27 July 2004

1. "Two killed in Turkey in clashes with Kurdish rebels", a Turkish policeman and a paramilitary auxiliary were killed Monday by Kurdish rebels in an ambush in a predominantly Kurdish area of southeastern Turkey, local security sources said. Six other auxiliaries were wounded in the ambush, which took place in the province of Bingol.

2. "692 people tortured in the first half of 2004 in Turkey", according to a report by Human Rights Association (IHD) in the first six months of 2004; 61 people lost their lives in armed clashes, 692 people were tortured or mistreated and 3,688 were arbitrarily detained.

3. "Peace Mothers launch 'peace' demonstration", a group of members of Peace Mothers' Initiative of Van demanded support for Ocalan's calls for peace in a press release.

4. "Turkey's Mullahs", “Minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets, mosques are our barracks, believers are our soldiers.” (Erdogan)

5. "Qaddafi: Turkey Not in Europe", it is in Turkey's economic interest to be part of Europe. It is also in the interest of the Muslim world that an Islamic nation like Turkey is within the European Union, as a Trojan horse.

6. "Israel pushing for Kurdish state?", relations between Turkey and Israel appear to be souring rapidly amid reports that Israeli commandos are training Kurds in northern Iraq to encourage the emergence of an independent Kurdish state.

1. - AFP - "Two killed in Turkey in clashes with Kurdish rebels":

DIYARBAKIR / 26 July 2004

A Turkish policeman and a paramilitary auxiliary were killed Monday by Kurdish rebels in an ambush in a predominantly Kurdish area of southeastern Turkey, local security sources said.

Six other auxiliaries were wounded in the ambush, which took place in the province of Bingol. Auxiliaries, known as "village guardians", have the task of protecting villages. The sources said that intensive military operations were in progress in the area.

In a separate incident, a bomb exploded early Monday at a police station in a predominantly Kurdish region in the far east of Turkey, but there were no casualties, the Anatolia agency reported.

It was detonated by remote control and blew out windows and damaged a vehicle and a generator when it exploded in the courtyard of the station in the town of Hakkari, according to a senior local official cited by the agency.

Bomb disposal experts blew up a second evice found at the police station in a controlled explosion. Clashes between Kurdish rebels and government forces died out after a unilateral declaration of a truce by the rebels, formerly called the PKK or Kurdistan Workers Party, now renamed Kongra-Gel, in 1999.

But they resumed after an end to the truce was announced on June 1 since when there have been several incidents. The PKK rebellion and its repression by the Turkish authorities are estimated to have cost 37,000 lives between 1984 and 1999.

2. - Bianet.org - "692 people tortured in the first half of 2004 in Turkey":

22 July 2004 / by Yildiz Samer

According to a report by Human Rights Association (IHD) in the first six months of 2004; 61 people lost their lives in armed clashes, 692 people were tortured or mistreated and 3,688 were arbitrarily detained.

BIA (Ankara) - In spite of the government claims of "zero tolerance" toward torture, a report by the Human Rights Association (IHD) on rights violations shows that 692 people were tortured and mistreated in the first half of the year.

The IHD releases monthly and yearly rights violations reports, as well as once every three and nine months.

January-June2004 report human rights violations, summarizes violations under the main topics of"right to live," "personal freedom and security," "freedom of expression," "freedom of meeting and demonstration," and"freedom to organize".

Right to live

* In the first six months of the year, a total of 61 people were killed in armed clashes. Six had died in the first three months. Fifty-five people died in the last three months. In the first six months of the year 2003, 41 people had been killed in armed clashes.

A total of 115 inmates and supporters have died in death fasts and hunger strikes in protest of the maximum-security F-type prisons. Hunger strikes and death fasts continue since October 20, 2000. when inmates started protest against the isolation policies imposed by the recently established “F-type” maximum security prisons.

* In the first six months of the year, eight prisoners committed suicide, six burned themselves to death, another six died as a result of denial of medical treatment, and two prisoners were killed by other prisoners. A total of 22 prisoners died.

* 692 people applied to the IHD in the first six months of 2004 and said they had been tortured. 336 people were tortured in the fist three months, and 356 in the months that followed. 972 people had applied to the association in the first six months of 2003 with torture claims.

IHD said that electric shocks, “Palestine hangers” and beating the soles of the feet were among the primary torture methods used in 2004, as they were in 2003.

* In 2003, a total of 451 people were tortured in formal detention centers. In the first six months of 2004, that number dropped to 202.

* 111 people were tortured in places other than detention centers in 2003. There was a big increase in this number in the first six months of 2004.

IHD and the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (IHV) proposed methods to prevent torture to Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and the government body that follows the implementation of reforms, the association said. "Government employees accused of torture should be removed from their posts," it added.

