23
June 2004
1. "Turkey: Ankara Says Kurdish Separatists Are Rekindling Insurgency", Turkish security officials say they have been facing a renewed insurgency by Kurdish separatists since the remnants of the Kurdistan Workers Party declared an end to its five-year-old unilateral cease-fire.
2. "Turkey condemned by rights court for inhuman treatment", the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday condemned Turkey for the "degrading or inhuman treatment" of two men arrested in 1995 for their ties to the rebel Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).
3. "Council of Europe ends Turkey monitoring", Turkey passes a critical threshold on its road to EU membership as the Council of Europe approves a report to end Turkey's monitoring of its human rights performance.
4. "Turkey Takes Another Stride Towards the EU", the Council of Europe has given Turkey a positive report card regarding its democratic reforms. But Ankara can't afford to rest on its laurels.
5. "Head of Kurdish cultural institute in Tehran arrested", Mohammad Sadigh Kaboudvand was picked up last Tuesday on charges of "disturbing public order" after his paper carried articles on jailed Turkish Kurd leader Abdullah Ocalan and Ghazi Mohammad, a historical pro-independence figure behind a breakaway republic in Iran in 1945.
6. "Syrian opposition groups blast repressive regime", 14 opposition, human rights groups denounce Syrian authorities over crushing peaceful rally in Damascus.
7. "Israel denies helping Kurds in north Iraq", Turkey has cautiously accepted Israel's denials regarding reports that it has deployed agents in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.
8. "Kurd Issue Likely to Fuel Chaos in Future Iraq", with the end of the 14-month occupation, Iraq is likely to be faced, once again, with some of the problems it has had ever since it was put on the map as a nation-state in 1921.
1. - Radio Free Europe - "Turkey: Ankara Says Kurdish Separatists Are Rekindling Insurgency":
Turkish security officials say they have been facing a renewed insurgency by Kurdish separatists since the remnants of the Kurdistan Workers Party declared an end to its five-year-old unilateral cease-fire.
PRAGUE / 22 June 2004 / by Ron Synovitz
Reports from southern Turkey suggest that Turkish authorities have launched a crackdown against Kurdish separatists since the remnants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) declared an end to the unilateral cease-fire it announced five years ago.
Kurdish separatists in the PKK had waged an insurgency for nearly two decades in southeastern Turkey in their failed bid to win autonomy for the Kurdish minority there. The now-defunct PKK declared the cease-fire in 1999 after its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured the previous year and urged his followers to conduct their campaign for autonomy through legitimate political means."The PKK based in northern Iraq is about to disintegrate.”
But the PKK's successor group, Kongra-Gel, called off the cease-fire at the start of June, saying Turkish security forces have refused to respect the truce.
Turkish security forces are reported to be increasingly involved in clashes with Kurdish separatist fighters. Ankara claims that about 2,000 Kurdish fighters have crossed into Turkey from hideouts in mountainous northern Iraq in recent weeks.
Seyfi Tashan is director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Bilkent University in Ankara. He notes that the Kurdish separatist movement has been disintegrating since many of its militant members fled into northern Iraq after Ocalan's capture.
Tashan says what now remains of the separatist movement is divided between moderates and splintering militant groups.
"The PKK based in northern Iraq is about to disintegrate,” he says. “Some of their members are joining the peshmerga [force that the PKK had fought against in the past]. A group of the PKK -- its name now is Kongra-Gel -- have decided to renew action, infiltrating eastern Turkey from Iraq."
Tashan says that by rekindling violence in southern Turkey, militant faction leaders hope to maintain unity within the disintegrating separatist movement.
"It would be to keep at least a certain part of the people together because, without fighting a war, keeping a group of [militants together] in a camp in the middle of nowhere in northern Iraq is a difficult feat," Tashan says.
However, international lobbyists for Kurdish rights say it is a misrepresentation to equate Kongra-Gel with militancy and terrorism.
Estella Schmid, coordinator of the London-based Kurdistan Solidarity Committee, told RFE/RL that although Kongra-Gel includes some former militants, the group in recent years has developed a political platform that renounces terrorism.
"Kongra-Gel is a congress. And following the dissolution of the PKK in 1999, this is quite a completely different organization in terms of its strategy and tactics. It is entirely based on the democratization of the Middle East. So they are putting forward a proposal of a federation of the Middle East in which the Kurds are part of the resolution of the problems in the Middle East -- entirely by political and peaceful means," Schmid says.
