7 May 2004

1. "Europe should recognize Turkey's progress Toward EU membership", in Turkey a sea change is under way - a transformation wrought by the soft power of the European Union. Yet it has gone almost unnoticed by Europe, which just welcomed 10 new members into its ranks.

2. "Turkey's Premier Journeys to Greece", the leader seeks the support of his nation's former foe in Ankara's bid for EU membership.

3. "Turkish army lashes out at government over planned educational reform", Turkey's powerful army on Thursday slammed the Islamist-rooted government over planned educational reforms which many believe will open the way for Islamist supporters to gain university degrees and hold public offices.

4. "Eight Kurdish rebels killed in fighting in southeast Turkey", eight Kurdish rebels have been killed over the past two days in clashes with Turkish security forces in two separate operations in the southeast of the country, local security officials said on Thursday.

5. "Turkey says working on nuclear energy plans", Turkey is working on plans to develop nuclear energy and intends to discuss the proposal soon with companies from nuclear energy-producing countries, Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said on Friday.

6. "Kurds flee Fallujah in fear", thousands of Iraqi Kurds have fled homes in Fallujah to northern Iraq after being threatened by Arab insurgents for supporting the coalition and refusing to fight against the U.S. military.

1. - The International Herald Tribune - "Europe should recognize Turkey's progress Toward EU membership":

ISTANBUL / 6 May 2004 / by Hakan Altinay and Aryeh Neier

In Turkey a sea change is under way - a transformation wrought by the soft power of the European Union. Yet it has gone almost unnoticed by Europe, which just welcomed 10 new members into its ranks.

The list of Turkey's recent accomplishments is long. The death penalty was repealed even though that meant that the most reviled man in the country - Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the violent revolutionary Kurdistan Workers Party - won reprieve. Draconian laws that restricted speech and the press for decades were abolished, ushering in a new era of free expression.

Incommunicado pretrial detention - a practice that facilitated torture - has been abandoned. Another important step to end torture was taken when the law that required superiors to approve investigations was voided. This law had effectively protected torturers against possible punishment.

A state of emergency that curtailed basic liberties in southeast Turkey, where a majority of the Kurds live, was lifted after 25 years. Broadcasting and instruction in the Kurdish language was legalized. Turkey agreed that its courts must incorporate the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in the conduct of domestic trials. The extraordinary powers of the national security council and its secretary general, which subordinated civilian rule to military authority, were eliminated.

For the first time in its recent history, Turkey will spend more money on education in 2004 than on defense.

Turkey has reversed its policy on Cyprus. The results of the referendum on April 24, which showed northern Cyprus clearly backing the reunification of that country, made clear the positive role played by Turkish diplomacy.

This is a remarkable turnaround. Moreover, when war broke out in Iraq, Turkey did not use the occasion to reinstate emergency rule in the southeastern region that borders Iraq. When four bombs exploded in Istanbul in November, killing 61 people and wounding hundreds, there was no move to revert to incommunicado detentions.

Turkey even adopted a freedom of information law, though this is not a specific requirement of the Copenhagen criteria for accession to the European Union. In this respect, Turkey has moved ahead of EU members such as Britain and Germany, which do not have these laws. Reform in Turkey now has a momentum of its own.

That is not to say that the transformation of Turkey is complete. Far from it. Yet the changes up to now are significant. The European Union should take pride in what it has accomplished by agreeing to hold out the prospect of membership when it meets in December to decide whether Turkey can begin official accession talks. If the process is to be sustained, Europe must recognize Turkey's progress.

Without such a gesture, Turkey's drive to reform may stumble. Negative remarks from European leaders have powerful reverberations. For example, several senior European public figures, including Alain Juppé, president of France's Union for a Popular Majority, and Angela Merkel, head of Germany's Christian Democratic Union, proposed to reverse the decision that made Turkey eligible for full membership in the European Union. Their statements met little reproach from other European leaders. This damaged the credibility of the European Union, which confirmed Turkey's eligibility in 1963, 1989 and again in 1999. It is important to remember that the way the EU treats Turkey as a candidate is being watched carefully, especially in the developing world.