Personal freedom and security

* In the first six months of 2004, a total of 3,688 people were arbitrarily detained. In January-June 2003, a total of 5,353 people were arbitrarily detained.

Freedom of expression and organization

According to the IHD figures, there was as much violation of freedom of expression and organization in the first six months of 2004, as there was in the same period last year. However, it added that there was a significant decrease in the number of seized and banned books, newspapers and magazines.

* In January-June 2004, three books and four magazines were seized, and one newspaper was banned. In the first six months of 2003, 29 magazines, 13 newspapers and nine books had been seized.

* In the first six months of 2004, a total of 218 people were charged under laws no: 312, 169 and 159 of the Turkish Penal Code in 35 trials whereas78 people were charged in 27 trials in the first six months of 2003 under same laws.

* According to IHD, there is no improvement in the attitude of prosecutors against those who solely express opinion.

3. - DIHA - "Peace Mothers launch 'peace' demonstration":

VAN / 26 July 2004

A group of members of Peace Mothers' Initiative of Van demanded support for Ocalan's calls for peace in a press release they held on Sanat street.

In the press statement she made representing the group, Zuleyha Tunc said the existing circumstances were rose up to an alarming degree. Tunc further said their aim with the press release was to share their anxieties about the crucial problems of Turrkey and the Middle East with public opinion, political parties and NGOs. Tunc added Turkey was a part of the existing chaotic atmosphere of the Middle East. Following is the press statement:

"Turkey couldn't solve its problems up today. Under such circumstances, we came together and founded an organization under the name of peace mothers. We founded it because we believe resolution of the problems passes through peace. We are going to share our ideas and solution proposals for problems with public, NGOs, democratic mass organizations, political parties and every state organization through meetings. The main slogan is that; this country and these people are ours. We must cry our peace-peace and peace against all hatred and enmities. To prevent new wars and attain peace, we all must do this."

Following are peace mothers' proposals:

* Kurdish question should be resolved on a peaceful basis.

* Bilateral ceasefire must be guaranteed.

* Prisons should be emptied with a general political amnesty.

* Conditions for return of the migrants should be provided.

* Education in mother tongue should be supported economically and politically by the state and organizations should be legalized for further enrichment and peace of cultures.

* Isolation policies should be given up and conditions should be granted for Mr. Abdullah Ocalan's taking part in peace over the country..

Security forces which took strict measures during the press release also covered it to camera.

4. - FrontPageMagazine.com - "Turkey's Mullahs":

27 July 2004 / by Stephen Brown*

“Minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets, mosques are our barracks, believers are our soldiers.”

No, these are not the words of some mad Iranian mullah or crazed al-Qaeda suicide bomber, uttered before he makes his twisted contribution to humanity by blowing himself and, unfortunately, others to smithereens.

On the contrary. These edifying lines are part of a poem composed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of the Middle East’s only secular Muslim state, Turkey. Erdogan recited these lines at a political rally in 1999 when he was mayor of Istanbul, earning for himself several months detention for breaking Turkey’s secular laws.

Erdogan was in France last week as part of his charm offensive to have Turkey accepted into the European Union. After leaving the Elysee Palace where he lunched with President Jacques Chirac, the Turkish prime minister assured reporters that his government had done almost all that was necessary to meet the EU’s main legal, judicial and legislative requirements.

However, Europe may get more than it bargained for if it accepts into the fold a Turkey under Erdogan’s leadership. The Turkish prime minister currently heads the Justice and Development Party (AKP) that was elected in November of 2002 with 34 per cent of the popular vote, garnering 365 of the 550 seats in Turkey’s parliament.

Since that time, Erdogan has taken pains to explain that the AKP is a conservative political party and not an Islamist one. Some observers of Turkish politics, however, have long suspected the Turkish prime minister of Islamist leanings, especially since he and other leading AKP members once belonged to a banned Islamist party.

And events in an Erdogan-ruled Turkey are beginning to bear this out.

Last May, amidst huge controversy, the AKP passed a law, fundamentally changing the country’s education system in favor of the Islamists. In essence, the law facilitates the entrance of students from the country’s religious schools into Turkish universities.

The religious schools, called ‘Imam Hatip’, were originally formed to produce imams for Turkey’s mosques. Now, defenders of Turkey’s constitutionally guaranteed secularist society regard them as nursery schools of Islamic radicalism. The Imam Hatip offer a religion-based education very different from that offered in Turkey’s public schools with their secular values. The religious schools now even accept girls who do not wish to submit to the public school ban on the wearing of religious head scarves. (The wearing of religious headgear is actually prohibited in public everywhere in Turkey.)

Secular observers believe the new law is part of a subtle, long-term Islamist strategy to eventually seize control of positions of power in Turkey by graduating large numbers of university students with religious school backgrounds. Erdogan himself is a graduate of an Imam Hatip. His daughter, however, studied in the United States where wearing a Muslim head scarf in school is legal.