Schmid concludes that it is Ankara's ban against Kongra-Gel, as well as some 700 attacks conducted by Turkish security forces against Kurds during the last five years, that make a peaceful, political resolution to Kurdish issues so difficult in Turkey.
Rochelle Harris, a spokeswoman for the London-based Kurdish Human Rights Project, says it is hard to find objective opinions about Kurdish issues inside of Turkey.
"The difficulty in finding an objective opinion on the Kurdish situation in Turkey is that the Kurdish side itself has been censored for so many years. For a number of years, it has been illegal to speak as a Kurd in the Kurdish language. However, the European Court of Human Rights is surely one body that could be expected to have an objective opinion. And it has condemned Turkey on a number of occasions for violating the right of freedom of association, of the right to a fair trial, for torture and for other human rights violations," Harris says.
Turkey has been enacting cultural rights for its estimated 12 million-strong Kurdish population as part of efforts to persuade the European Union to open entry talks.
But at the same time, ethnic clashes appear to be on the rise. Private Turkish broadcasters -- including NTV and the Turkish-language division of CNN television -- have reported in the past week that the Turkish military is preparing large-scale operations in southeastern Turkey to hunt down separatist militants.
Other reports confirm that raids already have been launched by Turkish authorities in the southern city of Adana near the Mediterranean coast.
In one raid in Adana last week, six Kurdish men and two Kurdish women were arrested on charges of plotting armed attacks. Turkish news reports say evidence seized from the suspects by police included 10 kilograms of plastic explosives along with detonators and documents on bomb making. Earlier this month, four members of the former PKK also were arrested in Adana on suspicion of planning attacks.
More than 37,000 people have been killed in Turkey as
a result of separatist violence and the subsequent crackdowns by security
forces since Kurdish militants launched their insurgency in the mid-1980s.
Most of those killed have been Kurds in the southeast of the country.
2. - AFP - "Turkey condemned by rights court for
inhuman treatment":
STRASBOURG / 22 June 2004
The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday condemned Turkey for the "degrading or inhuman treatment" of two men arrested in 1995 for their ties to the rebel Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).
Abdulrezzak Aydin and Abdullah Yunus were taken into custody in April 1995 during a Turkish police operation against the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organisation under Turkish law.
A month later a prison doctor examining the men found that both had sustained bruising and swelling to the testicles and were suffering from pain in the legs.
The men brought a case against their jailers, citing Article three of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.
The European Court found that the Turkish Government had been unable to provide a plausible explanation for two conflicting medical reports concerning the men's injuries, which could only have been sustained while they were in custody.
By failing to discharge its obligation to protect vulnerable persons in the custody of police officers, the Court unanimously found that Turkey had violated Article 3 of the Human Rights Treaty. Turkey was ordered to pay each man 20,000 euros (25,000 dollars) in damages.
While Turkey remains devastated by the 15-year PKK rebellion for self-rule in which some 37,000 people lost their lives, there has been a recent improvement in relations with its Kurdish minority.
Last month, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer signed into law a number of constitutional amendments aimed at bringing his country closer to EU standards of democracy.
In a move long-demanded by the EU, an appeals court in Turkey earlier this month also ordered the release from jail of four Kurdish politicians from jail, including human rights award winner Leyla Zana.
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.
The changes were welcomed by the EU, which will assess Turkey's reform process in December, based on a report to be presented by the European Commission, and decide whether it should start accession talks.
Turkey has been officially a candidate for EU membership
since 1999 but alone among a clutch of countries, has yet to start accession
talks.
3. - Turkish Daily News - "Council of Europe ends Turkey monitoring":
Turkey passes a critical threshold on its road to EU membership as the Council of Europe approves a report to end Turkey's monitoring of its human rights performance
ANKARA / 23 June 2004
The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly endorsed a report on Tuesday to end the monitoring of Turkey's human rights performance in the wake of recent democratic reforms, including the release from prison of four former Kurdish deputies.
At an April session, the Council of Europe assembly postponed voting on a proposal to end the monitoring after a State Security Court (DGM) in Ankara defied pressure from the European Union and upheld a previous ruling against four former deputies, including one-time Nobel Prize nominee Leyla Zana.
The ruling came after a lengthy retrial ordered by the European Court of Human Rights, which said the four former lawmakers had not received a fair trial.
EU aspirant Turkey has been under Council of Europe monitoring of its human rights record for the last decade, seriously undermining the prospects of joining the EU.
Meanwhile, assembly head Peter Schieder said representation of Turkish Cypriots in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly would be discussed at a parliamentary session in October.
