growing confidence in Ankara's commitment to reforms and Turkey's persistent campaign to join the EU. "There is no Plan B," said an EU official. "It will be impossible to avoid starting negotiations."

The EU is due to make a final decision at a summit in Brussels this December on whether to open accession talks with Turkey. The decision will be based on the Commission's recommendations, which will be made in October.

The recommendations are likely to be hotly debated by member states, but if talks do go ahead diplomats say Turkey could become an EU member by 2015.

Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy back Turkey's membership. France has remained ambiguous while others - in Scandinavia and among the new entrants due to join this year - have strong reservations on grounds of religion, costs and human rights.

A Cyprus deal would "boost Turkey's chances for starting accession talks," said a senior diplomat. He said Ankara was making a big effort to end the 30-year dispute started when Turkey occupied the northern part of the island.

Diplomats are also convinced that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, is determined to press ahead with reforms and meet the EU's "Copenhagen criteria" - the political and economic conditions for starting talks.

In strategic terms, Turkey's supporters see advantages in having a strong, secular and democratic Muslim country inside the EU.

"I am not sure the EU can develop a long-term relationship with the Islamic world if it sees itself as an exclusive Christian club," said a European ambassador.

Diplomats said all these factors meant it was no longer possible to put off the decision to start talks with Ankara. Turkey applied for membership over 40 years ago and was given candidate status in 1999.

Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, yesterday wrapped up a two-day visit to Turkey and said he supported the start of membership talks "without delay" if the Commission decided the conditions have been met.

"Schröder's trip to Turkey was about preparing public opinion at home over the possibility that Turkey one day will be in the EU," said a German official.

With European Parliament elections in May, he may also see electoral benefits in wooing the 2.5m Turks living in Germany, where the opposition Christian Democratic Union opposes Turkey joining the EU.

4. - The Washington Post - "Turkey's Human Rights Record Is Taken to Task":

25 February 2004 / by Nora Boustany

Inge Genefke, a Danish neurologist and veteran human rights activist, testified on Monday before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and used the occasion to criticize the Turkish government for not doing more to stop torture in its country.

In her testimony, she said the Turkish government had not shown the political will to enforce new laws against torture. Despite official claims that the use of torture had declined or stopped in Turkey, Genefke said, the number of victims treated by the independent Human Rights Foundation of Turkey has not decreased. The foundation reported 924 cases in 2003. Genefke's remarks came two days before the scheduled release of the State Department's annual human rights report.

"Substantial improvements have been made in Turkish legislation, yet no improvement has been made in the prevention of torture," Genefke said in a telephone interview yesterday. Genefke, 65, represents the International Rehabilitation Council of Torture Victims. That nonprofit organization is affiliated with the Research and Rehabilitation Center for Torture, which Genefke founded in 1985. Based in Copenhagen, the organization supports rehabilitation by health organizations around the world. She said the group has the largest international documentation center on torture.

Genefke mentioned a case in which nine members of the executive committee of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey were being tried for their activities in support of hunger strikers. "What is astonishing and grotesque is that they are punishing the doctors and not the police," Genefke said. "I would have some hope if there were maybe five or six cases against policemen out of the hundreds involved."

"Torture is the worst and most effective instrument against democracy. Three billion people live in countries where governments condone torture, and Turkey is one of them," she said.

She also called on the United States to influence other countries on the issue. "The United States as a superpower has the special ethical duty to help eliminate torture," she said.

5. - The New York Times - "Anti-U.S. Kurdish Militants Rebounding, Officials Say":

BAGHDAD / 25 February 2004 / by Jeffry Gettleman

Ali Hamaamin said he had been whipped with electrical cords, hung by his arms and kicked in the face. Because he was accused of not being religious, he was repeatedly tortured by men from the militant Islamic group Ansar al-Islam.

"They used to come to me at night, wearing masks, and do the most horrible things," said Mr. Hamaamin, who lives in Beyara, a village near the Iranian border.

His ordeal ended with the United States-led invasion of Iraq last year, when American Special Forces and Kurdish militias routed Ansar al-Islam, which once tried to set up a Taliban-like state in the jagged mountains along the border with Iran.

But Ansar is making a resurgence, Kurdish and American officials say.