A second major development that has observers worried about the spread of Islamist influence in Turkey is the curtailing of the army’s political power. The Turkish army has been a bulwark of secularism since modern Turkey was founded as a secular state in 1923 and has close ties with America. It came out of the barracks in 1997, for example, and deposed the government for failing to curb the growth of Islamic fundamentalism.

However, a law passed last summer reduced the political power of the National Security Council, a very important executive body made up of the president, prime minister, army chief of staff and their advisors. Prior to this, the NSC played a policy-making role; it is now only an advisory body. This move was in keeping with the European Union’s demand to reduce the army’s political role in order to bring Turkey more in line with European political standards.

The AKP was probably only too happy to oblige the EU. AKP members have even begun to criticize the army’s annual purge of Islamist-leaning officers.

While not happy with developments, the Turkish army has accepted its reduced role, since it realizes Turkey’s people overwhelmingly want to join the EU, viewing membership as a cure for their country’s economic woes. However, army representatives have stated it will defend secularism and protested the new education law. Its representatives also refused to attend a parliamentary function, hosted by the parliament’s AKP speaker, after they learned his wife intended to wear the banned head scarf. Erdogan’s wife and the wives of AKP cabinet ministers avoid attending state functions for fear of offending the army and other secularists.

Turkish secularists have also watched with concern as the AKP appoints people with Islamist tendencies to positions of power. The AKP government has also sent a missive to Turkish embassies, instructing them to support an organization and schools with Islamist agendas.

However, fear of the army, the Turkish constitution and Turkey’s desire for EU membership will prevent an open Islamisation of Turkey. After all, the AKP has no desire to experience the fate of the 1997 government. But the laws the AKP puts into place today, over time, may produce a political entity that will change the face of the Middle East – and, unfortunately, not for the better.

* Stephen Brown is a journalist based in Toronto. He has an M.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies. Email him at alsolzh@hotmail.com.

5. - Sofia News Agency - "Qaddafi: Turkey Not in Europe":

26 July 2004 / by Muammar al-Qaddafi / source: Algathafi.org

It is in Turkey's economic interest to be part of Europe. It is also in the interest of the Muslim world that an Islamic nation like Turkey is within the European Union, as a Trojan horse.

On the other hand, it is in the interest of Europe that Turkey is part of NATO only as a military colony and a military base for the Alliance, but it is not in its interest to be part of the European Union. Turkey is a tree, whose roots are in Asia, and only its branch touches Europe.

It is an Islamic state of a Sunni denomination, with oriental traditions, customs, history, culture, attitude and taste.

Even its alphabet is not Latin; in fact it spoiled the Latin alphabets.

Turkey is the cradle of the great Hittite historic oriental Civilization. It was the centre of the vast Ottoman Empire and the Islamic Caliphate. Turkey historically did not look into Europe but was an arena for expansion and conquests.

Turkey has been trying for 55 years to be a European state, but it has not materialized for a reason more objective than mere wishes and pragmatism. Admitting Turkey into the European Union is like an attempt to transplant a human organ into a body of another person with a different blood group, and they never have any biological compatibility. Their only link is that they live in opposite blocks of flats across the street!

Europe and Germany in particular could benefit from Turkey's cheap labour, as immigrant workers, but it is not in their interest that such labour is from a Union member state, as they will be entitled to rights not desired by Europe at all.

What is the interest of Europe if it is joined by a relatively backward (in comparison with Western progress) oriental state, as the annual income per capita in Turkey is less than 7000 dollars, whereas the lowest per capita in Europe is in Spain - 19,000 dollars, but in Germany it is 26,000 dollars.

Child death rate in Turkey is 45 per one thousand, whereas the rate in Europe is only 4 per one thousand. The inflation rate in Turkey is 70% and in Europe it is 2-3%.

Nonetheless, it is possible for Turkey to overcome such material discrepancies one day. But the thing that Europe will never be lenient on or adventurous about is to let Turkey be a Trojan horse. The problem does not lie with the Turkish veterans and subsequent generation of politicians, who still revere Ataturk, but the problem lies in the new and future generation.

Youth who are mentored by satellite channels and the Internet and acquire one lesson after another from Muslim World scholars, even from Ben Laden on daily and even on every hour bases, is a matter that could not be prevented.

What if thousand of Turks study under Ben Laden, his group, Mullah Omar or his Loya Jirgah (Grand Assembly), a thing that surely exists now. We say if only to alleviate the magnitude of the shock. For these consider Europe as infidel which only merits conquering by the sword.

