16 January 2004

1. "European Parliament invites jailed Kurdish activist to award ceremony", the European Parliament, which has called for the release of former Kurdish deputy Leyla Zana, jailed in Turkey since 1994, on Friday invited her to attend an award ceremony in Brussels later this month. Emma Nicholson, a senior European legislator, handed Zana's lawyer an invitation addressed to the jailed activist to attend a prize-giving ceremony in Brussels.

2. "Turkey is 'closer to the Union,' he says", Romano Prodi on Thursday began the first visit here by the executive chief of the European Union in 40 years and urged Turkey to press forward with reforms and push for a solution to the divided island of Cyprus.

3. "Turkey, a vital bridge between two civilizations", Turkey is an exemplar of democracy, modernism and moderate Islam and should enter the EU, for the world's sake.

4. "Kurdish autonomy is the product of mutual understanding", after abandoning its Kurdish friends twice, the US is finally in a position to work toward a settlement in northern Iraq that will meet the interests of all.

5. "Turkish police raid homes in northern Kurdistan", Turkish police and special forces raided several homes of Kurds in the city of Siirt in northern Kurdistan (southeastern Turkey) on January 15, arresting 19 people accused of supporting the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan which is seen as a big criminal act in the Turkish penal system.

6. "Kurds Head Towards Separation Up North", Recent developments in Northern Iraq may lead to the division of post-Saddam Iraq along ethnic lines. Kurds plan to turn their tactical gains from their role as unflinching U.S. allies in ousting Saddam Hussein into a strategic and historic one – a Kurdish federation that would include one of the world's richest oil reserves in Kirkuk.

1. - AFP - "European Parliament invites jailed Kurdish activist to award ceremony":

ANKARA / 16 January 2004

The European Parliament, which has called for the release of former Kurdish deputy Leyla Zana, jailed in Turkey since 1994, on Friday invited her to attend an award ceremony in Brussels later this month. Emma Nicholson, a senior European legislator, handed Zana's lawyer an invitation addressed to the jailed activist to attend a prize-giving ceremony in Brussels.

The move came at the start of the 10th hearing of her retrial by a state security court in Ankara. Zana, who was herself bestowed an EU prize in 1995, and three other former Kurdish parliament members were imprisoned in 1994 for collaborating with the armed Kurdish rebellion.

They are now being retried in a case closely watched by the European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join. "We believe she (Zana) should be released during this retrial, that she and her co-defendants should not be imprisoned during a retrial... This should be a complete retrial, not a rerun of an old trial," Nicholson, who was attending the court hearing Friday, told reporters.

"If she were released then she will be free to come to Brussels and receive her own Sakharov prize," she added. European Commission President Romano Prodi, on a visit to Turkey, said Thursday the EU was closely following the retrial of Zana and her colleagues.

The court has rejected demands by the four defendants to be released on bail ever since their retrial started in March last year. The four were able to ask for a judicial review under democratization reforms Ankara adopted in a bid to boost its candidacy for EU membership. In 2001, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that their initial trial was unfair, because they were unable to have key witnesses questioned and were not informed in time when charges against them were modified.

The EU has strongly criticized the sentences as a move to silence even peaceful advocacy of Kurdish rights. The defense has repeatedly complained during the retrial that the court is favoring the prosecution. The four activists have also lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights for being kept in prison during their retrial.

2. - The International Herald Tribune - "Turkey is 'closer to the Union,' he says":

ANKARA / 16 January 2004

Romano Prodi on Thursday began the first visit here by the executive chief of the European Union in 40 years and urged Turkey to press forward with reforms and push for a solution to the divided island of Cyprus.

The predominantly Muslim country is eager to join the EU and has carried out sweeping political changes in the last two years as it tries to meet EU standards. Ankara has abolished the death penalty and has granted greater cultural rights to Kurds, who are not recognized as an official minority.

"My main message is to continue along the path of reforms because impressive progress has been achieved," Prodi said at a news conference after talks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "The country is now closer to the Union."

Turkey hopes that European leaders, who will be meeting in December, will agree to open long-awaited membership talks.

Although finding a solution to the Cyprus issue is not technically a condition for Turkey to start membership talks, the EU has also made it clear that negotiations could falter if Cyprus remains split between the Turkish-controlled north and the Greek Cypriot south.

