8 January 2004

1. "Turkey to lift capital punishment during wartime", Turkey will sign Article 13 of the European Human Rights Agreement, accepting the lifting of capital punishment during and under threat of war.

2. "Headscarf Debate Divides the Nation", In Turkey, there's an ongoing debate over the headscarf.

3. "Syria, Turkey unite against Kurds", Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met top Turkish officials on Wednesday on a landmark trip that has found common ground between the two former foes with both denouncing any move to create Kurdish autonomy in Iraq.

4. "Syrian security in Kobani prevents the famous Kurdish musician Rashid Sofi from singing in his mother tongue", Governments in all over the world facilitate the celebrations of the New Year. This is not the case in Syria! The celebration that was to be held in al-Furat Celebrations’ Hall in Kobani, West Kurdistan has become a battlefield between the security forces on the one hand and Rashid Sofi’s fans on the other hand.

5. "Kurds start to rock the boat", Tensions over Iraqi Kurd demands for substantial autonomy within a future sovereign Iraq are causing unrest in northern Iraq and growing unease among Iraq's neighbors. In the latest of a string of violent incidents in the northern city of Kirkuk, unidentified attackers fired a rocket at the headquarters of one of the two main Kurdish factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

6. "Turk Cypriot Parties Say Coalition Seen by Weekend", Turkish Cypriot politicians said Thursday they were close to forming a coalition government for their breakaway enclave that could pave the way for fresh peace talks with the Greek Cypriot south of the island.

1. - Turkey Daily News - "Turkey to lift capital punishment during wartime":

Turkey will sign Article 13 of the European Human Rights Agreement, accepting the lifting of capital punishment during and under threat of war

ANKARA / 8 January 2004

Turkey will sign Article 13 of the European Human Rights Agreement, pledging to lift capital punishment during and under threat of war on Friday Jan. 9.

According to a Anatolia news agency report, the European Council Representative from Turkey Numan Hazar will sign the document in a ceremony in Strasbourg.

Turkey had signed Article 6 of the agreement on Jan. 15, 2003, lifting capital punishment during peacetime, and had officially approved it on Dec. 12, 2003. Turkey became one of the last European Council members to sign the agreement. It had long been a divisive issue between Strasbourg and Ankara.

Turkey, Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are among the countries that are yet to sign Article 13.

The European Council had opened the articles for members' signatures on May 3, 2002. The European Council wants to make Europe a capital punishment free area.

The U.S. and Japan, who attend the proceedings under observer status, are also under pressure from the European Council to lift capital punishment.

2. - Deutsche Welle - "Headscarf Debate Divides the Nation":

In Turkey, there's an ongoing debate over the headscarf.

7 January 2004 / by Dilek Zaptcioglu

The discussion on the Muslim headscarf is becoming increasingly tainted by ideology, and not only in Germany and France. In Turkey, too, the controversy increasingly threatens to divide public opinion.

It’s an everyday sight in Istanbul: Fashionably coiffeured women sitting in the bus alongside others wearing the Muslim headscarf. In big shopping centers, women with their heads covered stand at the sales tables next to others with their hair worn free.

Yet this peaceful coexistence is deceptive. In Turkey, no other topic gets people so worked up as the Muslim headscarf. For some, it’s a symbol of religious fanaticism and the oppression of women that ultimately has to be banished from public life. Others are convinced that the veiling of women is commanded by the Koran, and they argue that a ban would infringe their right to practice their religion freely – something that is anchored in the country’s democratic constitution.

So far, the state of affairs in Turkey may sound very similar to the situation in Germany or France; and indeed, in all these countries, the same kind of arguments are marshalled by both sides. In Turkey, too, the debate is being conducted with increasingly passionate intensity through the various channels of the mass media. But there is one significant difference: in contrast to the Western European countries, Turkey is populated mainly by Muslims.

Religion and politics are separated by law

This doesn’t mean, however, that Turkey is "an Islamic country," for since the foundation of modern Turkey 80 years ago, the country has defined itself as a "secular state," in which religion and politics are to be strictly separated by law.

Turkish girls are already forbidden to wear headscarves to school, from the first day of primary-level education onwards. Nonetheless, this is a topic that has been the source of heated controversy in Turkey for decades – and in the current battle, the schools and universities form the front line.

"Having lost Islam for a time, humankind has found it again. We all grew up in the 80s and 90s – and we are now witnessing the collapse of Western civilization! The revival of religion moves on from strength to strength!" These are the rallying cries of young, veiled, women at the University of Istanbul -- women who make no secret of their Islamist worldview.

