10
June 2004
2. "Turkish press jubilant over EU prospects after gestures to Kurds", The Turkish press hailed Thursday the release of four jailed Kurdish activists and the launch of Kurdish-language broadcasts as removing two major obstacles to the country's efforts to join the European Union.
3. "European rights court hears Ocalan appeal as thousands protest", Europe's top human rights court on Wednesday heard an appeal by Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan over his detention conditions in a Turkish prison, as thousands of Kurds marched through Strasbourg streets demanding his release.
4. "U.N. Confident on Kurd-Shiite Relations", U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi expressed confidence Wednesday that Iraq's Shiite Arab majority and Kurdish minority would settle their dispute over the new U.N. resolution that endorsed the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq's interim government on June 30.
5. "Will the Kurds Go Home?", So while the United Nations congratulates itself on the resolution passed last night, the Kurds see only a further undermining of the conditions that make a unified Iraq acceptable to them.
6. "Turkey at "critical mass" on reforms: Gul", Gul said the government's political reform drive had laid the foundations of a strong and independent legal system, setting the stage for the court's landmark decision to free ex-lawmaker Leyla Zana and three colleagues pending a retrial.
1. - The New York Times - "Turks Free 4 Kurds Whose Jailing Irked European Union":
ISTANBUL / 10 June 2004 / By SUSAN SACHS and SEBNEM ARSU
In a decision hailed by human rights advocates, a Turkish appeals court on Wednesday ordered the release of four Kurdish former members of Parliament who were convicted 10 years ago of belonging to an outlawed separatist movement.
Among those freed was Leyla Zana, whose campaign for Kurdish rights made internationally known.
The four were convicted of links to the Kurdish Workers Party; a hearing on their appeal is set for July 8.
Amnesty International called on Turkey to drop the case altogether, saying the four Kurds were prosecuted only for their political beliefs.
In an interview with Reuters after the release, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul predicted that the four would not return to jail.
They have already served all but nine months of their sentences.
In Brussels, Günter Verheugen, the European Union's commissioner for enlargement, said: "Today's decision is a sign that the implementation of political reforms, which Turkey has been introducing in the past two years, is gaining ground."
Since the 1994 convictions, Turkey has made wholesale changes in its Constitution and laws in an effort to fulfill European Union conditions for starting accession talks at the end of this year.
The special state security courts created for terrorism and treason cases were abolished last month. The official ban on playing Kurdish music and teaching the Kurdish language in schools has been lifted, and on Wednesday, state television broadcast its first-ever program of news and culture in Kurdish.
As Mrs. Zana and her colleagues emerged from Ulucanlar prison in Ankara, they were mobbed by a crowd throwing flowers and shouting, "Turkey is proud of you!" Commentators spoke of the beginning of the end of a long national conflict over state recognition of Kurdish cultural and language rights.
Later, Mrs. Zana said:
"I believe that a new period has started in this country, and
a new page is opened. Today is the day to unite, and today is the
day that everyone frees himself and herself of all prejudices."
2. - AFP - "Turkish press jubilant over EU prospects after gestures to Kurds
10 June 2004
The Turkish press hailed Thursday the release of four jailed Kurdish activists and the launch of Kurdish-language broadcasts as removing two major obstacles to the country's efforts to join the European Union.
"A historic day for Turkey," the liberal daily Radikal wrote, describing the moves as "two giant steps on the road to the European Union."
"Our EU road has been opened," the Milliyet newspaper trumpeted, while Hurriyet welcomed the "eradication of the last two pretexts (for refusing Turkey) put forward by the European Union."
EU leaders will decide in December whether Turkey has made enough progress in democratization to open membership talks with the pan-European bloc.
In a surprise twist to one of Turkey's most politically-charged cases, the appeals court Wednesday ordered the release of human rights award winner Leyla Zana and three other former Kurdish MPs, jailed in 1994 for collaborating with separatist Kurdish rebels.
The four were freed, pending the outcome of an appeal lodged against their convictions, which were confirmed in a retrial in April.
Their imprisonment has been denounced as a move to silence even peaceful advocates of Kurdish rights and was widely seen as a major obstacle for Turkey's EU aspirations.
