23
November 2004
2. "Divisions in Brussels over how to handle Turkey", EU member states seem to be divided into two camps on the practical handling of Turkey’s EU accession course, with differences emerging yesterday on two main points: the dialogue and negotiation required before accession and how to put that into words in the ‘Conclusions’ of the next European Council in December.
3. "Cyprus threat to Turkey's
EU accession talks", officials in Ankara declined to comment
yesterday on remarks at the weekend by George Iacovou, the Greek Cypriot
foreign minister, calling for Turkey to recognise his government.
4. "France said to seek EU "alternative"
for Turkey", France wants European Union leaders to mention
a possible alternative to full membership for Turkey when they decide
next month on opening accession talks, an official French source said
on Monday.
5. "Turkey's population to reach 71.8 mln by end of 2004", the average life span for Turkish women increased to 73.1 years while life span for men rose to 68.3 years.
6. "Welcome to Kurdistan (while it lasts)", Iraq's Kurds want full independence from Baghdad and all the trappings of statehood, but as Charles Glass reports from Irbil, their political leaders know that civil war and tragedy would be the inevitable consequence know the only way to avoid a civil war is to embrace a a form of federalism.
1. - DIHA - "WMA: Ocalan's conditions in Imrali
are unhealthy":
GENEVRE / 23 November 2004
The World Medical Association by criticizing the insulation on Kurdish Public Leader Abdullah Öcalan says the conditions in which Ocalan was held are unhealthy.
The WMA, making a declaration on Ocalan's conditions in Imrali Jail and the legal process carried out by Turkish justice says: ''the only ill person to be under hard conditions is Ocalan '' In the declaration it also took place that Ocalan has not been tried fairly and, in terms of human rights, the execution of his penalty is not at he level of international standards. The statement says the attorneys of Ocalan had difficulty in interviewing with him and the violation of human rights against Ocalan can be characterized under 3 issues: violation of right to live, arbitrary arrestation, unfair judging which was not open to people. The association wanted the insulation on Ocalan to be abolished.
The statement drawing attention to solitariness to which
Ocalan has been convicted of, emphasized that millions of Kurds in Turkey
are not recognized as an ethnic minority and do not have the right to
speak in their own mother tongue.
2. - Cyprus Mail - "Divisions in Brussels over how to handle Turkey":
23 November 2004 / By Myria Antoniadou
EU MEMBER states seem to be divided into two camps on the practical handling of Turkey’s EU accession course, with differences emerging yesterday on two main points: the dialogue and negotiation required before accession and how to put that into words in the ‘Conclusions’ of the next European Council in December.
More specifically, one group of countries, including Cyprus, is opposed to the policy adopted by the Dutch Presidency of essentially avoiding any in-depth discussion. This was raised in the Council of Foreign Ministers yesterday, where Austria, Cyprus, Slovakia, Malta and the Czech Republic highlighted the seriousness of the matter, the problems with domestic public opinion, and the impracticality of not having any discussion.
According to sources, Cyprus’ Foreign Minister George Iacovou focused in particular on the condensed procedures being followed, saying that such a critical issue could not be decided without comprehensive debate and an exchange of views between member states and also with Turkey. Regarding the Council’s conclusions, the minister noted that they should reflect this discussion. In response, the Dutch Presidency said it would enter into negotiation.
However, the Presidency has failed to convince members that it will enter into discussion, but rather seems to support the view of those states preferring to avoid dialogue and wanting to have the conclusions distributed at the Council of Foreign Ministers on December 13 and 14, just three days before the crucial decision of heads of state.
Its position was made clear when it gave member states a questionnaire to fill in on Turkey, consisting of six, mainly technical questions based on the assumption that Turkey would begin accession negotiations. For example, the first question asks when negotiations should start, while the remainder refer to issues like whether negotiations should be open-ended, the control mechanisms and benchmarks that Turkey must reach.
During yesterday’s Council meeting, a number of countries also raised the issue of separating the report in the conclusions on the candidate countries (Turkey and Croatia) so that certain problems could be submitted. At the other end, countries like Britain and Germany are seeking a common, all-inclusive and non-substantive report. The latter argue the same procedure adopted for the enlargement of 10 new countries, that is of ‘grouping’ them, should be followed now.
FOREIGN Minister George Iacovou will have his first meeting
with new Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn this morning in Brussels.
Cyprus’ demands regarding Turkey’s accession path will likely
be on the agenda. The same issues will be discussed with Iacovou’s
European counterparts in the coming days. This Thursday, Iacovou will
be in Germany, and next week in Spain, while meetings with the Foreign
Ministers of France and Britain are also on the horizon.
3. - Financial Times - "Cyprus threat to Turkey's EU accession talks":
ANKARA/NICOSIA/ATHENS / 23 November 2004 /
by Vincent Boland, Andreas Hadjipapas and Kerin Hope
Officials in Ankara declined to comment yesterday on remarks
at the weekend by George Iacovou, the Greek Cypriot foreign minister,
calling for Turkey to recognise his government.
Turkey is insisting it will not recognise the republic of Cyprus ahead
of next month's European Union decision on opening membership talks
with Ankara despite renewed Cypriot threats to veto the move.