According to interviews with captured Ansar members, the group is branching out from its former mountain strongholds to cities across Iraq. Its mission, too, has expanded, they say, from terrorizing local villagers to planning suicide bombings against the American-led occupation.

American officials are now blaming Ansar for many of the recent suicide attacks that they say pose the greatest threat to the fragile Iraqi state. So far this month at least 230 people, primarily members of Iraqi security forces, have died in suicide bombings.

"We've seen a real step up on the part of these professional terrorists from Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam conducting suicide attacks," L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, said on Monday.

A senior United States military official said Ansar was in "an intense period of evolution" and had recently formed a partnership with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.

"Mr. Zarqawi is the senior partner and Ansar supplies the local expertise," said the military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

American officials announced Tuesday that troops killed one of Mr. Zarqawi's top aides, a bomb maker named Abu Muhammad Hamza, in a shootout on Thursday in Habbaniya, about 50 miles west of Baghdad. The soldiers discovered explosive materials and Jordanian documents with Mr. Hamza, but American officials said they did not know what his connection was to Ansar.

Ansar lives in a landscape of shadows. The contours of its operations are known but the details remain murky.

Several Ansar members captured in recent months said the group was trying to reorganize in Erbil, one of the largest cities in northern Iraq. The prisoners, kept in a jail in Sulaimaniya in northeastern Iraq, were made available to The New York Times by Kurdish security forces.

"Our leaders have been looking for men to send back to Erbil to make operations," said Muhammad Khalid, 30, an Ansar fighter captured last summer as he crossed from Iran into Iraq. "That's where I was going."

Shahab Ahmed, another Ansar prisoner, said: "Our mission has become bigger than Kurdistan. We made car bombs from rockets, and we were told that if we killed Americans we would go to Paradise."

Mr. Ahmed, who warmed his handcuffed hands in front of a space heater as he talked, said there were Ansar suicide cells in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Falluja and Mosul.

According to a report prepared by the Kurdish authorities, Ansar recently had a pipeline of young men schooled to die. In June 2002, the report says, a 19-year-old former mechanic, Didar Khalan, was tackled at a Kurdish political party headquarters in Sayed Sadiq, in northern Iraq, just as he was about to blow himself up.

Mr. Khalan told investigators that Ansar's leaders sent him to the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan wearing a vest packed with TNT. To get into the office, Mr. Khalan was instructed to ask for Muhammad, a common name. Once inside, if 20 people or more were present, Mr. Khalan was to connect two wires in his pocket.

But as soon as he arrived, guards noticed that he was acting nervously and surrounded him, the report says.

"They put me on the ground, and they gathered around me and they took off the clothes and cut off the wire," the report quoted Mr. Khalan as saying.

6. - Reuters - "Iraqi Turkmen leader says civil war possible":

CAIRO / 25 February 2004

The Turkmen representative on Iraq’s Governing Council said in an interview published on Tuesday that she expected civil war in Iraq if any ethnic or religious group feels it has not received its due.

Many of Iraq’s Arabs and Turkmen are wary of Kurdish aspirations for significant autonomy in an area incorporating three provinces Kurds wrested from Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf War.

The northern city of Kirkuk, which sits atop one of the largest oil fields in the world, is at the heart of the dispute which has intensified since the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein last year.

In the interview with Egyptian state newspaper al-Ahram, Songul Chapouk was asked if civil war could break out because of the situation in Kirkuk.

“Yes, if there is any violation of the Turkmen’s rights and they are not given a right that is given to others,” she said.

“The same goes for other ethnicities. If there are not equal rights for all individuals of the Iraqi people, there will be civil war and I expect this, because civil war arises from discrimination,” she added.

Chapouk said Kirkuk was populated entirely by Turkmen until the British brought in other groups to work in the oil industry in the 1940s.

“It’s 100 percent Turkmen. I tell you I have documents to that effect. In 1941 the British set up the oil company and this company employed everyone who lived in Kirkuk. Those who got jobs were 90 percent Turkmen and the rest were Arabs, Assyrians and Kurds who lived outside Kirkuk.”

In 1921, when the British occupied Iraq, they estimated that Kurds had a large majority in the city. The 1957 census, the last officially conducted national poll, put the figure at 48 percent Kurd, 28 percent Arab and 21 percent Turkmen.