Shieder said they were determined to reach a solution to the issue at the October session.
The assembly in April rejected a draft resolution to give
rights to Turkish Cypriot deputies to attend and address its meetings
and instead called for closer relations with Turkish Cypriot parliamentarians
in the body.
4. - Deutsche Welle - "Turkey Takes Another Stride Towards the EU":
23 June 2004 / by Baha Güngör
The Council of Europe has given Turkey a positive report card regarding
its democratic reforms. But Ankara can't afford to rest on its laurels.
The positive report about democracy and law in Turkey will end the political monitoring program carried out by the Council of Europe which began in 1996 as a result of escalating tensions following the military coup in Turkey in 1990.
The assessment will normalize strained relations between the Strasbourg institution and Turkey as well as help Turkey take an important step further on the long road to the EU. But, as Deutsche Welle's Baha Güngör says, Ankara still has much work to do.
Seen through Turkish eyes, the vote in the EU parliamentary assembly is a positive result. But it shouldn't be seen as a final entry ticket to the EU club. There's still much disorder in the Turkish state even though the light at the end of the tunnel is shining brighter.
The Belgiun and Luxembourgian members of the Council of Europe who reported on Turkey's progress were impressed by concrete measures Turkey has taken: the Kurdish human rights activist and former parliamentarian Leyla Zana (photo) was recently released from prison after ten-years together with three other former members of parliament of Kurdish-origin.
Zana, who was awarded the European Parliament's Human Rights Prize, is now openly demanding peace, a renunciation of violence and stability in Turkey as well as an end to the struggle between militant Kurds and the Turkish State.
Torture still in place
These positive developments shouldn't be allowed to mask the fact that it took a long time and much patience before the situation in Turkey had "normalized."
In September last year, experts of the Council of Europe discovered during a visit to Turkish prisons that although it wasn't as frequent as earlier, torture methods were still being used against inmates, particularly in Kurdish-dominated regions. Mistreatment, such as beatings, forced sleep deprivation or being made to stand for hours as well as limiting access to a lawyer, were still frequently practiced.
With the end of direct monitoring, Turkey now joins the group of nations that fall in the "post-monitoring" stage. Here Turkey finds itself in much better company: EU countries such as the Czech Republic, Latvia and Slovakia all belong to the group as well as EU aspirants Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia.
More reforms needed
Turkey is well on its way to fulfilling the membership criteria of the EU in the areas of democracy, the rule of law, protection of minorities, and individual and institutional freedom. It is also meeting EU economic criteria. But the country still has to clear a number of hurdles before taking its place in the European Union family.
That includes, for instance, the lowering of the ten-percent hurdle in parliamentary elections -- which above all prevents a representation of the Kurds in parliament -- the possibility of refusing service in the army, an amendment of penal law and a review of laws stemming from the country's long-running "state of emergency."
Martial law was imposed over the entire country in 1978 and was later upheld as a state of emergency, a notch below the level of martial law, in parts of the country until two years ago.
New challenges to Europe
There's no doubt that Turkey's entry will pose completely new political
challenges to the EU. After all Turkey's 70 million citizens are almost
exclusively Muslims and thus members of a different religious community
than the largely Christian Europe.
But it's exactly this difference in religion that gives Europe the chance to prove that it's capable and prepared for dialogue and peace with other cultures and faiths. Those who want a stable peace in Europe need Turkey as a bridge of trust between the Orient and the Occident, between East and West.
Dealing with Islamic fundamentalism and blasphemous terrorism
demands courage. Courage to look beyond one's own Christian existence
and along with it to accept Turkey as a country that wants to carry
Europe's political values beyond its geographical borders.
5. - AFP - "Head of Kurdish cultural institute
in Tehran arrested":
TEHRAN / 22 June 2004
The director of a Kurdish cultural institute in the Iranian capital has been arrested while attempting to cross into the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, his institute said in a statement released Tuesday.
The statement said Bahram Valibeyghi, who also runs the bilingual daily Ashti ("Reconciliation"), was detained at Khosravi border post on orders from Tehran prosecutors office. It said no explanation was given for the arrest, which was made on Sunday.
It said he was to go on trial in Tehran on Wednesday. On Monday, the director of an Iranian Kurdish weekly paper arrested for publishing articles deemed to encourage ethnic and religious dissent was reportedly freed on bail, the official news agency IRNA reported.
Mohammad Sadigh Kaboudvand was picked up last Tuesday on charges of "disturbing public order" after his paper carried articles on jailed Turkish Kurd leader Abdullah Ocalan and Ghazi Mohammad, a historical pro-independence figure behind a breakaway republic in Iran in 1945.