A solution to Cyprus "is not a precondition," Prodi said. "But this will be a big help."

Accompanying Prodi was the EU commissioner for enlargement, Günter Verhügen.

Later, in an address to Turkey's Parliament, Prodi said that "a settlement would also greatly facilitate Turkey's membership aspirations."

"This is not a formal condition," he added, "but a political reality."

Cyprus joins the EU in May, but only the Greek Cypriot side will gain membership benefits unless the island's nearly 30-year-long division is ended. Turkey sent in troops to the Mediterranean island in 1974 after a short-lived coup by supporters of union with Greece and still keeps about 40,000 troops there.

Turkey has bristled at suggestions that its candidacy be linked to the Cyprus question, but it is working on changes on a UN-sponsored plan to reunify the island.

Erdogan said Turkey was determined to implement the reforms by the end of the year and would press for a solution to Cyprus by May.

In October, the European Commission must prepare a report for EU leaders on whether Turkey meets the standards for potential candidates.

The commission in November noted "significant progress" but cited several areas where more needs to be done, including strengthening the independence of the judiciary and implementing human rights reforms.

Prodi was the first EU Commission president to visit Turkey since 1963, when Ankara signed an agreement that made it an associate member of the Common Market - a precursor to the EU. The country was accorded official candidate status in 1999 but lags behind other nations that want to join.

Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and the Czech Republic are set to join on May 1, along with Cyprus.

In remarks likely to displease Ankara, Prodi also said that European public opinion was divided over the prospect of Turkey's membership, in contrast to Turkish public opinion. which is overwhelmingly in favor of joining the EU.

"There are those who are concerned about the religious dimension. Others have raised issues such as the capacity of the Union to integrate a country of the size and with the demography of Turkey, the economic development of Turkey and Turkey's geographical situation," Prodi said in an address to Parliament.

"We need to reply to these concerns," he added.

Prodi was to travel on to Istanbul on Friday to address the Bosphorus University and inaugurate an EU information center.

3. - The New York Times - "Turkey, a vital bridge between two civilizations":

Turkey is an exemplar of democracy, modernism and moderate Islam and should enter the EU, for the world's sake.

NEW YORK / 16 January 2004 / by Thomas Friedman

`Turkey's membership in the EU is so important that the US should consider subsidizing the EU to make it easier for Turkey to be admitted.'

While visiting Istanbul the other day, I took a long walk along the Bosporus near Topkapi Palace. There is nothing like standing at this stunning intersection of Europe and Asia to think about the clash of civilizations -- and how we might avoid it. Make no mistake: we are living at a remarkable hinge of history and it's not clear how it's going to swing.

What is clear is that Osama bin Laden achieved his aim: Sept. 11 sparked real tensions between the Judeo-Christian West and the Muslim East. Preachers on both sides now openly denounce each other's faith. Whether these tensions explode into a real clash of civilizations will depend a great deal on whether we build bridges or dig ditches between the West and Islam in three key places -- Turkey, Iraq and Israel-Palestine.

Let's start with Turkey the only Muslim, free-market democracy in Europe. I happened to be in Istanbul when the street outside one of the two synagogues that were suicide-bombed on Nov. 15 was reopened.

Three things struck me.

First, the chief rabbi of Turkey appeared at the ceremony, hand in hand with the top Muslim cleric of Istanbul and the local mayor, while crowds in the street threw red carnations on them.

Second, the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who comes from an Islamist party, paid a visit to the chief rabbi -- the first time a Turkish prime minister had ever called on the chief rabbi.

Third, and most revealing, was the statement made by the father of one of the Turkish suicide bombers who hit the synagogues.

"We are a respectful family who love our nation, flag and the Koran," the grieving father, Sefik Elaltuntas, told the Zaman newspaper. "But we cannot understand why this child had done the thing he

had done. First, let us meet with the chief rabbi of our Jewish brothers. Let me hug him. Let me kiss his hands and flowing robe. Let me apologize in the name of my son and offer my condolences for the deaths. We will be damned if we do not reconcile with them."

The same newspaper also carried a quote from Cemil Cicek, the Turkish government spokesman, who said: "The Islamic world should take stringent measures against terrorism without any `buts' or `howevers.'"

