13 July 2004

1. "One Turkish soldier killed, one injured in mine explosion", a Turkish soldier was killed and another injured on Monday when a military vehicle hit a mine believed to have been planted by armed Kurdish rebels in the southeast of the country, the Anatolia news agency reported.

2. "Closure case against Egitim-Sen revives doubts over reform implementation", the closure case against Egitim-Sen, an organization with more than 100,000 members across Turkey, came as a surprise to many. Analysts said the move against the union could well be interpreted by the EU as an indicative that reforms passed to meet membership criteria are not effectively implemented in practice.

3. "Turkish PM seeks to relax Islamic headscarf ban", Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday he wanted to relax laws banning the use of Islamic headscarfs in private universities, less than two weeks after Europe's top human rights court ruled Istanbul University was justified to throw a veiled student out.

4. "Turkey, Europe and John Kerry", Hesitation by the EU is understandable. Admitting Turkey would extend the EU's borders to Syria and Iraq. The reforms Turkey must make to become congruent with EU values are not complete. And smaller European nations, especially, worry about Turkey's size. The Financial Times notes that in 10 years, when Turkey's population might be 80 million, it might have more votes in EU affairs than Germany will have.

5. "Turkish 'Peacekeepers' Withdraw from North Iraq", because Turkey still keeps a few thousand other troops in northern Iraq to pursue Kurdish guerrillas from Turkey who fought in the 1980s and 1990s for an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey.

6. "Cypriot minister leery of EU trade plans for north Poll shows south fears economic crisis", Cypriot Foreign Minister George Iacovou said Monday there were "substantial problems" with European Union plans to offer trade privileges to the breakaway Turkish state in the north of the island.

1. - AFP - "One Turkish soldier killed, one injured in mine explosion":

ANKARA / 12 July 2004

A Turkish soldier was killed and another injured on Monday when a military vehicle hit a mine believed to have been planted by armed Kurdish rebels in the southeast of the country, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The mine was set off by remote control as the army vechile was passing near the town of Guclukonak near the border with Syria.

The agency said the explosive was thought to have been laid by rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), recently renamed KONGRA-GEL, which last mongh ended a unilateral five-year-old ceasefire.

The PKK had announced the truce in 1999 after a 15-year bloody campaign for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast, which claimed some 37,000 lives.

The region enjoyed relative calm during the ceasefire period, but there has been a sharp increase in the number of clashes since the end of the truce on June 1.

2. - Turkish Daily News - "Closure case against Egitim-Sen revives doubts over reform implementation":

'Nothing has changed in practice. Reform steps are no more than attempts aimed at appeasing the EU and reform proponents,' says one protestor gathering in downtown Ankara to protest the legal move

ANKARA / 13 July 2004 / by Fatma Demirelli

Hundreds of riot policemen were lying on the grass in Guvenpark, some eating a sandwich, others drinking tea, as police horses were sluggishly roaming around the park tightly cordoned off by metal barriers. The extraordinary scene in this busiest intersection of Kizilay Square becomes part of a meaningful picture when combined with loud protests of more than a thousand demonstrators gathering a few hundreds meters away from Guvenpark. Shouting angry slogans and holding banners, the demonstrators were protesting a closure case recently brought against their union, the teachers' union Egitim-Sen, for calling for education in mother tongue in its regulations. And the police were on duty on every corner in Kizilay to ensure that the protest wouldn't get out of control.

According to protestors on Yuksel Street, the closure case was a clear sign that the government's reform efforts complying with the European Union criteria were no more than a "show."

The closure case against Egitim-Sen, an organization with more than 100,000 members across Turkey, came as a surprise to many. Analysts said the move against the union could well be interpreted by the EU as an indicative that reforms passed to meet membership criteria are not effectively implemented in practice.

And the basic contradiction lies in the fact that Turkish Parliament has already enacted laws to allow education and broadcasting in mother tongue, lifting legal obstacles in this regard. The state broadcaster TRT also recently started airing short programs in several languages, including two most common dialects of Kurdish.

"Nothing has changed in practice. Reform steps are no more than attempts aimed at appeasing the EU and reform proponents. The closure case is a clear example of that," said one of the demonstrators on Yuksel Street. He said he came from the eastern province of Erzincan to participate in the protest.

The same demonstrator defended the reference to education in mother tongue in the Egitim-Sen regulations, saying it was scientifically appropriate. "In addition, given the fact that Turkey is a country with diverse ethnic groups, it is clear that this is a necessity under democratic principles," said the demonstrator.

Appeal to government

Protestors from Egitim-Sen, a traditional critic of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, put the blame on the government, saying it contradicted itself by remaining silent in the face of what is being done to their union.

"This is a political case, not legal. It is the government that holds the power and it keeps remaining silent. This is what we criticize," said another protestor.

