10 May 2004

1. "Dutch court gives go ahead for PKK leader's extradition", the Netherlands' highest court on Friday upheld an extradition request by Turkey for one of the most senior members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting for self-rule in the southeast of the country.

2. "Turkey orders sermons on women's rights", Turkey's young governing party, with roots in political Islam, has confounded critics and some supporters alike by transforming the nation's 70,000 mosques into bully pulpits from which preachers advocate women's rights and other democratic reforms.

3. "Blair, Chirac say Turkey will join EU, but process will be long", British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac both insisted Sunday that Turkey would eventually join the European Union, but that the process would be long and challenging.

4. "France's Sarkozy Says Turkey Shouldn't Be Allowed to Join EU", French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Turkey mustn't be allowed to join the European Union, raising concern France will prevent the start of talks on Turkish membership of the world's largest trading bloc.

5. "Turkey's Parliament Approves Constitutional Reforms", Turkey's parliament approved constitutional reforms that reduced the influence of the military. The changes may ease the way for accession talks with the European Union, said analysts including Mumtaz Soysal, a professor of constitutional law at Ankara University.

6. "Greece, Turkey look to the future", Karamanlis and Erdogan, in friendly talks, stress commitment to improvement in relations.

7. "A strange country", Turkish politicians apply "double standards" towards torture.

8. "Two soldiers killed in mine explosion in southeast Turkey", two Turkish soldiers were killed when an army vehicle hit a mine believed to have been planted by Kurdish rebels in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast, local security sources said Monday.

1. - AFP - "Dutch court gives go ahead for PKK leader's extradition":

THE HAGUE / 7 May 2004

The Netherlands' highest court on Friday upheld an extradition request by Turkey for one of the most senior members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting for self-rule in the southeast of the country.

"The final decision (regarding extradition) lies with the minister of justice, who will announce his decision in a few weeks time," justice ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes told AFP after the Netherlands Supreme Court decision.

The Turkish authorities accuse Nuriye Kesbir of being behind at least 25 attacks on military targets in eastern Turkey between 1993 and 1995.

Kesbir was a member of the PKK's presidential council and as such played an important role within the organisation, working closely with Osman Ocalan, the brother of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

She has always denied being involved in the attacks and claims she dealt only with women's issues. The PKK led a bloody 15-year armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey, claiming more than 36,000 lives.

It has largely subsided since 1999 when Abdullah Ocalan was captured and the group later declared a ceasefire to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Friday's decision overturns an earlier judgement by the Amsterdam appeals court which ruled in December 2002 that Turkey had failed to explain satisfactorily the role it thought Kesbir had played in the attacks.

The Kurdish leader, who has said she fears an unfair trial and torture if she returns to Turkey, immediately announced she would begin a hunger strike to protest the decision.

Her lawyer Victor Koppe said he was determined to use all legal means available to prevent his client from being extradited, including an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in the French city of Strasbourg.

Kesbir was arrested at Amsterdam airport in September 2001. She claimed political asylum in the Netherlands, which was turned down.

2. - Chicago Tribune - "Turkey orders sermons on women's rights":

Reforms preached in 70,000 mosques

ISTANBUL / 9 May 2004 / by Catherine Collins

Turkey's young governing party, with roots in political Islam, has confounded critics and some supporters alike by transforming the nation's 70,000 mosques into bully pulpits from which preachers advocate women's rights and other democratic reforms.

The government's Directorate of Religious Affairs, which dictates the all-important Friday sermons, has instructed the nation's imams to turn their spiritual guidance to the arena of human rights and ridding Turkey of unwanted vestiges of traditional society.

Rather than the calls to holy war that echo through mosques in some parts of the world, worshipers here are being told that "honor killings," in which men murder female relatives suspected of tarnishing the family name, are a sin as well as against the law.

Those attending services also are hearing about formerly taboo subjects, such as a need for equality of the sexes in the home and the workplace and women's reproductive rights.

Liberals pleased

The messages have pleased liberal Turks, many of whom had feared that the Justice and Development Party's sudden rise to power in November 2002 would herald a retreat to conservative religious policies because of the party's ties to Turkey's Islamic political wing.