The prospect of EU membership has pushed Turkey forward, giving a huge incentive for domestic reforms. Turkey's membership would also be a crucial step for the EU, substantially extending its geographic and demographic zone of peace, prosperity and liberty. It would also help thwart the efforts of those who wish to transform predictions of a clash of civilizations into a poisonous reality.

A European Union that incorporates a Turkey that has made significant headway along the path it is now pursuing would be more dynamic economically, more cosmopolitan and more committed to the values of an open society. This would enhance the EU's moral authority in an era when the values that Europe represents face great challenges from the forces of intolerance in all parts of the world.

Half a century ago, Jean Monnet and his contemporaries set out on daring project. The expansion of the European Union last weekend is a testimony to their foresight. Europeans should now have the courage to include Turkey in that grand project.

Hakan Altinay is director of the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation in Turkey. Aryeh Neier is president of the Open Society Institute in New York.

2. - The Los Angeles Times - "Turkey's Premier Journeys to Greece":

The leader seeks the support of his nation's former foe in Ankara's bid for EU membership.

ANKARA / 7 May 2004 / by Amberin Zaman

Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday became the first Turkish prime minister to visit Greece in 16 years, as the two former enemies sought to shore up their improved relations.

Erdogan hopes during two days of talks to cement Greek support for his government's bid to win the approval of European Union leaders for launching talks that would lead to Turkish membership in the powerful alliance. Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose conservative New Democracy Party took power in March, has pledged to endorse Turkey's candidacy despite recent setbacks over the divided island of Cyprus.

Efforts to reunify Cyprus failed last month when Greek Cypriots voted overwhelmingly to reject a United Nations plan that envisages creating a loose federation of Greek and Turkish states on the island. The Turkish Cypriot minority voted in favor of the deal, which was firmly backed by the European Union, Turkey and the United States.

Rejection of the plan meant that the Turkish Cypriot north, whose government is recognized by only Turkey, was not able to join the EU with the rest of the island when the alliance expanded to 25 members May 1.

Turkey played a major role in galvanizing Turkish Cypriot support for reunification partly to improve its own chances of joining the European bloc. EU leaders had made clear that they would consider opening membership talks with Turkey only if Erdogan's government helped to resolve the 3-decade-old Cyprus dispute.

Shortly after his arrival in Athens, Erdogan joined the Greek prime minister for a private dinner with their wives at Karamanlis' villa northeast of Athens. The two leaders, who last met at a summit in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital, in April, are said to get along well even though they do not share any common language.

Turkish officials involved in the talks said the Greeks were likely to call for a revival of the U.N. plan but demand that it be modified in ways that would garner Greek Cypriot support. They declined to speculate on what the Greek proposals would entail.

"I believe Erdogan will be open to such proposals because he has pinned his own political future on securing a date to start membership talks with the European Union," said Hasan Unal, a professor of international relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, the Turkish capital. "Despite his public pronouncement to the contrary, I believe that in private he will be flexible."

Another thorny issue likely to come up between the two leaders is the long-running dispute over rival territorial claims in the Aegean Sea, which separates Turkey from Greece. The two countries came to the brink of war in 1996 over a pair of tiny Aegean rock islets inhabited by goats. Only last-minute intervention by President Clinton helped to avert a conflict between the two nations, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Relations have steadily improved since Greece and Turkey rushed to each other's aid after powerful earthquakes shook both countries in 1999. Over the last year, diplomats from the two nations have met more than 20 times to try to resolve the Aegean dispute.

There has been little progress on Greek demands for Turkey to reopen a centuries-old seminary that was shut down in 1970 after a Turkish military coup. Greek Orthodox clergy were long trained at the site, on an island off Istanbul. Generations of ecumenical patriarchs — the various Christian Orthodox denominations' equivalent of the popes — were educated there.

Greek officials have hinted that unless Turkey agrees to reopen the theological school by December, Greece might withdraw its support for Turkey's bid to join the EU.