His paper, The People's Message, is published in both Kurdish and Farsi and was launched in early 2004.
Iran has a six million-strong Kurdish community, and authorities are quick to stamp on what they consider to be any moves towards autonomy.
At least a dozen journalists are currently in jail in
the Islamic republic, where authorities have closed down over 100 publications
in recent years. Most are close to the pro-reform movement.
6. - Middle East Online - "Syrian opposition groups
blast repressive regime":
14 opposition, human rights groups denounce Syrian authorities over
crushing peaceful rally in Damascus.
DAMASCUS / 22 June 2004
Fourteen opposition movements and human rights groups in Syria on Tuesday criticised what they called the repressive attitude of the Syrian authorities who forcibly prevented a planned sit-in in Damascus.
They said thousands of security forces and police went to the venue of the rally - planned to mark the day of the Syrian political prisoner - in Arnuss Square, "striking and humiliating the rare people who approached".
"The regime excels in violent and repressive practices when democratic movements follow a peaceful policy in remaining faithful to the rights of expression, demonstration and gatherings," the groups said in a statement.
Among those signing the statement were the Human Rights Association of Syria (ADHS), the Committees for the Defence of Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms in Syria, the National Democratic Rally - a coalition of five banned parties -- the Kurdish party, Yakiti, and the Kurd People’s Union.
The groups called for the abolition of Syria’s emergency law, in place since 1963, and for "the release of all political detainees, of whom some have been held more than 30 years, like Farhan al-Zohbi," detained for 34 years.
The ADHS said in a separate statement that during the
attempted sit-in on Monday "eight people were questioned for several
hours and at least 10 others were violently beaten."
7. - Haaretz - "Israel denies helping Kurds in
north Iraq":
23 June 2004 / by Yoav Stern
Turkey has cautiously accepted Israel's denials regarding reports that
it has deployed agents in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. The Turks,
however, will continue to monitor affairs in this area of Iraq, and
try to verify that Israel's denials are credible. Turkey's Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul said yesterday that Israel has contacted Ankara in recent
days, and denied a New Yorker report that it has sent spies to the northern
Iraqi region.
"Israel has made clear that this information is not accurate, and
we hope that this is indeed the case," Gul said. "Everyone
knows how sensitive this issue is for Turkey, and so we must trust Israel's
messages. I hope that we are doing the right thing by believing these
messages."
According to the report, Israel seeks to strengthen the
Kurds so that they can act as a counter-weight to Shi'ites in Iraq,
and also collect information about developments in Syria and Iran.
8. - Arab News - "Kurd Issue Likely to Fuel Chaos in Future Iraq":
23 June 2004 / by Amir Taheri
With the end of the 14-month occupation, Iraq is likely to be faced,
once again, with some of the problems it has had ever since it was put
on the map as a nation-state in 1921.
The most complex of these concerns the Kurds whose leaders are playing a game of bluff and counter bluff in the hope of exacting maximum advantage in a period of uncertainty.
Both Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the two most prominent leaders of the Iraqi Kurds, have dropped hints that they might decide to “part ways” if their demand for a Kurdish veto on some key national decisions is not included in the new constitution.
This may or may not be a bluff. But the threat of Kurdish secession has already met with two different reactions from Iraq’s non-Kurdish leadership elite.
Some Iraqi Arab leaders are horrified at the thought of the Kurdish problem dominating the nation’s agenda once again. They are prepared to do all they reasonably can to satisfy Kurdish demands within a multi-ethnic pluralist system.
Others, however, manifest some frustration against the Kurds.
“The Kurds have been the source of all our national miseries from the start,” says one Iraqi Arab leader on condition of anonymity. “We became involved in several wars because of them. We also had to submit to dictators because we believed they would prevent the Kurds from secession. But now that Iraq is free why should we return to the failed policies of the past just to keep the Kurds under our flag?”
Many Iraqis, and some policy-makers in Washington, see the Kurdish secession as the worst case scenario for the newly-liberated nation. Barzani and Talabani, arguably the most experienced politicians in Iraq today, know this and try to exploit such fears.
A closer look at the reality of the situation, however, would show that there is little chance for a breakaway Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
There are several reasons for this. To start with Iraqi Kurds do not constitute a single ethnic entity let alone a “nation” in the accepted sense of the term.
Iraqi Kurds speak two different, though mutually intelligible, languages, each of which is divided into several sub-dialects, with distinct literally and cultural traditions.