But the sermons are only one of many signals that the government appears to have embraced secular democracy and rejected the orthodoxy of religious fundamentalism practiced by some of its conservative core of supporters.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's recent efforts to persuade Turkish Cypriots to approve a referendum to unify the divided island of Cyprus and his government's adoption of legal and constitutional reforms aimed at gaining membership in the European Union have won him and his party international praise.

But in this predominantly Muslim country, from which the Ottomans once ruled the Islamic world, the most significant change might just be the simple idea of using Friday prayers to emphasize the rights of women.

The architect of the transformation is Ali Bardakoglu, the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, which regulates religious practices in Turkey.

A former academic with a mild manner, Bardakoglu has taken the unusual step of consulting numerous women's groups and physicians as part of an effort to craft sermons addressing women's issues.

"To have the head of the Religious Affairs Ministry seeing women's rights as important may in itself bring about change," said Yakin Erturk, the new UN Human Rights Commission's representative on violence against women. "He can reach people the human-rights advocates often cannot--the 15 million men in Turkey who attend services every Friday."

Sermons called `revolutionary'

Halime Guner, a member of Flying Broom, one of the women's groups consulted, described the new sermons as "revolutionary."

Bardakoglu said the country's religious practices must parallel the modernization under way in other sectors of Turkish society. Part of that transformation, he said, involves using the influences of imams to point out that abuses of human rights, particularly women's rights, do not originate in Islam.

"In modern Middle Eastern society, when you say `women's rights,' not everyone or every country has the same understanding of the term," he said. "Not only in Turkey but also throughout the Islamic world, we are trying to help these issues be better understood."

Bardakoglu said the government would prefer that the imams write their own sermons, but he said the majority of the preachers could not deliver the right message because they lack the proper training and resources.

As a result, a committee of 16 religious scholars affiliated with his agency prepares the sermons for the Friday services, and the messages are dispatched across the country. The imams, who are civil servants, risk losing their jobs if they do not deliver the sermons, though they are free to make their own comments afterward.

Eventually, Bardakoglu said, he hopes a majority of imams will be allowed to craft their own sermons, reflecting the simultaneous progress of religion and democracy in Turkey.

Not everyone is pleased with the process. Some conservative preachers bristle at the control exercised from Ankara, the nation's capital, angered as much by the meddling in religious affairs as the messages.

"In a secular state, which Turkey is supposed to be, this is not right," said Abdullah Sezer, imam at a mosque in Istanbul's conservative Fatih neighborhood. "But we do not have religious freedom in this country, the way they have it in the United States."

But a younger imam, who asked that his name not be used, said the government plays an important role.

"As a citizen and as a Muslim, I think government control is helpful," he said. "Without it, some mosques could go out of control."

The government-dictated sermons would seem to violate the strict secular tenets on which modern Turkey was founded in 1923. But the definition of secular here differs slightly from the American practice of separating church and state by tolerating all religions equally. In Turkey, as in France, there is a stricter understanding of secularism, which results in a ban on wearing head scarves in schools or beginning a parliamentary session with a prayer.

Imams resistant

In an attempt to eradicate religion from government, the staunchly secular Turkish military in 1996 ousted a prime minister it considered too Islamic, and the state established control over the mosques. Through the Religious Affairs Directorate, the state pays the salaries of the imams and regulates how religious schools are run.

Bardakoglu acknowledged, however, that getting the imams not only to deliver the sermons but also to embrace their sentiments will take time.

"It is a challenge for the imams that people close their ears to such things," he said. "The resistance is normal, though. It shows that change has begun."

An area where change cannot come fast enough for most Turks is honor killings. There is no reliable record of the numbers of victims annually, but it is thought that relatives kill dozens of Turkish women every year for supposedly besmirching the family honor.

The problem was dramatized in late February when two brothers shot their 22-year-old sister to death as she lay in a hospital bed in Istanbul. She had given birth to a child out of wedlock a few months earlier and was recovering from an earlier attempt on her life.

The Religious Affairs Directorate reacted immediately, bumping another sermon off the schedule. Bardakoglu issued a statement saying that honor killings are only one of the many problems faced by women around the world.