Erdogan is also scheduled to travel to the region known as Western Thrace, home to about 100,000 ethnic Turks. He will be the first Turkish leader in half a century to visit the lands formerly ruled by the Ottoman Turks.

Turkey has long accused Greece of discriminating against its Turkish minority. Greece denies the claims.

3. - AFP - "Turkish army lashes out at government over planned educational reform":

ANKARA / 6 May 2004

Turkey's powerful army on Thursday slammed the Islamist-rooted government over planned educational reforms which many believe will open the way for Islamist supporters to gain university degrees and hold public offices.

"It is obvious that practices outside the (existing legal) framework will harm the principles of unity of education and that of secular education," the general staff said in a statement.

"This is why institutions and people who are fully committed to the basic tenets of the republic cannot be expected to support the draft," it added.

The draft, submitted to parliament on Wednesday, seeks to make it easier for graduates of religious schools to pass the country's notoriously complicated university entrance exams.

Religious schools in Turkey, which by law are tasked with educating preachers and other Muslim clergy, are regarded by many as hothouses for Islamist political movements.

Under the existing university entrance system, it is almost impossible for graduates of such schools to win a place at institutions of higher education other than divinity faculties.

The measure effectively serves to block Islamist-leaning Turks from obtaining degrees that would later allow them to hold government jobs.

The army said religious schools were described in two different education laws as vocational schools whose graduates went on to study at university departments related to their vocation.

It charged that the bill contradicted these codes and had the potential to lead to "serious problems" at a time when the country was already dealing with other important matters.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government argues that graduates of the vocational high schools, which include religious schools, should be given equal opportunity when it comes to examinations to continue their education in whatever field they chose.

Erdogan is himself a graduate of such a high school.

The government originally tried to adopt the reform in October, but it backed down in the face of a wave of criticism, including by the army.

The army keeps a wary eye on Erdogan's Justice and Development Partyfor its Islamist past, while the party asserts that it has disavowed its Islamist origins and now holds true to democracy and secularism.

4. - AFP - "Eight Kurdish rebels killed in fighting in southeast Turkey":

DIYARBAKIR / 6 May 2004

Eight Kurdish rebels have been killed over the past two days in clashes with Turkish security forces in two separate operations in the southeast of the country, local security officials said on Thursday.

The eight were believed to be from the Kurdistan People’s Congress (KONGRA-GEL), an offshoot of the outlawed group formerly known as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Seven were killed in a security operation in a mountainous region near the town of Eruh in the province of Siirt on Wednesday and Thursday, the governor’s office said in a statement.

Another was killed in a separate operation near the town of Ercuss in the neighbouring province of Batman, officials said.

It was earlier reported that a government militiaman was killed by rebels and four others were wounded in a clash in Guzeldere, near Genc, in neighbouring Bingol province.

The PKK led a 15-year armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast 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.

Turkish officials estimate that about 5,000 Kurdish rebels have since found refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq, which borders southeastern Turkey.

5. - Turkish Newsline - "Turkey says working on nuclear energy plans":

7 May 2004

Turkey is working on plans to develop nuclear energy and intends to discuss the proposal soon with companies from nuclear energy-producing countries, Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said on Friday.

ANKARA (Reuters) - He told reporters officials had reached the stage of preparing tender specifications and were looking at possible locations for a nuclear power station, including Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast.

"Our preference is for the private sector to do this, but if necessary we will," Guler said, noting that tenders for a nuclear power station had been opened twice before but were unsuccessful.

The previous government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit put plans to build Turkey's first nuclear power plant on hold in July 2000 to wait for the country's finances to stabilise.

Turkey's treasury had refused to provide financing guarantees for the multi-billion dollar Akkuyu project, arguing that the country's IMF accord at that time forbade such large guarantees.

Ankara currently has a $19 billion loan deal with the IMF which ends in February 2005.

The project had also faced environmentalist opposition focusing on concerns that the planned site lay too close to active earthquake fault lines and that it might deter tourists from visiting Turkey's Mediterranean coastline.

