4
March 2004
2. "Straw pushes Turkey's EU bid", Torture has increased in Turkey since the arrival in power of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a leading anti-torture group said Wednesday.
3. "Post-election Greece faces Cyprus talks", Greece will have to play a leading role in solving the Cyprus issue if the two communities on the island are unable to work out a deal, Foreign Minister Tassos Yiannitsis said yesterday
4. "Kurdish Language To Be Used in Iraqi Official Documents, Stamps, Currency", Kurdish language is to be used on Iraqi passports, currencies and stamps and other important official identifications, reported the independent Kurdish weekly, Hawlati today, 3 March 2004.
5. "Land issues at heart of Cyprus talks", President Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash yesterday discussed the status of territory that Turkish Cypriots will return to the Greek-Cypriot sector under UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s blueprint for the island’s reunification.
6. "Jailed Kurd rebel leader Ocalan ordered to do Turkish military service", The Turkish authorities may have jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan for life but that has not stopped the army he fought against calling him up for national military service.
1.
- AFP - "Torture in Turkey is worse under Erdogan: anti-torture
group":
COPENHAGEN (Denmark) / March 3, 2004
Torture has increased in Turkey since the arrival in power of Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a leading anti-torture group said Wednesday.
The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT)
called on Europe and the United States to pressure Ankara to put an
end to the
practice.
"The nice declarations by Erdogan and political reforms to combat
torture have fallen on deaf ears. Torture is more widespread than
ever, and almost
none of the torturers has gone on trial," Inge Genefke, Denmark's
representative at the IRCT, told AFP by telephone.
Genefke was speaking from the Turkish city of Izmir, where she is
following the trial of psychiatrist and human rights activist Alp
Ayan.
"This trial, the first one to be attended by a US diplomat, is
one of the many examples of the authorities' harassment of human rights
defenders in
Turkey," she said.
"Dr. Alp Ayan's crime is that he criticized the government for
its passivity in the fight against torture and the impunity that torturers
enjoy,"
said Genefke, who in 1985 opened the world's first center to treat
torture victims in Copenhagen.
Genefke urged the EU to insist that Ankara put an end to torture before
considering the country for EU membership.
"But the United States, and especially President (George W.)
Bush, carry a lot of weight and could change the situation,"
she said.
Genefke, who last week appeared before members of the US Congress
in Washington to discuss the issue in Turkey, said she was "deeply
concerned"
about another trial due to open in Ankara next week against nine executive
board members of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT).
"They are accused of collecting money without authorization a
few years ago to help hunger strikers released from prison who were
on the verge of death and of cooperating with international organisations
without the authorities' permission," she said.
The HRFT treated 924 people, including 225 women and 33 children,
in 2003 in its five centres nationwide.
"A guilty verdict against the HRFT executive board members will
sound the death knell for these centres. And what does Ankara want?
To see this annoying institution, which serves as a witness to the
practice of torture, disappear," she said.
2. - Aljazeera - "Straw pushes Turkey's EU bid":
3 March 2004
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has backed Turkey's bid to join the EU, saying the pan-European bloc would benefit from letting the mainly Muslim country in.
"It is for Turkish people to decide whether it is in Turkey's interest to join the European Union, but ... it is in the European Union's interest for Turkey to be inside the EU," Straw told reporters here after meeting his Turkish counterpart Abd Allah Gul.
Turkey has been a formal candidate for EU membership since 1999, but is the only country so far not to have started accession negotiations with the bloc.
EU leaders will decide in December whether Ankara has made sufficient progress in meeting the bloc's political and economic norms to sit down at the negotiating table.
Straw praised NATO-member Turkey for the "huge amount of progress" it has made to improve its democracy and human rights record, which he said was acknowledged by all European leaders.
"I hear very few arguments (against Turkey's accession) because
the progress towards setting a date is something which has been agreed
unanimously by heads of state, government and foreign ministers in
the EU," he said.
3. - Kathimerini (Greece) - "Post-election Greece faces Cyprus talks":
Athens / 3 March 2004
Greece will have to play a leading role in solving the Cyprus issue if the two communities on the island are unable to work out a deal, Foreign Minister Tassos Yiannitsis said yesterday after meeting in Athens with the US State Department’s special coordinator for Cyprus, Thomas Weston. The American official said he had left Cyprus earlier with the impression that things were moving in a positive direction. Greek and Turkish Cypriots, however, remained gloomy.
UN political affairs chief Sir Kieran Prendergast arrived on Cyprus late yesterday to assess progress for Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He said his visit was not a sign that the talks were in trouble. “First, you should see it as a signal of the secretary-general’s intensified personal interest in Cyprus,” he said. “Secondly, with talks being conducted on a daily basis it is not possible for (mediator) Alvaro (de Soto) to go to New York.”
President Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash yesterday indicated that their talks, which are aimed at ending Cyprus’s division before it joins the EU on May 1, have a long way to go. “Today’s meeting was not productive at all,” Papadopoulos said. “Mr Denktash has the opportunity to repeat his vision,” he added, referring to the Turkish Cypriot’s wish to keep the two communities separate and gain recognition for his breakaway state. Denktash charged, “If the Annan plan is accepted without change, the Turkish Cypriots will be destroyed.”
Yiannitsis, in Athens, stressed that the period between March 8,
the day after Greece’s elections, and March 31 will be very important
and “will determine the shape and future of Cyprus.” If
Papadopoulos and Denktash cannot work out a deal on the basis of Annan’s
blueprint for reunification by March 22, Athens and Ankara will be
called in to join the talks until March 29. If there is still no deal,
Annan will fill in the blanks and call separate referenda on the island.
