1 June 2004

1. "Kurdish rebels to end Turkey truce", Turkish troops face the prospect of a renewed separatist conflict.

2. "Turkey's EU bid", in a recent interview in Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul outlined his vision of what membership in the European Union would mean for his nation and the world.

3. "Turkey's Military Wins Veto Of Islamic Bill", Turkey's military has won a battle to quash a law meant to faciliate the entry of Islamic students into university and civil service.

4. "Turkey's ancient Christians seek to resettle former village homes", the ancient Syriac Orthodox monastery outside this southeastern city is praying for a brighter future as Christians, forced out of their ancestral lands by economic hardship and an armed Kurdish insurgency, start trickling back to their villages.

5. "Kurdish leader insists on own federal region", Jalal Talabani, the veteran Iraq Kurdish leader, has said the Kurds will not support a new UN resolution unless it endorses a federal Kurdish region within Iraq.

6. "'Diyarbakir Prison Massacre' case adjourned again", the trial against 72 Turkish officers hold responsible for the events that ended in death of 11 prisoners at Diyarbakir E Type Closed Prison in 1996, has been adjourned again.

1. - Reuters - "Kurdish rebels to end Turkey truce":

Turkish troops face the prospect of a renewed separatist conflict

29 May 2004

Separatist Kurdish guerrillas have declared an end to their five-year ceasefire with Turkey, a news agency close to the rebels says.

The declaration by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on Friday comes after a spate of recent violence in which at least 20 people have died.

"The ceasefire will end on 1 June," said a statement from the PKK leadership, based in northern Iraq.

"The ceasefire’s political and military meaning has been lost with the Turkish state’s destructive operations over the last three months," said the statement, carried by the Europe-based Mezopotamya agency, a mouthpiece for the rebels.

"(The PKK) is warning foreign investors and tourists that with the end of the ceasefire, Turkey has become a risky country for economic investment and tourism," the statement said.

The PKK took up arms against Turkey in 1984 in a bloody campaign to carve out an ethnic homeland in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast.

More than 30,000 people, mainly Kurds, died in the conflict, but the violence fell off sharply with the 1999 capture and imprisonment of PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan.

International repercussions

A resurgence in violence could inflame tensions with neighbouring Iraq, where most PKK fighters are based.

Washington has urged Turkey not to intervene next door as US forces struggle to stabilise the Arab country.

It could also complicate relations with the European Union, which Turkey wants to join. EU members were critical of Turkey’s treatment of Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s, accusing Turkish authorities of torture and other abuses.

The PKK threatened to end its unilateral ceasefire, announced in 1998, as recently as last September, then extended its truce.

Turkey has always refused to negotiate with the guerrillas, rejecting the ceasefire as a ruse.

Bloody clashes

This month has been the southeast’s bloodiest in years, with at least 12 PKK fighters and eight security personnel killed.

A PKK fighter was killed on Friday in the remote mountains of Sirnak province, which borders Iraq, after a gun battle with security forces, a security official said.

In the southern city of Adana, which has been spared much of the violence seen in the southeast, police exchanged fire on Friday with three suspected PKK members, wounding two of them, Cihan news agency said.

Ankara has accused its close NATO ally the United States of not doing enough to stamp out the PKK’s strongholds in northern Iraq.

Turkey keeps thousands of soldiers along the northern Iraqi border to pursue some 5000 rebels in mountain camps there.

2. - The Washington Times - "Turkey's EU bid":

1 June 2004

In a recent interview in Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul outlined his vision of what membership in the European Union would mean for his nation and the world. Turkey hopes to receive in December a date to begin formal talks to join the European Union. This would "prove that Turkey is fulfilling the fundamental standards of democracy, human rights, transparency," Mr. Gul said, and it would send the following message: "You can be a Muslim country and compatible with the modern world. This is going to be the biggest gift to world peace." Mr. Gul also said Turkey hopes to play a constructive role in narrowing the post-Iraq war rift between the United States and some European countries.

The United States sounded a similar note by inviting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to next week's G-8 meeting in Georgia. The White House said it will discuss how Turkey can support democracy in the Middle East and beyond. While Ankara and Washington disagree on some strategies for building democracies, Mr. Erdogan has the opportunity to influence policy by participating.