There is a message here: Context matters. Turkish politicians are not intimidated by religious fundamentalists, because -- unlike too many Arab politicians -- they have the legitimacy that comes from being democratically elected.

At the same time, the Turkish parents of suicide bombers don't all celebrate their children's suicide. They are not afraid to denounce this barbarism, because they live in a free society where such things are considered shameful and alien to the moderate Turkish brand of Islam -- which has always embraced religious pluralism and which most Turks feel is the "real" Islam.

For all these reasons, if we want to help moderates win the war of ideas within the Muslim world, we must help strengthen Turkey as a model of democracy, modernism, moderation and Islam all working together.

Nothing would do that more than having Turkey be made a member of the EU -- which the EU will basically decide this year. Turkey has undertaken a huge number of reforms to get itself ready for EU membership. If, after all it has done, the EU shuts the door on Turkey, extremists all over the Muslim world will say to the moderates: "See, we told you so -- it's a Christian club and we're never going to be let in. So why bother adapting to their rules?"

I think Turkey's membership in the EU is so important that the US should consider subsidizing the EU to make it easier for Turkey to be admitted. If that fails, we should offer to bring Turkey into NAFTA, even though it would be very complicated.

"If the EU creates some pretext and says `no' to Turkey, after we have done all this, I am sure the EU will lose and the world will lose," Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, told me in Ankara.

"If Turkey is admitted, the EU is going to win and world peace is going to win. This would be a gift to the Muslim world.

"When I travel to other Muslim countries -- Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia -- they are proud of what we are doing. They are proud of our process [of political and economic reform to join the EU]. They mention this to me. They ask, `How is this going?'"

Yes, everyone is watching, which is why the EU would be making a huge mistake -- a hinge of history mistake -- if it digs a ditch around Turkey instead of building a bridge.

4. - The Taipe Times - "Kurdish autonomy is the product of mutual understanding":

After abandoning its Kurdish friends twice, the US is finally in a position to work toward a settlement in northern Iraq that will meet the interests of all.

16 January 2004 / by William Safire

On Monday, Kofi Annan will have a chance to play "a vital role" in Iraq that the US has promised. Iraqi, US and British representatives will troop into his New York office with a request: Inform the Shiite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, that the world body supports a reasonable timetable for Iraqi elections, not a premature election that would amount to a coup by Iraq's Shiite majority.

As the UN thus demonstrates its nation-building usefulness, the US will face its own delicate task: to persuade the Kurds in the north not to demand so much autonomy that it may endanger the nation's unity.

Here is what we owe the Iraqi Kurds, targets of genocide, as demonstrated in Saddam's poison-gas massacre of 5,000 innocents in Halabja:

(1) We abandoned Kurds to the Shah in the 1970s, after Mullah Mustafa Barzani placed his trust in the US. We double-crossed them again after the Gulf War, when their forces rose at our instigation and were decimated by Saddam's gunships. Despite this double duplicity, Kurds fought on our side with little equipment and great valor against Saddam for over a decade.

(2) After we protected this non-Arab people in a no-flight zone, Kurds overcame tribal differences to establish a working free-enterprise democracy in the north of Iraq, now a model of freedom for the rest of the country.

(3) Despite casualties elsewhere in the post-victory war, not a single US soldier has been killed (knock wood) in the area called Iraqi Kurdistan and patrolled by the pesh merga, its battle-hardened Kurdish militia. (But in a blunder, Kurdish leaders suspicious of Turkey blocked the contribution of 10,000 Turkish troops to help us put down the Baathist insurgency.)

The Kurds owe their US ally plenty, too: US and British air forces, from bases in cooperative Turkey, secured the Iraqi Kurds from Saddam's predations for a decade. And last year we freed all Iraqis from that dictator forever.

Now Americans and Kurds need each other's understanding. The US is committed to helping build a unified Iraq, with no path to secession, and with representation based on geography, not ethnicity. The Kurds, a 20-percent minority in Iraq, are committed only to autonomy within a federal Iraq: they refrain from declaring independence, but require constitutional and security guarantees that they will not be tyrannized again.

"We cannot afford another Halabja," said Barham Salih, the articulate Kurd who would make Iraq's most effective UN representative. "Surely Americans grasp the value of states' rights, and remember how all states had to ratify your Constitution," he said.