"These problems do not arise from a religious source," he said at the time. "These problems are caused by social, cultural and economic reasons. ... The fact that 14 centuries after the Koran was revealed to us women still face discrimination is saddening and thought-provoking."

3. - AFP - "Blair, Chirac say Turkey will join EU, but process will be long":

PARIS / 9 May 2004

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac both insisted Sunday that Turkey would eventually join the European Union, but that the process would be long and challenging.

"The integration of Turkey into European norms will be long and difficult," Chirac told 400 university students gathered at his Elysee presidential palace to celebrate Europe Day.

"But it will happen and it is desirable for that to happen," the French leader added, with Blair by his side for the question-and-answer session.

Chirac said Ankara had made important strides toward fulfilling the political and economic criteria for EU membership, but acknowledged: "It still has to make some efforts."

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.

The EU has said it will consider setting a date by the end of the year for the start of membership talks with Ankara. But Chirac said late last month that negotiations for Turkish membership would last at least 10 years.

Blair -- who has been a strong supporter of Turkey's future EU membership -- said Ankara's bid would present a "great challenge", noting: "What's important is that the conditions are applied to Turkey as they would be to anyone else.

"What determines the speed and process of Turkey's application for European membership are the rules. The rules we set out for all European countries are the rules that we should apply to Turkey too."

According to a recent opinion poll, some 61 percent of the French are against Turkey's entry into the EU. Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP) has also said it is opposed.

4. - Bloomberg - "France's Sarkozy Says Turkey Shouldn't Be Allowed to Join EU":

PARIS / 9 May 2004

French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Turkey mustn't be allowed to join the European Union, raising concern France will prevent the start of talks on Turkish membership of the world's largest trading bloc.

``Turkey isn't European, neither by its geography, not by its culture, nor by its history,'' Sarkozy said at a convention of the UMP, President Jacques Chirac's party, in the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. ``Its place isn't in Europe.''

The European Commission will draft a report on Turkey's membership prospects later this year, with EU leaders deciding in December whether the country can start accession talks. Turkey needs to reduce the military's influence over public life and improve its record on human rights, the EU says.

The Turkish government, which first applied to join the EU in 1959, says a start to accession talks would encourage foreign investment in Turkey, whose population of 70 million almost equals that of the 10 countries joining the EU on May 1.

Turkey should have ``privileged'' agreements with the EU, rather than being a full member, Sarkozy said, adding that any membership bid by Turkey should be ratified by a referendum in France. Sarkozy was speaking as the UMP launched its campaign for European parliamentary elections on June 13.

`Desirable'

President Chirac on the other hand called Turkey's integration into the EU ``desirable.''

EU leaders will continue to negotiate with Turkey so that ``membership talks are started as soon as possible,'' Chirac told students whom he addressed with U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair in Paris. Membership talks could take 15 years, Chirac said last month.

The French finance minister, the most popular member of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's party, also said a European constitution under discussion among the 25 EU members should be adopted by referendum.

The EU expanded to 25 members from 15 at the start of the month, when the Greek Cypriots, Malta and eight central and eastern European countries joined. Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia are seeking to join the union in 2007.

5. - Bloomberg - "Turkey's Parliament Approves Constitutional Reforms":

ANKARA / 9 May 2004

Turkey's parliament approved constitutional reforms that reduced the influence of the military. The changes may ease the way for accession talks with the European Union, said analysts including Mumtaz Soysal, a professor of constitutional law at Ankara University.

Lawmakers voted for a second time on reforms to banish military representatives from boards that oversee broadcasting and higher education and to scrap special courts used to try political crimes. Parliament approved the changes by 457 votes to eight.

``These changes will institutionalize democracy in Turkey and render rights and freedoms permanent,'' Justice Minister Cemil Cicek told parliament after the amendments were approved.

Turkey needs to reduce the military's influence over public life and improve its record on human rights, the EU says. The government expects accession talks to boost direct foreign investment in Turkey, which has lagged behind all other members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in the past decade. It would also cut interest rates on Turkey's debt.

``I think these amendments, added to others made in the past, will satisfy the EU as far as reforms to the constitution go,'' Soysal said. ``Now, the most critical issue for the Union is implementation of political and social reforms.''

The European Commission will draft a report on Turkey's membership prospects in June, with EU leaders deciding in December whether the country can start accession talks.