6. - The Washington Times - "Kurds flee Fallujah in fear":

KALAR / 7 May 2004 / by Michael Howard

Thousands of Iraqi Kurds have fled homes in Fallujah to northern Iraq after being threatened by Arab insurgents for supporting the coalition and refusing to fight against the U.S. military.

More than 2,000 people have arrived since April 9 in the Kurdish town of Kalar near the Iranian border, according to officials of the Kurdish regional government. Others are scattered in the large Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah.

Fallujah was relatively calm yesterday as military action centered on the southern city of Najaf, where U.S. forces captured the governor's office in fighting that killed an estimated 40 Shi'ite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr.

A suicide bomber exploded a car in Baghdad killing five Iraqi civilians and a U.S. soldier near an entrance to the heavily guarded Green Zone. The blast wounded 25 persons, including two U.S. soldiers.
Displaced and traumatized families arriving from Fallujah in Kalar yesterday said a mixture of die-hard Saddam loyalists and foreign "mujahideen" were accusing Kurdish residents in the city of being traitors and collaborators.

Others said the insurgents had chosen to conduct their attacks on U.S. forces from the rooftops and narrow lanes of the mainly Kurdish Jolan district -- which saw the fiercest fighting between guerrillas and Marines -- knowing that any retaliatory fire would destroy Kurdish houses and civilians.

"On the first day of the fighting, a masked man came to my husband and told him either to fight the Americans, leave the city or die," said Sobyar Abdullah, who escaped Fallujah on foot with her husband and five children.

"He demanded that we leave our house, so the fighters could take control."

Mrs. Abdullah said four masked guerrillas then charged through their living room and up to the roof, from which they fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. forces before moving to another house.

"My children were terrified," she said. "We had just got out when the Americans fired back. Now everything is rubble."

Their lives in turmoil after the war to remove Saddam and the recent fighting, Mrs. Abdullah and her family refused to blame the destruction of her home on U.S. forces.

"They are not Americans; they are angels sent from God to free us from Saddam," she said.

Aryan Raouf, director of the local office of the Ministry of Human Rights in Kalar, said, "There was a deliberate tactic by terrorists and Arab chauvinists to take the fighting to the Kurdish homes and threaten anyone who objected."

Mr. Raouf said many of the displaced families were too terrified of reprisals by Arab fighters to return to their homes in the volatile heart of the Sunni triangle.

"Much of the Arab world has hailed the Fallujah insurgents as heroes fighting the U.S. occupation, but these stories of fear and intimidation by their Arab compatriots tell a different story," he said.
Many of the families were originally from the border area near Kalar but were expelled to Fallujah by Saddam in the 1970s, said Saman Shawkat of the Kurdistan Children's Nest, a local organization trying to help those displaced by the Fallujah fighting.

"They have taken refuge among friends and relatives but hail from poor families in the Kalar area and are now an added burden on them," he said. "They need help to rebuild their lives in the relative calm of Iraqi Kurdistan."

Malihah Osman, whose 19-member family is crammed into two spartan cinderblock dwellings, said graffiti promoting the killing of Kurds had begun to appear on walls near the home she abandoned in Fallujah.
"We came to Kalar with just our ID cards and are too afraid to go back to Fallujah, even for our belongings," she said.

Fazhil Tawfiq, who ran a video-repair workshop in an Arab district in Fallujah, said opinion in the city had turned against Kurds after the participation of Kurdish fighters in the newly formed Iraqi security forces that helped fight the insurgents.

"They are vowing the Kurds will pay for supporting the Americans. It reminds me of the days of Saddam," he said.

Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of the Iraqi population, were strong supporters of the war to remove the former regime and have remained staunchly supportive of U.S. forces.

But many have been alarmed by the resurfacing of anti-Kurdish sentiments among Sunni Arabs and supporters of Sheik al-Sadr.

Gunmen yesterday assassinated a prominent Kurdish official in Kirkuk in a drive-by shooting that also killed his driver and wounded his wife.

Also, a bomb exploded in front of the headquarters of one of the two main Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.