Iraqi Kurds are also divided into half a dozen religious communities, including a number of heterodox creeds.
Some of the people generally labelled “Kurdish” are, in fact ethnic Lurs and Elamites with their distinct languages, cultures and histories. At the same time the predominantly Kurdish area is also home to some non-Kurdish communities, including ethnic Arabs, Turcomans, Assyrians and Armenians.
To make matters more complicated, at least a third of Iraqi Kurds live outside the area that might one day become an independent Kurdish state. (There are more than a million Kurds in greater Baghdad, for example.) The creation of a breakaway Kurdish state in Iraq could trigger a process of ethnic cleansing, population exchanges, and displacements that could plunge the whole region into years of conflict.
A Kurdish mini-state in northeastern Iraq might not even be viable. It would be landlocked and will have few natural resources.
Almost all of Iraq’s major oil fields fall outside the area under discussion. Also, the area’s water resources would be vulnerable to manipulation from Turkey and Iran where the principal rivers originate.
But what about a greater Kurdistan, encompassing all who describe themselves as Kurds? After all there are millions of people who, despite the objective diversity of their languages, histories, and ways of life, feel themselves to be Kurds.
Such a state, including Kurds in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as Iraq, would have a population of 30 million in an area the size of France. To create this greater Kurdistan one would have to reorganize a good part of the Middle East and re-draw the borders of six states, including the two largest in the region: Turkey and Iran. Even then the greater Kurdistan would still be a weak landlocked state with few natural resources, and surrounded by powers that, if not hostile, would not go out of their ways to help it get along.
Such a greater Kurdistan would face numerous internal problems also. To start with it will have to decide which of the four alphabets in use for writing the various Kurdish languages should be adopted as the national one.
If the view of the majority is to prevail the alphabet chosen should be Turkish because almost half of all Kurds live in Turkey. At the same time, however, the bulk of Kurdish historic, literary, political, religious and other significant texts are written in the Persian alphabet, itself an expanded version of the Arabic. And where would be the capital of the greater Kurdistan?
If history, myth and, to some extent, the number of inhabitants, are the yardsticks the Iranian cities of Sanandaj and Mahabad would be strong candidates. And, yet, the city with the largest number of Kurdish inhabitants is Istanbul, Turkey’s cultural and business capital which is home to more than 1.6 million ethnic Kurds.
In a greater Kurdistan the intellectual elite would come from Iran and the business elite from Turkey. Would they then allow Iraqi Kurds to provide the political elite? That is hardly likely. What is certain, however, is that in a greater Kurdistan Barzani and Talabani, now big fish in the smaller Iraqi pond, could end up as small fish in a much bigger pond.
All that means that Barzani and Talabani have no interest, personal or otherwise, to provoke the disintegration of Iraq only to end up as local player in a bigger Kurdish state. Nor do a majority of Iraqi Kurds have an interest in leaving Iraq now that it has, for the first time, a real opportunity to build a state in which Kurds can enjoy full autonomy plus a leading position in national power structures.
The experience of the 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds who have lived a life of full autonomy thanks to US-led protection since 1991 is a mixed one. The area was divided into two halves, one led by Barzani the other by Talabani, showing that even limited unity was hard to achieve in a corner of Iraq let alone throughout the vast region where the Kurds live. The two mini-states respectively led by Barzani and Talabani developed a complex pattern of shifting alliances in which, at times, one allied itself with Saddam Hussein against the other. The two mini-states even became involved in numerous battles, including a full-scale war.
Like pan-Arabism and its promise of unity, Kurdish unification is easy to talk about but hard to implement even on a small scale.
Barzani and Talabani should stop bluffing about “walking away”. Other Iraqis, meanwhile, should realize that a shrunken Iraq, that is to say minus its Kurds, would be a vulnerable mini-state in a dangerous neighborhood.
The preservation of Iraq’s unity is in the interests of both Kurds and Arabs. It is also in the best interest of regional peace.
At the start of the 21st century, the Kurds cannot pursue their legitimate aspirations through the prism of 19th century romantic nationalism which has mothered so many wars and tragedies all over the world.
The Kurds, wherever they live, must be able to speak their languages, develop their culture, practice their religions and generally run their own affairs as they deem fit. These are inalienable human rights, and the newly-liberated Iraq may be the only place, at least for the time being, where the Kurds can exercise those rights.
In other words this is not the time for the Kurds to think
of leaving Iraq nor for other Iraqis to deny the legitimate rights of
their Kurdish brethren.