For most of these educated, metropolitan students, Islam has become an ideology that allows them to interpret the present while pointing the way towards the future. The headscarf has long since become the symbol for an "Islamic ideology" that refuses to see religious faith as something to be "caged in" in the private sphere; instead, it wants to see this faith "lived out" in every area of public and private life.

In her recent commentary on the French plan to ban the headscarf, the well-known Islamist lawyer Sibel Eraslan described the Muslim headscarf as a symbol of "an alternative, divine set of coordinates, diametrically opposed to the basic principles of Western modernity."

Headscarves returned to fashion in the 60s

It’s true that the revival of the veil has been accompanied by a strengthening of the role played by Islam in modern Turkish society. In the 30s and 40s, headscarves disappeared from the Turkish cities, only to reappear in greater numbers in the course of the 60s.

Until then, there had been a one-party system in Turkey. The strictly secular Republican People’s Party had paid close attention to upholding the clothing reforms introduced by Kemal Atatürk. Men were forbidden to wear the turban, the fez or the kaftan, while women were banned from wearing the charshaf, the black "sheet" that conceals the entire body with the exception of the eyes or the face. Women are, and were, permitted to wear a headscarf at home or on the street – but not in the state-controlled areas: in schools, universities, hospitals, and government offices, no kind of veil or headscarf is permitted.

Many contemporary Turkish women see the headscarf as the symbol of a counter-revolution that wants to rob them of everything they have won. But is this really the goal of the "headscarf movement?" If so, it must be celebrating the progress made today, when headscarves and "modest" ankle-length dresses are worn by the wives of almost every senior politician in the Turkish government.

A difficult choice

Most of the "veiled" young women in the Turkish cities are also the children of Atatürk’s modernized Turkey. And they don’t want to be oppressed by men. In the case of these young women, the headscarf ban has precisely the opposite effect intended.

After studying medicine for four years, Nilüfer Pehlivan was forced to abandon her dream of becoming a doctor, for she was not permitted to take up a medical residency. She describes the crucial meeting with her professor: "He compared it with a set of scales. He told me to imagine the headscarf on one side and my course of studies on the other -- and he asked me which weighed more heavily in the balance. I felt as if someone were playing a horrible game with me, forcing me to choose between my faith and my studies." No compromise was possible: Nilüfer left the room – and, eventually, she left the university, too.

Indeed, in Turkey, as elsewhere, the controversy seems bound to grow ever more acrimonious. The Muslim headscarf is a political issue par excellence.

Translation from German: Patrick Lanagan

3. - DAWN (Pakistan) - "Syria, Turkey unite against Kurds":

ANKARA / 7 January 2004

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met top Turkish officials on Wednesday on a landmark trip that has found common ground between the two former foes with both denouncing any move to create Kurdish autonomy in Iraq.

Assad and Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer reacted sharply on Tuesday night to US comments that Washington was not prepared to step in to stop Iraqis taking the potentially divisive step of establishing Kurdish autonomy in the new Iraq.

"The territorial integrity of Iraq, the freedom and the unity of the Iraqis has to be preserved," Assad told reporters in Ankara late on Tuesday, on the first official visit to Turkey by a Syrian head of state.

"We both condemn any approach that can damage this aim." Sezer reiterated Assad's point at the joint news conference, saying: "Turkey and Syria, as neighbouring countries of Iraq, reaffirm our determination to consider those goals in an active way."

Assad met Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and military Chief of Staff Hilmi Ozkok on Wednesday morning, as well as opposition leader Deniz Baykal. He made no comments to the press and the rest of the day's programme involved cultural visits.

The Syrian leader's trip marks a dramatic thaw in relations between the two neighbours, divided for years by rows over territory, water resources and Syria's long-time tacit support for Kurdish fighters fighting in southeastern Turkey.

The two countries came to the brink of war in 1998 until Damascus expelled Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan. But the prospect that some kind of Kurdish ethnic entity might be carved out of Iraq when Washington hands sovereignty back to the Iraqis by the end of June has spooked Damascus into worrying about its own Kurdish minority.

Now Turkey and Syria, far from being split over Kurdish independence, are united in their fears that Kurdish autonomy in Iraq could fuel similar demands in their own countries.

"Syria used to hold the Kurdish card against Turkey... But since then international developments have led both Turkey and Syria to become frightened by the establishment of a Kurdish state," commentator Mehmet Ali Birand wrote in Wednesday's Turkish Daily News.

"The countries are now cooperating to avoid this by formulating joint policies. Turkey, for the first time ever, seems to have found an ally."