Commitments to unity and autonomy may not be in conflict, but they are not in accord. Though Arab Iraqis are happy to let the Kurds continue to run their local affairs in what used to be the no-flight zone, many find trouble arising in other Kurdish lands seized by Saddam, who drove Kurds from their homes and moved in his supporters to "Arabize" the area.

The key is the city of Kirkuk, which Iraqi Kurds consider their capital. But Arab colonists and indigenous Turkmen dispute that hotly, as does Turkey, worried about a rich Kurdistan attracting Turkish Kurds. Kirkuk sits atop an ocean of oil holding 40 percent of Iraq's huge reserves.

Determined to reverse Saddam Hussein's ethnic cleansing, Salih insisted that "Kirkuk is not about oil." (I think of Senator Dale Bumpers' line during impeachment: "When you hear somebody say, `This is not about sex' -- it's about sex.")

Our Paul Bremer told Kurdish leaders brusquely last week to forget the past US autonomy policy and get with the unity program; they suggested he stick that in his ear. He has since modified his demeanor, and Washington is reviewing our policy reversal. Mollified Kurds then met constructively with Iraqi Arabs, and Salih was due to meet with "our friends to the north [Turkey]" yesterday.

The solution should include relocation funds for Arabs displaced by returning Kurds; a referendum to decide status within a Kurdish or other Iraqi "governorate"; legal protections in Kirkuk for Turkmen, Christians and other minorities; and the pesh merga's place in Iraq's national military command.

"The oil is part of the national treasure," said Salih, in autonomy's concession to unity.

"We just want to make sure that Iraq's oil wealth is never again used against Kurds," he said.

5. - DozaMe.org - "Turkish police raid homes in northern Kurdistan":

SIIRT / 16 January 2004

Turkish police and special forces raided several homes of Kurds in the city of Siirt in northern Kurdistan (southeastern Turkey) on January 15, arresting 19 people accused of supporting the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan which is seen as a big criminal act in the Turkish penal system.

The raids came after a big demonstration against the isolation of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan in the suburb of Conkbayir in Siirt. The arrested people were Musa Askara who delivers the pro-Kurdish "Yeniden Özgür Gündem" newspaper, Abdullah Askara, Selahattin Ceylan, Eyüphan Aksu, Fahrettin Akcan, Abdulselam Günes, Meryem Çiçek, Musa Askara, Resul Timurlenk, Kamil Baytekin, Hakim Günes, Seyfettin Oguz, Kutbettin Kutlu, Hayrettin Çiçek, Memduh Kutlu, Hüseyin Kutlu, Sakir Kutlu, Metin Kutlu and Muhyettin Çiçek.

After being released, Musa Askara gave a statement to the Kurdish news agency DIHA saying that several black hooded security forces with automatic rifles came at night time without any warrant and smashed in his door, woke him and his family up and forced them to gather up in a room while his house was turned upside down.

"They came at night with three military armored vehicles and seven police cars. They smashed in our door, screaming that it was a raid. I confronted them and said that they could not do this without any search warrant issued by an attorney. Hooded men poured in and one of them kicked down my stove saying 'we are the attorney!'", he said.

"They wouldn't let us go in to the rooms that were being searched. I don't know what they were looking after and they refused to tell me. I felt very humiliated. It was so surreal."

Musa Askara and the other arrested Kurds have decided to file a complaint to the office of the republican attorney.

Ocalan sits today in severe solitary confinement in the prison island of Imrali and weekly visits from lawyers and relatives are still being arbitrarily blocked by Turkish officials.

6. - AntiWar.com - "Kurds Head Towards Separation Up North":

16 January 2004 / by Hilmi Toros

Recent developments in Northern Iraq may lead to the division of post-Saddam Iraq along ethnic lines.

Kurds plan to turn their tactical gains from their role as unflinching U.S. allies in ousting Saddam Hussein into a strategic and historic one – a Kurdish federation that would include one of the world's richest oil reserves in Kirkuk.

Plans for a Kurdish federation emerged unexpectedly last month after a unity move between two bickering Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Jalal Talabani and the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Massous Barzani.