The trial in an Ankara court will start today. Tens of thousands of demonstrators from several parts of Turkey are expected to arrive in Ankara to hold a rally near the courtroom in a show of support for their union.

Not only Egitim-Sen members but also several leftist political parties and nongovernmental organizations, gathered on Yuksel Street on Monday and are expected to take part in today's rally.

The protestors were confident on Monday that their union would not be closed. "The verdict will definitely be in our favor. They can't close our union amid efforts to achieve harmonization with the EU," said Hanim, a 30-year-old Egitim-Sen official from the far eastern province of Agri.

3. - AFP - "Turkish PM seeks to relax Islamic headscarf ban":

ANKARA / 10 July 2004

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday he wanted to relax laws banning the use of Islamic headscarfs in private universities, less than two weeks after Europe's top human rights court ruled Istanbul University was justified to throw a veiled student out.

"If there are legal obstacles to this, then we have well-known institutions that can remove them," Anatolia news agency quoted Erdogan as saying. One of the "institutions" Erdogan was referring to is parliament, where his Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) has an absolute majority.

But the prime minister insisted there was a need to find a "social consensus" on the issue, which is an extremely sensitive one in Turkey. Turkey is a mainly Muslim country but has a secular system which is enshrined in the constitution and is fiercely guarded by the powerful army and the intellectual elite. Supporters of secularism see the wearing of the headscarf as a clear sign of support for an Islamic political system.

Women are strictly banned from wearing headscarves in the civil service and the country's public and private universities. On Friday Erdogan, whose wife wears the headscarf, complained during a television broadcast that the laws and authorities of the higher education council were too rigid.

The head of the council, Erdogan Tezic, is adamantly opposed to relaxing laws that ban the wearing of headscarves in private universities such as that in Istanbul. Tezic, an expert on constitutional law, said it would be impossible to decouple the rules governing private and public education establishments without amending Turkey's basic law.

In a ruling that upheld secularism as a basic guarantee of democracy, the European Court of Human Rights said on June 29 that Istanbul University had not violated the rights of medical student Leyla Sahin by refusing her permission to enroll because she insisted on wearing a headscarf.

The court stressed that "religious symbol had taken on political significance in Turkey in recent years" and said its ruling "did not lose sight of the fact that there were extremist political movements in Turkey which sought to impose on society as a whole their religious symbols and conception of a society founded on religious precepts".

The ruling was the first the Strasbourg-based court has made on the headscarf issue. It could set a legal precedent in a topic that has cropped up elsewhere in Europe, notably in France, a country with five million Muslim residents, which this year banned the wearing of Islamic headscarves and other religious insignia in schools.

4. - The Joplin Globe - "Turkey, Europe and John Kerry":

WASHINGTON / 13 July 2004 / by George Will

As he often did, Ronald Reagan crystallized a common intuition into a continental thought when in 1980 he asked voters if they were better off than they had been four years earlier. Surely voters have often made, without articulating, such judgments on the eve of presidential elections.

But when national traumas have occurred since the previous election, Reagan's question is inapposite. It would have sounded odd in 1864, when more than three years of civil war had intervened. Or in 1944, when the nation again re-elected a president, even though it would have been peculiar to ask whether people were better off than they had been in 1940.

In both of those blood-soaked years Americans were arguably better off than they had been four years earlier, because irrepressible conflicts had at last been joined and were being won. Nevertheless, the "better-off" question could not have neatly framed those elections, and cannot frame this year's.

However, John Kerry's selection of John Edwards suggests an itch to frame it that way. The most liberal senator's choice of the senator tied with two others as the second-most liberal (as measured by the nonpartisan National Journal) has produced a ticket of Washington-centric liberalism reminiscent of only the 1984 Walter Mondale-Geraldine Ferraro ticket, which lost 49 states.

This year the "better off" framing makes sense only if you believe, as Edwards' "two nations" rhetoric suggests that he does, that even with the nation at war, and after 10 quarters of economic expansion, many millions of voters in this affluent society will vote on the basis of economic resentments.

Perhaps the selection of Edwards expresses Kerry's desire to outsource, as it were, the nonsense part of his campaign. Edwards can talk economic foolishness for the constituency hungry for that - the Democratic base - while Kerry talks sense, as he understands it, about other matters.

The high liberalism quotient of the Kerry-Edwards ticket delights Republican frightmongers. But a Kerry win might not mean marked changes in either domestic or foreign policy.

Kerry says that as president he would repeal President Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy. Republicans say Kerry would pack the higher courts with liberal judges. But both sides are forgetting Congress - and the most important change in governance in a generation. The change is the elevation, by both parties, to quasiconstitutional status of the Senate rule regarding cloture.

Under Washington's new scorched-earth ethic of bitter partisanship, there is a supermajority requirement for any significant action. Nothing as important as increasing the progressiveness of the income tax or confirming important judges can happen without the support of 60 senators. Both candidates' promises, and their warnings about what the other fellow will do, should cause voters to ask the calming question: Will 60 senators support that?