The release of the four coincided with another landmark move -- the inauguration of Kurdish-language broadcasts on state radio and television, a turning point for a country where Kurdish was banned less than 15 years ago.
Zana caused uproar in parliament in 1991 when, after taking her oath in Turkish, she vowed in Kurdish to struggle for peace between Turks and Kurds.
"The four former MPs who were jailed in a process that started
with an oath in Kurdish are freed on the day Kurdish-language broadcasts
begin," the Sabah newspaper noted.
3.
- AFP - "European rights court hears Ocalan appeal as thousands
protest":
STRASBOURG / June 9, 2004 / by Amelie Bottollier Depois
Europe's top human rights court on Wednesday heard an appeal by Kurdish
rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan over his detention conditions in a Turkish
prison, as thousands of Kurds marched through Strasbourg streets demanding
his release.
Waving Kurdish flags and carrying pictures of their hero, at least
7,500 people according to police -- 20,000 according to organisers
-- from all over Europe gathered for the hearing.
Officials allowed about 200 of the protesters to assemble outside
the European Court of Human Rights building as judges heard the appeal
of Ocalan over his life sentence, who until his arrest in February
1999 had been Turkey's most wanted man for almost two decades.
Inside, his lawyer Aysel Tugluk charged that his client was being
subjected to "psychological torture", and that he was suffering
from asthma and other ailments owing to the humidity in the prison,
on the remote island of Imrali in the Marmara Sea.
Another lawyer, Timothy Otty, alleged that in 2003 alone, officials
had cancelled 28 visits of his client. He charged Ocalan had in five
years also repeatedly been without contact with anyone save the prison
guards for up to six-week periods.
Last year the court found partially in favour of the separatist leader
when it found Turkey had subjected him to an unfair trial, in a blow
to Turkey's European Union membership aspirations.
It said in its non-binding ruling that not only were his rights violated
by the lack of an "independent and impartial tribunal" but
again when he was given the death penalty. It called the sentence
a "form of inhuman treatment."
The 55-year-old was sentenced to die in 1999 for "treason and
separatism" over his role in the war for independence waged by
his now-disbanded Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in which about 37,000
people died.
In 2002, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after Turkey
abolished the death penalty, one of a number of reforms aimed at boosting
Ankara's chances of joining the EU.
The court also said that Turkey had violated the European Convention
on Human Rights by having a military judge seated on the state security
court that tried him, and by limiting his access to his lawyers and
files.
But the court failed to consider complaints over Ocalan's conditions
of detention or his arrest in Kenya and transfer to Turkey. Since
1999, he has been held as the sole inmate on Imrali island.
The court last year ordered Turkey to pay Ocalan's lawyers 100,000
euros (122,000 dollars) for costs and expenses. Both sides appealed.
Evin Vayartan, a representative for the Kurdistan National Congress,
said at the protest that Kurds were not looking for a condemnation
of Turkey.
"The Kurdish population in the Middle East want international
pressure so that these states recognise freedom, democracy and the
cultural identities" of the Kurds, she said.
She was among the thousands of Kurds from Belgium, Denmark, France,
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, assembled to hear
speeches and watch Kurdish dance performances.
Turkey has been trying to join the 25-member EU, which is to assess
Turkey's democratisation process in December and decide whether to
start membership negotiations with the predominantly Muslim nation.
4. - Associated Press - "U.N. Confident on Kurd-Shiite Relations":
UNITED NATIONS / 9 June 2004
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi expressed confidence Wednesday that Iraq's
Shiite Arab majority and Kurdish minority would settle their dispute
over the new U.N. resolution that endorsed the transfer of sovereignty
to Iraq's interim government on June 30.
Kurdish leaders wanted a reference to Iraq's temporary constitution
included in the resolution because they believe it protects their
autonomy in northern Iraq. They hinted that they might not participate
in the new government or future elections if it wasn't.
But the Security Council adopted the resolution unanimously Tuesday without any mention of the Transitional Administrative Law. U.N. diplomats said the reference was kept out to appease Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who grudgingly accepted the charter when it was approved in March.
Brahimi, who helped put together the interim government and just
returned from Baghdad, was asked whether his talent could be used
to help resolve the issue.