The first group controls the north-eastern provinces of Sulaimaniyah, and the second the north-western provinces Arbil and Dohuk.

The Kurd plan falls short of the independent land they have dreamt of for centuries. But it is strong enough to cause alarm both within and outside an unsettled Iraq.

The Kurdish plan did not indicate any clear division of land; it only set out the principle that Iraq would be a binational federation between Kurds in the north and Arabs in the centre and south. There would be a substantial Shia overlap on both sides.

The plan would legalise and broaden a de facto Kurd area since the first U.S. blitz on Iraq in 1991. Kurds have own affairs since then, first under protection of a U.S. and British air umbrella and now more openly.

In a sign of further consolidation of their power in the north, Iraq's two main Kurdish parties were reported to have agreed Tuesday this week to set up a separate regional administration in the provinces each controls in Northern Iraq. Former Kurdish military forces, the Peshmerga, have already been incorporated into the police in Kirkuk.

Kirkuk is quite a bounty. The 3,000-year-old city would be the capital of the projected Kurd federation. Land around the city is source of 40 percent of Iraqi oil production. The area has 10 billion barrels of known oil reserves.

Turkmen and Arab residents of Kirkuk are protesting already against a "Kurdification." Turkmens claim to be the majority in this city. Ethnic violence flares up occasionally.

The city of 700,000 is the traditional site of the tomb of the biblical prophet Daniel. Archaeological findings of flint sickle blades and milling stones here have provided evidence of innovative agriculture thousands of years ago.

The city is a melting pot of Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians and now the Arabs pushed up north in Saddam Hussein's anti-Kurdish and anti-Turkmen "Arabisation" drive.

Turkmens, the third largest ethnic group in Iraq after Arabs and Kurds, live in areas that would fall within the projected Kurd federation. They feel close to Turkey because of ethnic and linguistic affinities.

Estimates of their population in Iraq vary from 300,000 to two million. But they claim to be the majority in Kirkuk, and refuse to be swallowed up by a Kurdish federation. A Turkmen leader said recently that his people would declare a federation of their own if Kurds went ahead with their plans.

The Arab population that has swollen up in the past two decades is suspicious both of Kurds and Turkmens, though current Kurdish dominance is bringing them closer to Turkmens.

Kurds also claim to be in the majority in Kirkuk. Already, they are reported to have begun to seek the return of Kurds driven out by the "Arabisation" of the city.

The plan for a Kurdish federation is officially on hold for now. The United States which owes a favour to the Kurds for their support against Saddam Hussein has taken no official position on the proposed Kurdish federation. All that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said is that Northern Iraq will remain a part of Iraq.

Turkey is playing a leading role in marshalling support against a division it says would further unsettle Iraq and the region. It needs to convince the United States, which was stung last year by Turkish refusal to join the invading coalition.

"But as Kurds are drawing the borders of their federation in Northern Iraq by including the oil-rich Kirkuk province in their territories, Turkey finds itself with no leverage over American policies," says Omer Taspinar, co-director of the U.S.- Turkey project at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "The simple fact is that Iraqi Kurds have become the best friends of the United States on the ground.."

Turkey has gained the support of neighbouring Syria and Iran. In whirlwind diplomatic moves that saw Turkey host Syrian President Bashar Assad and dispatch its foreign minister Abdullah Gul to Iran within a matter of days, it then invited a leading Shia cleric from Iraq to drum up support against any ethnic split in Iraq. The Shia religious majority in Iraq is usually portrayed as seeking a strong central government that would contain intensifying Kurdish strength in the North.

Turkey will argue its case strongly within the Arab world and at the United Nations with Syrian and Iranian support, Turkish officials say.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was briefed by the military on developments in northern Iraq Wednesday night. He reportedly told Iraqi Shia leaders later that Iraqi Kurds were "playing with fire" and must be stopped.. He said Iraq's neighbours would not stand by idly if the country fell apart. Erdogan is due in Washington later this month.

Turkey, Iran and Syria have Kurdish populations of their own. The Kurd population in the area is estimated at 20 million, with 12 million in Turkey, four million in Iran and about two million in Syria. Iraqi Kurds claim a population of about five million.

Turkey fears that an autonomous Kurdistan within Iraq could be a first step towards independence, and embolden Kurds in Turkey to seek similar status.