4. - Kurdish Media - "Syrian security in Kobani prevents the famous Kurdish musician Rashid Sofi from singing in his mother tongue":

KOBANI / 8 January 2004

Governments in all over the world facilitate the celebrations of the New Year. This is not the case in Syria! The celebration that was to be held in al-Furat Celebrations’ Hall in Kobani, West Kurdistan has become a battlefield between the security forces on the one hand and Rashid Sofi’s fans on the other hand.

Kobani, same as most of the Kurdish towns and villages, has been Arabized, the name has changed into Ain Al-Arab (The eye or spring of Arabs).

The organizers of the party already had the permission from the "Political Security" Branch in Kobani several days before.

The Kurds in Syria cannot celebrate any occasions or hold any parties - including the wedding parties - unless they get the Political Security’s license, which is not given unless the organizers undertake that there will be no singing in Kurdish or in any other language but Arabic.

On the bases of that license, it was announced that the popular Kurdish musician Rashid Sofi is on the top of the singers’ list. However, in the afternoon of December 31st, 2003 i.e. hours before the beginning of the party, the head of the political security in Kobani called for all the singers and asked them to sign a declaration in which they pledge not to sing in the Kurdish language.

Rashid Sofi, however, neither went nor signed anything. As a result, the security branch told the party’s organizers that there were orders from Aleppo to prohibit all New Year celebrations. The organizers, however, could in a way or another convince the head of the Political Security branch to allow the celebration provided that Rashid Sofi should not participate.

At the time of the party, the attendants noticed that security members have imposed themselves among their tables. When Rashid came to sing, they attacked and prevented him from singing and suppressed the audience. Not only that they even swore at him.

Rashid Sofi has studied music in Cairo, Egypt. He added a wire to the lute, which is a new addition to the Arab music, and was interviewed in the Syrian TV.

5. - Radio Free Europe - "Kurds start to rock the boat":

PRAGUE / 7 January 2004 / by Charles Recknagel

Tensions over Iraqi Kurd demands for substantial autonomy within a future sovereign Iraq are causing unrest in northern Iraq and growing unease among Iraq's neighbors. In the latest of a string of violent incidents in the northern city of Kirkuk, unidentified attackers fired a rocket at the headquarters of one of the two main Kurdish factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The attack comes after some 2,000 Arabs and Turkish-speaking Turkomans last week surrounded the PUK's head office to protest Kurdish calls for autonomy and demand that Kirkuk remain under the control of the central government in Baghdad.

At the time, one of the protest leaders, Ali Abdullah of the Democratic Turkoman Unity Party, said the demonstration was to reject any move to turn Iraq into a federal state with autonomous entities. "We have gathered today for this demonstration to proclaim that the Iraqi city of Kirkuk is a city of peace that belongs to all ethnic groups and to say 'no' to suggestions of federalism and to say 'yes' to the unity and integrity of Iraq," Abdullah said.

Several bursts of gunfire during the protest left at least five people dead and debate is still raging in the city over who fired first - Kurdish police or protesters. Another person was later killed as rival groups clashed in the city center.

Emotions have run high in Kirkuk ever since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in April brought a dramatic change in its status.

After decades of a Saddam-era "Arabization" program that forced out much of its Kurdish population and replaced it with Arab settlers from elsewhere in the country, Kirkuk is now firmly under Kurdish control. The city has a Kurdish mayor brought to power when Kurdish fighters swept in on the heels of Saddam's retreating army, and former Kurdish refugees are returning home. Many Arabs and Turkomans accuse the Kurds of grabbing power, while the Kurds say that they are regaining lost rights.

Now, tensions could be ratcheted even higher as Kurdish representatives on the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) press for adopting a federal system in which Kurdish-controlled areas would have a large degree of authority over security, taxes and revenues from local oil fields. They hope to see that authority framed within the "transitional law" the IGC is drafting to serve as a temporary constitution paving the way for a sovereign Iraqi government to take power at the end of June.

The Kurdish initiative is politically sensitive not only because it affects the fate of Kirkuk and the rich Kirkuk oil fields. It also could force Iraqi leaders to begin deciding now the future shape of the Iraqi state: whether it will be divided into ethnic and religious-based regions or be tightly knit under a central government.

That speeds up a debate which, before the March/April war, saw Iraqi exiles agree Iraq should have a federal system but since then has seen many in Iraq and in neighboring states worry the formula could lead to the country's disintegration.

Mike Amitay of the Washington Kurdish Institute in Washington DC, says there are several reasons Kurdish leaders have decided to press their autonomy demands now, rather than wait until Iraq forms a sovereign government and begins working on a permanent constitution.