Britain also has put its weight behind Turkey's EU bid. British Prime Minster Tony Blair recently visited Ankara, and has said that Turkey would gain geo-political stature by joining the union and playing an important role in its neighborhood. Perhaps more importantly, Turkish Europeans could help moderate Europe's increasingly embittered Muslim minorities, through their broad recognition of the benefits of democracy.

For its part, Ankara has reached out to smaller players in Europe, such as Bulgaria and Romania, which are expected to become EU members in 2007. Both countries recently expressed support for Turkey's efforts to join the union. Meanwhile, Mr. Erdogan visited Romania last month, and has planned a trip to Bulgaria for next month.

While the union stands to gain strategically by making Turkey a member, it would face challenges. Turkey would become a net recipient of EU funds for an undetermined period, and an influx of Turkish workers could affect the EU economy -- concerns most stridently voiced by France.

Turkey's U.S. and European supporters should continue the discourse and support Turkey's methodical diplomatic outreach. The constructive role that Turkey could play as an EU member is critically important for the United States and Europe.

3. - Middle East Newsline - "Turkey's Military Wins Veto Of Islamic Bill":

ANKARA / 30 May 2004

Turkey's military has won a battle to quash a law meant to faciliate the entry of Islamic students into university and civil service.

Turkish President Ahmet Sezer vetoed an education reform bill that would pave the way for Islamic seminary students to enter universities and government. Sezer said on May 28 that the legislation -- which also reduced the military's role in higher education -- would encourage youngsters to attend religious schools and violate the secular principles of Turkey.

"The president found the law to be partially inappropriate and returned it to parliament," a presidential statement said.

The military has blamed state-operated religious schools for spawning Islamic insurgency groups and their supporters. Senior commanders have accused Islamic groups of trying to infiltrate the army and government sector.

4. - AFP - "Turkey's ancient Christians seek to resettle former village homes":

MARDIN / 31 May 2004

The ancient Syriac Orthodox monastery outside this southeastern city is praying for a brighter future as Christians, forced out of their ancestral lands by economic hardship and an armed Kurdish insurgency, start trickling back to their villages.

"It is our pleasure to have our people back from different parts of the world," said Archbishop Filuksinos Saliba Ozmen at the Deyrulzafaran monastery, which dates back to the fifth century and sits on a bluff overlooking an extensive plain.

"By the grace of God they are coming back. Otherwise we would lose everything, the entire community," he added in his office adorned with pictures of late archbishops and patriarchs.

The Syriac Orthodox community, one of the world's oldest Christian denominations, whose original congregations also settled into what is today Iraq, Syria and the Lebanon, numbered some 50,000 to 60,000 members in southeastern Turkey in the 1960s.

Many left for Europe in the 1970s for economic reasons. Emigration to countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden ballooned over the following decade amid heavy fighting between the army and Kurdish rebelsseeking self-rule in the mainly-Kurdish southeast.

"We were caught in the middle of the clashes," Ozmen said. The community now numbers 20,000-25,000. Most of them now live in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul, in the west of the country.

Recently however some Syriac Orthodox families in Europe decided they would try their luck and return to villages they had abandoned, as the insurgency has almost died out after rebels declared a unilateral ceasefire and took refuge in neighbouring Iraq in 1999.

The rebels however issued a statement over the weekend threatening new attacks. "The situation now is at least safer than before. We have been struggling, working for it to get better," Ozmen said just before that statement was issued.

Also bolstering the community's hopes was an official government call in 2001 for the Syrian Orthodox comminity to return and a guarantee that they would not be be hindered from doing so.

Turkey's drive to join the European Union is another influence on the return of this Christian community, as the mainly Muslim country strives to ensure religious freedoms and democratic rights for its minorities in order to get into the pan-European club.

Ozmen explained that of 12 Syriac villages abandoned in the region, only one -- Marbobo -- had been rebuilt and resettled after eight families returned.

Reconstruction was under way in two other villages, Kafro and Arbo, while plans were being drawn up for the rebuilding in some six other villages in the surrounding rugged hills, said the archbishop.

"The authorities are helping us with getting water and electricity to the villages. We are planning to receive some young families", said Ozmen.

"If we get five percent of the Syriac community back, it would not be bad," he added. But all is not rosy. The archbishop pointed to the difficulty of keeping alive the culture of the community which uses Aramaic, the language spoken at the time of Jesus, in its liturgy.