“With its proposals, Greece will have to play a leading role
in the final proposals that the secretary-general will present, especially
in terms of securing a solution in line with the acquis communautaire,”
Yiannitsis said.
"We look forward to a positive decision from the European Council
to set a clear timescale for negotiations in December this year,"
he added.
Political criteria
He also offered his country's help in bringing Turkey up to European
standards in order to begin membership talks with the European Union.
"We have been very strong supporters of Turkey's membership of
the EU... We are ready to give any support we can ... to Turkey in
order to make sure the criteria are met," he added.
Turkey says it has met most of the political criteria required to start negotiations. But Brussels has pointed to some shortcomings, including fundamental freedoms, the political influence of the army and the rights of its sizeable Kurdish minority.
Earlier on Wednesday, Straw attended a ceremony to commemorate the victims of a wave of bombings in Istanbul in November which killed 63 people, including British consul Roger Short.
After meeting Gul, Straw left for Pakistan for talks with President
Pervez Musharraf.
4. - KurdishMedia - "Kurdish Language To Be Used in Iraqi Official Documents, Stamps, Currency":
London / 03 March 2004 / By Bryar Mariwani
Kurdish language is to be used on Iraqi passports, currencies and stamps and other important official identifications, reported the independent Kurdish weekly, Hawlati today, 3 March 2004.
Hawlati reports that according to the recent agreement on the Iraqi constitution laws, which will be formally signed on Friday, the Kirkuk crisis will be delayed until the next two years, when an elected Iraqi government will be established. Meanwhile, the temporary Iraqi government will work on solving Arabistaion in the Kurdistani areas of Kirkuk and its neighbourhoods. The temporary Iraqi government will aid the return of the displaced people and will encourage the return of the Arabs to their places of origins.
Accoring to Hawlati, the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Kurdistan parliament are legalised in the constitution agreement.
For new constitutions to be agreed on, at least 3 governates are needed to decline the constitution through a referendum, which means that if Hewler and Sulaimani and Duhok declined the Iraqi constituion, the constitutions will not take place.
Kurdish language will be legalised as the second official language
of Iraq.
5. - Kathimerini - "Land issues at heart of Cyprus talks":
Denktash urges ‘no’ vote
Athens / 4 March 2004
President Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash yesterday discussed the status of territory that Turkish Cypriots will return to the Greek-Cypriot sector under UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s blueprint for the island’s reunification. Again the two blamed each other for ongoing disagreement.
Late on Tuesday, Denktash said he would urge his people to vote against the plan in the April referendum so a reunited Cyprus can join the EU on May 1. “If the desired revisions are not made to the plan, I will ask my people to reject it,” he told the Turkish-Cypriot Bayrak television channel. “I am surprised at people who say this issue will be finished on May 1,” he said.
Papadopoulos, however, stressed that May 1 was still the target date for a settlement. But he pointed out the deadlock that had arisen because Denktash kept reverting to his demand for two loosely linked states on Cyprus and a reduced number of Greek-Cypriot refugees returning to the north. Papadopoulos has rejected these demands, stressing that they are outside of the framework of Annan’s plan. Denktash described this as the Greek Cypriots’ “shying away from negotiations.”
Yesterday the two men discussed the situation that will apply in the territory that the Turkish Cypriots are to hand over to Greek Cypriots. Annan’s plan calls for a gradual return over between 104 days and three years, but Denktash wants this to be stretched from a year to eight years and eight-and-a-half months. Papadopoulos said also he wants all laws and international treaties necessary for the functioning of the state to be ratified and to be part of the deal that will be put to referenda on both sides of Cyprus. Turkish officials have said their parliament will ratify any agreement in three months. UN political affairs chief Sir Kieran Prendergast attended yesterday’s talks. He will brief Annan in New York tomorrow.
Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was quoted by CNN
Turk news channel as saying Greek Cypriots would only represent the
southern part of Cyprus if they say “no” in the referendum.
The EU has said the whole of Cyprus has joined the EU but that the
acquis communautaire will not apply in the north before a settlement.
6. - AFP - "Jailed Kurd rebel leader Ocalan ordered to do Turkish military service":
ANKARA (Absurdistan) / March 1, 2004
The Turkish authorities may have jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan for life but that has not stopped the army he fought against calling him up for national military service, Hurriyet newspaper reported on Monday.
Ocalan, the head of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PPK), is serving a life sentence on the northwestern prison island of Imrali for leading a 15-year rebellion for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey.
But that has not prevented the enlistment office in his hometown of Halfeti, in the southeast, officially requesting that the authorities responsible for the Imrali area send the 54-year-old rebel to do military service in the Turkish army, Hurriyet said.
Military service is compulsory for all Turkish males once they reach 18. But Hurriyet said the army's demand for Ocalan to complete a duty he had successfully avoided for the last 26 years was only a formality because the PKK leader had no chance of been freed any time soon.
Ocalan was captured in Kenya by Turkish agents in 1999 and put on death row for his part in a conflict with the Turkish army between 1984 and 1999 in which an estimated 36,000 people died.
Ocalan's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2001 after Turkey abolished capital punishment to improve its chances of joining the European Union.
The Kurdish separatist rebellion has all but subsided since 1999.
The PKK has changed its name twice since the capture of its leader
five years ago and in November 2003 announced it was disbanding to
set up a more democratic Kurdish organisation.