One reason is Kurdish unhappiness with the economic and political upheavals in much of the country. Amitay says many Kurds feel they need autonomy to protect the relative stability and economic prosperity they have enjoyed since breaking away from Saddam-controlled Iraq in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War.

"I think the Kurds have determined at this point that they need to essentially function or promote their political agenda separate from the wider agenda - that is quite confused - being considered for the whole of Iraq," Amitay said.

Amitay also says that the Kurds feel they must act now, while the Coalition Provisional Authority still retains political control over the country. He says some Kurdish leaders feel they can win backing from the US because of Washington's interest in rapidly and smoothly turning over power and because of the aid the Kurdish factions have given US forces.

"They see the timetable [for rapidly handing over power] as being motivated only by the [US] administration's concerns about Iraq in the headlines in November [2004, when US presidential elections will be held]. So, they feel that they have an advantage in that the coalition owes them, perhaps, for their alliance, for not having to station combat troops in their area, for maintaining their own affairs, for running the different sectors of their society in a fairly painless fashion," Amitay said.

At the same time, the Kurds are determined to ensure they retain a future share of Iraq's oil income. Prior to the UN-administered oil-for-food program, which allocated 13 percent of Iraq's oil earnings to the Kurdish areas, the Kurds had to depend on Baghdad's goodwill for any share of revenues.

Amitay says the Kurds see control of the Kirkuk oil fields as the best guarantee they will get the money they need to keep their economy going. "The bottom line is the distribution of Kirkuk's oil resources," he said. "In order for the [Kurdish parties] to continue running their administrations and maintaining their sort of patronage systems, there needs to be a guaranteed stream of revenue. And we have seen in the past when that stream dries up, when hostile neighbors cut the flow of goods and materials into Kurdistan, the parties get edgy and even begin to fight each other for the crumbs."

So far, there is no sign that either the Iraqi Governing Council or Washington will resolve the complicated issue of the Kurds' autonomy demands quickly.

"The New York Times" on Tuesday quoted a senior legal adviser to the chairman of the IGC committee drafting the "transitional law" as saying the board is trying to reconcile the differences between its own draft and that proposed by the Kurds.

Feisal Istrabadi said: "There is substantial agreement that the status quo in the Kurdish region would be maintained during the transitional period." But he said no one is ready to accept building a federal Iraq made up of states defined by ethnic or religious identities. He gave no details of any discussion on the future of Kirkuk or its oil fields.

Washington has said that it will not step into the debate but will leave the matter for the Iraqis to decide. US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said: "We have always supported and will continue to support Iraq's political unity and territorial integrity. The Kurds are members of the Governing Council, and have themselves expressed commitment to a unified Iraq. The structure of a future Iraqi state, including federalist elements, is a constitutional issue for Iraq to decide."

As tensions over the autonomy demands grow, several neighboring states are watching with increasing unease. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned Iraq against creating any Kurdish or other ethnic entity. He said in an interview with CNN Turk television: "This is a red line and should be [seen as such] by all countries in the region, especially Iraq's neighbors."

Turkey, too, has repeatedly warned in the past against substantial autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan, calling it a step toward independence. Both Syria and Turkey reportedly fear that creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq would inspire their own Kurdish minorities to seek greater freedoms. Ankara recently quashed a 15-year rebellion seeking Kurdish-self rule in southern Turkey that claimed more than 36,000 lives.

6. - Reuters - "Turk Cypriot Parties Say Coalition Seen by Weekend":

NICOSIA / 8 January 2004

Turkish Cypriot politicians said Thursday they were close to forming a coalition government for their breakaway enclave that could pave the way for fresh peace talks with the Greek Cypriot south of the island.

They spoke as Turkey's government and top brass, under international pressure to break the Cyprus stalemate before the south joins the European Union on May 1, met in Ankara to thrash out a new approach to stalled U.N. peace moves.

General elections last month in Turkish Cypriot-run northern Cyprus, recognized and supported only by Turkey, ended in a dead heat between parties supporting the U.N. blueprint and the previous governing coalition, which rejected it.

But the leader of one of the parties opposed to the plan, Serdar Denktash, said he might join a new coalition with the pro-settlement Republican Turkish Party (CTP), which emerged by a whisker as the biggest single party.

"If we can agree, a government will be formed by the weekend," he told a news conference held jointly with CTP leader Mehmet Ali Talat.

Denktash, son of veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, said officials from his Democrat Party would join CTP members to look afresh at ways to take the U.N. plan forward.

The Mediterranean island has been split along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkey invaded after a Greek Cypriot coup backed by the military junta then ruling Greece.