The Syriac Orthodox were not recognised as an official minority in 1923 when the Turkish Republic was founded -- unlike the Greek, Jewish and Armenian communities -- leaving them without the right to open official schools.

The community resorted to sending their young to Turkish state schools in the towns during the day and afterwards to informal schooling in both Deyrulzafaran as well as in the Mor Gabriel monastery -- the oldest monastery in the world -- in nearby Midyat town.

"That is why we would like to see Turkey in the EU to live better and practice our culture better. We, as Christian minorities, have a great task in establishing ties between Turkey and the European Union," said Ozmen.

5. - Financial Times - "Kurdish leader insists on own federal region":

31 May 2004 / by Gareth Smyth

Jalal Talabani, the veteran Iraq Kurdish leader, has said the Kurds will not support a new UN resolution unless it endorses a federal Kurdish region within Iraq.

Mr Talabani said he still hoped the resolution, which is being discussed at the UN, would uphold the principles of "democracy, human rights, federations and equal citizenship" that were in the Transitional Administrative Law (Tal), agreed by Iraq’s US-appointed Governing Council in March.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Talabani, who leads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), expressed the growing assertiveness of Iraq’s former opposition - which dominates the Governing Council - in the run-up to the transfer of sovereignty on June 30 and elections in January.

Mr Talabani said the Kurds - who make up 20-25 per cent of Iraq’s 25m population - were disappointed that neither the new president nor prime minister would be a Kurd.

But he praised Iyad Allawi, the nominee for prime minister, as "an old friend of ours, one of the leaders of the Iraqi opposition for a long time".

Mr Talabani defended another longstanding opposition leader, Ahmed Chalabi, condemning the recent police raid on his Baghdad house as "a violation of human rights" and dismissing the allegation that Mr Chalabi was an Iranian agent. Mr Talabani called Mr Chalabi an "Iraqi patriot" who had worked for "human rights, democracy, and Kurdish federation".

Mr Talabani said the year’s delay in forming an Iraqi government had led to slow political progress in Baghdad.

He endorsed the new US approach to security in both Falluja and Najaf, which has involved council members as mediators.

Mr Talabani said he would welcome Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, into the political process but stressed that any arrest warrant would still need to be served after June 30.

"If he [Mr Sadr] had worked as a political party he could have gained support," he said. "But when he started military activity, gradually he lost support. People in Najaf and Kerbala have asked him to move his forces out."

Mr Talabani acknowledged that mistrust between Arabs and Kurds had grown in the past year. He said this was due partly to Arab satellite television’s "propaganda against Kurdish people" and denied reports that Kurdish forces fought alongside the US in clashes in Falluja.

He said mistrust between Kurds and Arabs also reflected diverging views about the US presence.

"The Kurds call it liberation," he said. "In reality, we were liberated from the worst kind of dictatorship, from the Iraqi army and the moukhabarat [security police]. We were liberated from ethnic cleansing and discrimination."

Mr Talabani said the Kurds, who placed their 30,000 peshmerga forces under US command in last year’s war to remove Saddam, remained close allies of Washington.

"Being friends doesn’t mean being ’yes men’," he said. "Sometimes you have different views, but these remain within the framework of friendship."

6. - DIHA - "'Diyarbakir Prison Massacre' case adjourned again":

AMED/DIYARBAKIR / 31 May 2004

The trial against 72 Turkish officers hold responsible for the events that ended in death of 11 prisoners at Diyarbakir E Type Closed Prison in 1996, has been adjourned again.

To the hearing held at Diyarbakir 3rd Heavy Penal Court, suspect parties didn't attend while intervening attorneys Chairman for Diyarbakir Bar Sezgin Tanrikulu and Lawyer Meral Bestas repeated their request for an arrest ruling. Excuse petitions of the suspects' lawyers were read during the hearing and the trial was adjourned. The board decided to write to and demand family registries of the suspects from Registry Department of Justice Directorate.

20 years imprisonment requested for suspects

The lawsuit was opened against 35 soldiers, 29 policemen and 8 guards on charge of "abusing duty" and "intentionally committing murder". The case was taken to ECHR 6 months ago since it was not a "just trial" and was constantly adjourned. About the suspects from 8 to 20 years imprisonment is requested.