They will not stop at the doors of Vienna, as the Ottomans did, but will look forward to cross the Atlantic, and follow the footsteps of Auqba Ben Nafaa, who stood on the back of his horse on the Atlantic coast and said: ‘‘O' God if I knew that there are people beyond You (Atlantic), I would cross on my horse to conquer and force them to embrace Islam".

Auqba never knew then that there was a continent called America beyond the Atlantic. But these know very well what is beyond the Atlantic. These new generations do not recognize the abolition of capital punishment, because God in the Quran commands it.

Even more, they will not accept but cutting off the hand of the thief as commanded by God. And scourging whoever commits adultery with one hundred stripes, as these are the limits (ordained) of Allah (God). "And there is the life for you in retaliation, O men of understanding" and "Whoso judge not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are evil-livers."

Then when Turkey becomes a European member, they will not accept a ban on parties with Islamic titles in Turkey, whereas no ban on those with Christian titles in Europe. Then the new Muslim extremists who control power or the street in Turkey will not accept to be part of a Union which constitution does not provide for Islamic sharia and limits (ordained) of Allah.

They could constitute a majority in the European parliament, because they will ban all means of contraceptives, for they believe it is not permitted. They believe in polygamy, maids and what the right hand possessed, i.e. European Christian women, thus Turkey will be the most populous state in Europe.

Then plans of Islamist Turks in Europe and obviously behind them the Islamic grass roots are to revive Albania as an Islamic state, as well as Bosnia.

Therefore, infidel Europe, as they believe will be for the first time, before the pressure of the new European Islamic front behind which is the entire Muslim world, one which will force Europe into embracing Islam or pay poll tax, this is provided for in the Quran as a duty.

Such information could be surprising or amusing to sum, but for Muslims it is a message from God that has to be realized.

The future from now on is for Islamic parties in Turkey and for supporters of Ben Laden. Subscription to any Islamic party particularly if they are newly formed in Turkey is surprising. In few years time, several millions including one million women joined one of the Islamic parties in Turkey. Ben Laden, the Mullahs and the Loya Jirgah (Grand Assembly) will be happy and indeed gainers if Turkey joins the European Union.

Furthermore, Turkey will drag with it to Europe a set of problems and indeed explosive ones, such as the Kurds problem, sectarian conflict, and a potential war over the Tigris and Euphrates, membership of the Organization of Islamic Conference, Islamic D8, and Turkey's roots in the Islamic Central Asian states.

Seljuk and after them the Turks were a nation founded by conquests, they arrived at Anatolya by conquests and arrived at Constantinople by conquests and arrived even at Austria by conquests.

It was possible for me not to toll this alarm bell and not to uncover this horrifying map. However, due to my responsibility to the stability of the world in the first place and peace in the Mediterranean, which the Arab possess its southern coast- of which Libya occupies two-thousand kilometers of this southern coast- since there is no coast in the south without Libya.

All this makes it incumbent upon me to speak out to the world about what I see as far as this strategic issue is concerned, which will have serious reflections that will touch my country, its region and then shacks the entire world, before it is to late and before adecision is taken that will have serious consequences.

6. - The Hindu - "Israel pushing for Kurdish state?":

26 July 2004 / by Atul Aneja

Relations between Turkey and Israel appear to be souring rapidly amid reports that Israeli commandos are training Kurds in northern Iraq to encourage the emergence of an independent Kurdish state.

Israel has vociferously denied these reports, which acquired prominence in a recent article written by the American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, in The New Yorker magazine.

In a damage control exercise, the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, rushed to the Turkish capital, Ankara, last week where he addressed this issue. At a press conference, Mr. Olmert said, "I conveyed at every opportunity that we are not in northern Iraq and that we have never been active in that region. It is a lie that Israel is cooperating with Kurds." Israel and Turkey have been known as "strategic partners" and have had a strong military relationship. Israel has also viewed Turkey as its strategic anchor in West Asia - a region that has been intensely hostile towards it. Turkey, however, has a huge stake in seeing that northern Iraq does not become independent.

Fears of secession

Turkey fears that an independent state at its doorstep Iraq could become the nucleus for a larger Kurdish nation, which could incorporate parts of its territory where Kurds reside in large numbers. Iran and Syria, which also have large Kurdish populations on their soil also share these apprehensions and have stood opposed to Kurdish secession in northern Iraq.

Notwithstanding Israel's denial, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signalled his unhappiness by declining to meet Mr. Olmert. He met Naci Otri, Prime Minister of Syria - Israel's arch foe, who was also visiting Turkey at the same time. Differences between Turkey and Israel have also come out in the open over the Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

Mr. Erdogan has not given much credence to reports of Israeli presence in northern Iraq, indicating that the dissonance could also be driven by other factors. Analysts point out that Ankara has begun to perceive that Israel opposes Turkey's attempt to enter the European Union - its core foreign policy objective.