New Constitution

``This new package shows once again the strong commitment of Turkey to political reforms,'' the Brussels-based commission said in a statement. The commission also called on Turkey to address the outstanding issues related to EU eligibility.

The government plans to pass another package of changes to the constitution to strengthen the independence of the judiciary and basic rights and freedoms for Turkey's citizens, Cicek said, without saying when parliament would tackle the laws.

The current constitution was drawn up under military rule in 1982 and amended on several occasions since then. Turkey's president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, has 15 days after today to approve the changes. He can return the laws to parliament or ask the Constitutional Court to have them revoked.

``The European Parliament has said it wants a new constitution, but I think the current constitutional reform package addresses the European Commission's concerns,'' said Simon Quijano-Evans, an analyst at Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG in Vienna.

Changes to the constitution may not be enough in themselves to ensure talks with the EU.

Implementation

Turkey must fully implement previous democratic reforms, including measures to eradicate torture and secure rights for the country's Kurds, before negotiations can begin, say EU leaders including French President Jacques Chirac. Turkey may become a member within 15 years, Chirac said last week.

The EU recently condemned a decision by a Turkish court to uphold a guilty verdict on a former Kurdish lawmaker and three colleagues. The EU regards all four as political prisoners and won't consider membership for a country with such prisoners, Jean- Christophe Filori, spokesman for the European Commission, has said.

Welcoming Turkey, with a mostly Muslim population of 70 million, means the EU's borders would include more than half a billion people. Turkey's population is almost equal to that in the 10 members who joined the bloc on May 1.

Tony Blair

The EU should accept Turkey to prove that Western nations are opposed only to violent Muslim groups, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in March. Blair, a supporter of Turkey's candidacy along with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, plans to visit Ankara on May 17.

Turkey first applied to join the EU, then known as the European Economic Community, in 1959. It signed a customs union with the bloc in 1995 and became an official candidate for membership in 1999.

Turkey's generals, seen by many Turks as the guardians of secularism, may be concerned the government might use the revisions to the constitution in an attack against the nation's secular principles, Soysal said.

The military, which led a campaign to oust a predecessor of the ruling Justice and Development Party in 1997, yesterday opposed a separate government plan to ease curbs on religious schools, saying it would ``harm the principles of secular education.''

Investors are concerned any conflict in public between the military and government may harm Turkey's changes of joining the EU. The lira extended recent losses after the military's statement. It shed 0.65 percent to 1,512,500 to the dollar, heading for its lowest level in six months.

``Cynics in the EU might question why the military is even commenting on the issue given the ``spirit'' of the raft of EU reform legislation passed over recent months, which aims to boot the military out of Turkish politics,'' said Tim Ash, an economist at Bear Stearns in London, in a note to investors.

6. - Kathimerini (Greece) - "Greece, Turkey look to the future":

Karamanlis and Erdogan, in friendly talks, stress commitment to improvement in relations

ATHENS / 8 May 2004

Prime ministers Costas Karamanlis and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Athens yesterday and confirmed the very good climate in relations between traditional rivals Greece and Turkey and their wish for a future of peaceful cooperation freed of the burdens of the past.

Despite their being neighbors, Erdogan's is only the fifth official visit to Greece by a Turkish prime minister since 1952. The two countries also nearly came to war in 1974, when Turkey invaded Cyprus, and in 1987, when Turkey sent an oil drilling ship into disputed waters in the Aegean. A year later, Turgut Ozal was the last Turkish prime minister to pay an official visit to Greece. In 1996 they nearly went to war over a disputed islet in the eastern Aegean.

Following a three-hour private dinner at Karamanlis's private residence on Thursday night and official talks at his office yesterday, both men stressed the friendly climate and the wish to solve problems between the two countries.

«Mr Erdogan and I confirmed our political will to strengthen cooperation further at all levels and to exploit to the fullest degree the current positive momentum,» Karamanlis said. «I assured him of the Greek government's support, and mine personally, in Turkey's moves toward closer ties with Europe and the reforms that Mr Erdogan is promoting.»

Erdogan, repeatedly referring to the personal friendship that he and Karamanlis have developed over the past few years, promised that the Halki Seminary in Turkey will soon reopen and expressed the wish for a peaceful settlement of differences between the two countries.