"I am confident that both Ayatollah Sistani and the Kurdish leaders
are very, very responsible people," Brahimi said.
"These are real issues," he said. It's not that one side
or the other is being unreasonable, and I'm sure that they will find
common ground for Iraq to continue along this rather difficult and
challenging transition towards stability."
But a senior U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, appeared
less certain, expressing hope that "it will not develop into
anything ugly."
5. - The New York Times - "Will the Kurds Go Home?":
BAGHDAD, Iraq / 9 June 2004 / By BARTLE BREESE BULL
While the United Nations Security Council wrangled over military chains of command in Iraq and the violence in Arab cities like Karbala and Falluja grabbed the headlines, a story far more important to the country's future has been largely ignored: the growing unease of the Kurdish minority.
So while the United Nations congratulates itself on the resolution passed last night, the Kurds see only a further undermining of the conditions that make a unified Iraq acceptable to them. And we should not take lightly their threats of boycotting the government and even seceding. While the West has gone to great lengths to appease the country's Arabs, both Shiite and Sunni, the Kurds are the only players at the table with the ability and the mettle to walk away. If they do, hopes of a democratic, multiethnic Iraq go with them.
The other day at a military hospital here, I visited a former Kurdish guerrilla who had been working as a guard at the Baghdad offices of the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of two main Kurdish political groups. His name is Saadar Khajakadir, and he says he fought Saddam Hussein's troops in the mountains for more years than he can remember. Last week a Russian-built rocket exploded through the roof of the building he was guarding, killing one of his comrades and wounding him and four others.
I asked him if the wounds were worth it, if the political process in Baghdad was something he was happy to bleed for. "If Baghdad is where we must achieve our freedom, these wounds are an honor," he told me. "But if we do not win our freedom here, we will go home to the mountains and give up much more than blood to win it there."
That attack went entirely unreported. (One of the party's senior military commanders, Muhammad Qazi, told me they don't want to reward terrorists with publicity.) The same day, a suicide bomber killed a high-ranking member of the other Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, at its Baghdad headquarters. As a double attack on Kurdish offices, it was a grim echo of the twin suicide bombings that killed 101 people in the northern Kurdish city of Erbil in February.
In addition, smaller attacks on Kurdish targets have been occurring with greater frequency than the world knows. Three Kurdish officials were assassinated in Kirkuk in separate incidents in May; when I was there last week, I visited a Kurdish family whose house had just been hit by a rocket. While I was in Erbil over the weekend, a pipe bomb in the bazaar killed one and wounded about 20. Mr. Qazi, the military commander, told me that in Irbil an "action in progress," like a suicide bomber trying to drive through barriers outside the Interior Ministry, is foiled about once a month.
This violence comes in the context of remarkable freedom, prosperity and order in the Iraqi Kurdish entity — a calm forged during the 12 years American jets in the no-flight zone kept Saddam Hussein's troops out of the region. While Kurdish politics continues to be heavily dominated by the two main parties, there are scores of other groups in the region, including several each for the Communists, the Turkmens and the various Christian sects. Dozens of newspapers in the Kurdish area frequently criticize the two provincial administrations. Salaries for teachers, drivers and office workers have risen in the past couple of years to $200 or more a month from $20.
Of the 4,500 villages the Baathists are said to have destroyed, 4,000 have been rebuilt since 1991. Much of the mountainous countryside is dotted with young oak trees reclaiming the hills Saddam Hussein denuded. In Sulaimaniya, unmarried young men and women sit together at the outside tables of the MaDonal burger restaurant on the main street. Ready to defend all of this are 40,000 Kurdish militiamen, or peshmerga, drilled and in uniform, the only coherent domestic armed force in Iraq.
With all of this political and personal freedom long established, can the Kurds really want to be a part of a fledgling Iraq? Until now, the answer has been yes. They made a series of compromises — concessions in the interim Constitution over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk; acceptance of a new government with no Kurds in top positions — to help put the country back together.