Foreign policy is the realm of presidential freedom from Congress - too much so - and is Kerry's primary interest. But disregard, as voters will, Kerry's complaints about how Bush entered the war that Kerry (and Edwards) supported. Looking ahead, as voters do, what is the big difference between Kerry and Bush?

It is Kerry's vague promise to do something that he says Bush cannot do - mend America's breach with "the world," and especially with Europe.

But in seeking help in Iraq, Bush already has gone, Stetson in hand, to "the world," in the form of the United Nations, and to Europe, in his request for NATO to accept a mission there.

Furthermore, on his recent European trip Bush again aggravated many Europeans by urging the European Union to act favorably on Turkey's desire to join. Few American voters have thought about this subject, but America has an interest in further integrating into the West - Turkey has long been an important NATO member - a mostly Muslim nation that is, so far, secular and democratic.

Hesitation by the EU is understandable. Admitting Turkey would extend the EU's borders to Syria and Iraq. The reforms Turkey must make to become congruent with EU values are not complete. And smaller European nations, especially, worry about Turkey's size. The Financial Times notes that in 10 years, when Turkey's population might be 80 million, it might have more votes in EU affairs than Germany will have.

But if, as president, Kerry would abandon support for Turkey in order to avoid friction with Europe, he should say why. And if he would risk that friction on Turkey's behalf, he must acknowledge, to Bush's benefit, that international harmony is not the highest aim of foreign policy.

5. - Reuters - "Turkish 'Peacekeepers' Withdraw from North Iraq":

ISTANBUL / 12 July 2004

Turkey is withdrawing its remaining peacekeepers from northern Iraq where they have been deployed since 1997 to prevent internecine fighting, a Turkish government official said on Sunday.

Iraqi Kurds have sought the withdrawal of the Turkish troops since the U.S.-led war to topple former president Saddam Hussein, saying the force could spark tension with Kurds.

Turkish peacekeepers entered the enclave under the supervision of Britain and the United States, which brokered a 1996 cease-fire between the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The two factions, close allies of the United States, have run northern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Their relations have improved considerably since infighting plagued the region in the mid-1990s.

"The peacekeepers are leaving because their work there is done," the official told Reuters.

He said the force numbered 400 troops at most in the 1990s, but only around a dozen Turkish officers have been there in recent years.

Turkey still keeps a few thousand other troops in northern Iraq to pursue Kurdish guerrillas from Turkey who fought in the 1980s and 1990s for an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey.

"Those forces will stay in northern Iraq as long as the situation does not change," the official said.

Ankara considers northern Iraq part of its sphere of influence and fears Kurds there will seek independence in post-war Iraq and rekindle separatism among Turkey's own 12 million Kurds. Iraqi Kurds deny statehood is their aim.

6. - The Daily Star (Lebanon) - "Cypriot minister leery of EU trade plans for north
Poll shows south fears economic crisis":

13 July 2004

Cypriot Foreign Minister George Iacovou said Monday there were "substantial problems" with European Union plans to offer trade privileges to the breakaway Turkish state in the north of the island.

"There are substantial problems with direct trade because we think it is based on false political assumptions and on unsound law," Iacovou said going into a meeting with his fellow EU foreign ministers.

The EU's head office last week proposed trade and aid benefits for the Turkish Cypriots to ease their international isolation after they voted in favor of the island's reunification in an April referendum.

Greek Cypriots voted against the UN reunification plan, ensuring that the island remained divided when it joined the EU on May 1. That effectively shut the Turkish part out of the EU since the breakaway state is not recognized by the union.

Under the plan proposed by the European Commission, the EU would grant the Turkish north $321 million in aid up to 2006 and would relax restrictions on trade from the north.

The proposal would allow the Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce to issue the necessary authorization for goods that enter the EU by crossing the island's dividing line.

Despite his government's reservations over the trade provisions, Iacovou suggested it would not object to the aid to the north, which has been impoverished by the years of isolation.

"There shouldn't be any major problems with the financial package," he said.

The Cypriot government can block the plans, which much be approved by all 25 EU governments and the European Parliament.

Cyprus has been divided since Turkey invaded in 1974 after an abortive coup by supporters of union with Greece. The breakaway state in the north is recognized only by Turkey and has been suffering from international trade restrictions as a result.

Also Monday, a survey found that 65 percent of Greek Cypriots favor adopting the euro, but an even higher number fear the risk of an economic crisis associated with Cyprus's recent EU admission.

An EU-commissioned poll by Cymar Research showed 68 percent of respondents were concerned by the possibility of an economic crisis, with inflation among their primary concerns.

Headline inflation was running at 2.8 percent year-on-year in June with the index pressured by a dismantling of subsidies on a range of foodstuffs, a move dictated by European Union membership, and higher fuel prices.