«What we say is that we must look to the future. We must leave past incidents in the past,» Erdogan said.

Karamanlis said that the two sides had decided that talks aimed at delineating the Aegean's continental shelf would continue beyond December and that there was no commitment to take the issue to the International Court of Justice at The Hague by the time the EU is to decide whether to give Ankara a date for the start of accession talks. Although the EU summit at Helsinki in 1999 had suggested this deadline, sources said that Greece and Turkey would agree to take the issue to The Hague only if they had already come to an agreement.

Erdogan is to pay a private visit to Western Thrace today, where he will meet with members of Greece's Muslim minority and the staff of the Turkish consulate in Komotini. He will also meet with Macedonia-Thrace Minister Nikos Tsiartsionis and Deputy Foreign Minister Evripidis Stylianidis.

On the official leg of his visit yesterday, Erdogan met with President Costis Stephanopoulos, held talks with Karamanlis and met with Parliament Speaker Anna Psarouda-Benaki and Greece's political party leaders. He was awarded the gold medal of the City of Athens by Mayor Dora Bakoyannis. Erdogan and Karamanlis spoke at a meeting of the Greek-Turkish Business Council and also at an official dinner in the Turkish leader's honor last night.

Erdogan, who visited Athens shortly after his party won elections in November 2002 but was not yet prime minister, declared his happiness at being in Greece. «You know, I was born in Istanbul. I grew up there. When I was a child, I worked for some Greek businessmen. They were my employers and I always remember them with gratitude,» he told a joint news conference with Karamanlis. He noted that in the past five years the two countries had signed 25 bilateral agreements. «It makes me especially happy that many of the issues concerning the two countries can now be discussed at a bilateral level and not through third parties,» he said.

An expansion in economic relations was one of the main issues the two prime ministers discussed. Karamanlis stressed that one of his intentions was «to examine the possibility of our cooperation in the transportation of oil.»

7. - Sabah - "A strange country":

Turkish politicians apply "double standards" towards torture

10 May 2004 / by Semih Idiz

Since the photos of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners came out, we’ve been hearing people say, ‘This is too much,’ ‘it’s a crime against humanity’ and ‘this shames the US.’ The photos are truly disgusting. No matter if they are from the US or Turkey, such torturers lack a proper sense of humanity. Such reactions from our officials, politicians and the nation should please us, and they do. However, there’s a great contradiction here. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

‘These pictures are disgusting and make me feel ashamed as a US citizen,’ one US diplomat told me yesterday. ‘If this is what we do, what have we got to offer to the world? These torturers aren’t aware of the damage they did to our flag and our nation. So we must punish them to satisfy the nation’s conscience. Not only others, but the American people want this as well.’

However, he didn’t hide his anger at Turkey’s ‘moral outrage’ against the US over this torture. Complaining about Turks’ ‘double standards,’ he said, ‘With such outrage, one would think that Turkey is completely innocent.

What Turkish leader owned up to the torture, as President George W. Bush did, and said that such people blackened the name of your country? What government minister of yours was obliged to face the representatives of the nation like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did?’

Then I suddenly remembered the torturers who had stayed hidden for years, the courts which didn’t give them the punishment they deserved, and dirty bloody campaigns against human rights campaigners. Then I thought, ‘Our country is really strange. Who do we think we’re fooling’?

8. - AFP - "Two soldiers killed in mine explosion in southeast Turkey":

DIYARBAKIR / 10 May 2004

Two Turkish soldiers were killed when an army vehicle hit a mine believed to have been planted by Kurdish rebels in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast, local security sources said Monday.

The explosion, near the town of Lice in Diyarbakir province, occured on Sunday when the soldiers were on patrol duty, the sources added.

The mine was believed to have been planted by rebels from the Kurdistan People's Congress (KONGRA-GEL), an offshoot of the outlawed group formerly known as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The PKK led a 15-year armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey which claimed more than 36,000 lives. Its rebellion has been largely stalled since 1999, when PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured and the group declared a ceasefire to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

The PKK has since changed its name twice and announced in November 2003 that it was disbanding to set up a more democratic Kurdish organisation.