But how much more are they willing to give up? After all, the Kurds have fought against every incarnation of the Iraqi state since the British mandate of 1920. It is almost impossible to meet a Kurd who does not have some personal horror to relate about suffering under Saddam Hussein. And now they see the chaos to the south every night on Al Jazeera. "We are the only people in Iraq with experience of functional government and democracy," Bruska Shaways, a Kurd who is deputy defense minister in the new Iraqi government, told me. "We want to export it to the rest of Iraq, but never at the expense of all we have earned."
This sentiment was echoed by Nesreen Berwari, a Kurdish woman who is minister of public works in the new government: "Why would we ever accept less today than we had for the last 12 years under Saddam?"
The Security Council was well aware of the situation. Yet it passed a resolution that not only explicitly fails to guarantee a federal Iraq, but also abandons the interim Constitution and its commitment to a Kurdish veto over the permanent Constitution. These guarantees have long been conditions for the Kurds' willing participation in the project of iraqi unity.
Is it too late to mend the rift? Perhaps not. Assuming the worst about the United Nations resolution, some of the Kurdish leaders have told me they might be open to an alternative: having their rights enumerated in parallel statements from the United States, the United Nations and the new Iraqi government. Washington would do well to press ahead on this.
The alternative is for the Kurds to head back to their lands and — even in the face of a potential invasion of the Turks — set about building one of the Middle East's only prosperous democracies. The Kurds hold strong cards, and one of the strongest is that everybody else knows they have always stuck up for themselves in the past. If they don't receive their guarantees, soon there may be no Iraq — just a free Kurdistan and a burning Arabistan.
Bartle Breese Bull is the author of "Around the Sacred Sea:
Mongolia and Lake Baikal on Horseback."
6. - Reuters - "Turkey at "critical mass" on reforms: Gul":
ANKARA / 10 Jun 2004 / By Gill Tudor
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Wednesday's freeing of four jailed Kurdish activists brought Turkey's EU-oriented reforms to a "critical mass" ahead of the bloc's decision on whether to offer accession talks.
Gul said the government's political reform drive had laid the foundations of a strong and independent legal system, setting the stage for the court's landmark decision to free ex-lawmaker Leyla Zana and three colleagues pending a retrial.
"This case itself is proving now that there is a functioning and reliable legal system that can deal with a very controversial issue," Gul told Reuters in an interview.
"Honestly, I can tell you, with these changes we really achieved a critical mass."
The European Commission had labelled the four jailed ex-MPs, who have served 10 years of a 15-year sentence for links to Kurdish separatist guerrillas, "prisoners of conscience" and warned their continued detention could wreck Turkey's EU bid.
Gul's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has pushed through a swathe of political, judicial and human rights reforms since gaining power in late 2002, going all-out to fulfil the European Union's Copenhagen political criteria.
Ankara, which has aspired for decades to join the bloc, hopes EU leaders will give it a firm start date next year for full membership talks when they meet at a December summit.
SENTENCES SERVED
Zana and her colleagues will face a retrial next month -- but in a new, civilian court as the government has abolished the controversial state security courts that convicted them.
Gul said he thought it was unlikely they would return to jail even if the guilty verdict was upheld, as they had already served a large part of their sentences.
"I'm not the judge," he said. "But the courts usually don't take the risk (of freeing defendants) -- their understanding is that it's enough. Even if she's found guilty they'll say 'OK, she's served her sentence.'"
The release coincided with Wednesday's historic start of Kurdish-language broadcasts on state radio and television, another closely watched reform increasing cultural rights for the country's 12 million Kurds.
For decades Turkey denied the very existence of its Kurdish minority. Courts came down hard on expressions of Kurdish identity, especially after armed separatism broke out in 1984.
The European Court of Human Rights started hearing rival defence and prosecution appeals on Wednesday on the fate of guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, jailed since 1999, and Gul said the correct judicial process would take its course.
He said the broadcasts were another key step to EU approval.
"Almost every week we have been delivering something new," he said, pointing to Ankara's recent diplomatic efforts to secure the reunification of Cyprus under a U.N. peace deal -- a plan rejected by Greek Cypriots in an April referendum.
Gul said Turkey was achieving sweeping reforms at a time when violence was raging in neighbouring Iraq, international terrorist attacks were on the rise and many Western countries were sacrificing some liberties for the sake of security.
"Yet in this climate we are so determined to continue with reforms
and implementation," he said.