The stalemate is looming increasingly large ahead of the EU decision to open accession talks on December 17. Turkey is the only European country that does not recognise the Cyprus government, which it claims represents only the majority Greek Cypriot community on the divided island. It is also the only country that recognises the government of the Turkish enclave in northern Cyprus, which is not part of the EU.
Mr Iacovou listed five conditions he said would have to be met for the Greek Cypriots to agree to the start of accession talks with Ankara.
As well as recognition, these include setting a timetable for the withdrawal of about 35,000 Turkish troops from north Cyprus, the return home of Turkish settlers and measures to protect Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north. Turkey should also lift its ban on Cyprus becoming a member of international organisations such as the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Mr Iacovou said the message to Ankara was: "Help us if you want us to help you, or don't make things difficult for us so we don't make problems for you."
Diplomats in Ankara said yesterday that Turkey would also be unwilling to accept any conditions related to Cyprus attached to the EU's decision on opening membership talks.
The diplomats said recognition of Cyprus was emerging as a "red line" that Turkey would not cross, even if it meant the Cyprus government vetoed the opening of the accession talks. The government has said several times that Turkey would not join the EU "at any cost", which some analysts have said includes recognition of Cyprus.
Costas Karamanlis, Greek prime minister, last week urged Tassos Papadopoulos, the Greek Cypriot leader, to rule out a veto. During a visit to Nicosia, Mr Karamanlis stressed the importance of Turkey's EU membership for regional stability.
But Greek officials said yesterday that Mr Iacovou's remarks
have revived concerns about Greek Cypriot intentions, although Mr Papadopoulos
has so far failed to find any support among EU leaders for his hardline
positions.
4. - Reuters - "France said to seek EU "alternative" for Turkey":
BRUSSELS / 22 November 2004
France wants European Union leaders to mention a possible alternative to full membership for Turkey when they decide next month on opening accession talks, an official French source said on Monday.
The European Commission has recommended the 25-nation bloc open entry talks "without delay" since Ankara had met the EU's basic criteria on democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
French President Jacques Chirac is one of the strongest supporters of Turkey's EU bid but faces strong domestic opposition including in his own conservative UMP party.
The UMP and its future leader, outgoing Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, have demanded the EU offer Turkey a "special partnership" rather than full membership, an idea which Ankara has categorically rejected.
"Jacques Chirac wants negotiations to be opened with the aim of membership," the French source said, citing a start date of the end of 2005 or early 2006 to avoid clashing with planned referendums on the EU constitution.
"But if, for one reason or another, that is not possible, perhaps one could envisage what would be done in case the negotiations did not reach a conclusion," the source added, noting that Austria and the Netherlands also wanted an explicit mention of an alternative in the EU decision.
The exact wording of the Dec. 17 summit decision has yet to be drafted and the French source said it would have to be weighed carefully to avoid alienating Turkey.
Ankara's main European supporters reject any idea of spelling out an alternative to full membership.
"Accession talks are about accession. Period," a British official said.
Turkish leaders vehemently oppose starting negotiations with the possibility of second-class non-citizenship at the end.
The Commission recommendation offered wording intended to assuage critics of Turkish membership without offering an alternative, saying the talks would be open-ended without a guaranteed outcome and proposing the possibility of suspension if Turkey went back on human rights reforms.
Chirac said this month that Turkey might never reach all the standards required for EU membership.
"Naturally one can't underestimate the possibility that in a few years' time we come to realise that ... the road that Turkey has to travel doesn't permit it to adopt all the values of Europe," he said.
"In that case, what has to be found is a means to
create a sufficiently strong link so that there is no separation between
Europe and Turkey, without there being integration."
5. - Turkish Daily News - "Turkey's population to reach 71.8 mln by end of 2004":
The average life span for Turkish women increased to 73.1 years while life span for men rose to 68.3 years
ANKARA / 23 November 2004
Turkey's population is expected to reach 71.8 million by the end of this year, increasing by 966,000 over last year, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday.
It has been estimated that 1.3 million babies will have
been delivered and 456,000 people will have died in Turkey this year,
according to research based on projections made by the State Planning
Organization (DPT), the State Institute of Statistics (DIE) and Hacettepe
University's Population Survey Institute.
Turkey's population stood at 70.84 million at the end of 2003 and is
expected to reach 71.8 million by the end of 2004 and 72.77 million
by the end of 2005.
In line with the current trend, the Turkish population is projected at 80.84 million in 2014 and 88.97 million in 2023, at the 100th anniversary of the Turkish Republic.
There are an estimated 2.5 million people of foreign descent
in Turkey at present, according to the survey.
By the middle of 2004, 28.8 percent of the population consisted of the
0-14 age group, 65.5 percent in the 15-64 age group and 5.7 percent
in the over-65 age group. Turkey's elderly population is expected to
increase in the future.
The average life span for Turkish women increased to 73.1 years while
life span for men rose to 68.3 years.
6. - The Independent - "Welcome to Kurdistan (while it lasts)":
Iraq's Kurds want full independence from Baghdad and all the trappings of statehood, but as Charles Glass reports from Irbil, their political leaders know that civil war and tragedy would be the inevitable consequence know the only way to avoid a civil war is to embrace a a form of federalism
IRBIL / 23 November 2004
In a small government office on the edge of the Iraqi Kurdish capital, three oil paintings show better than words what is driving Iraq towards separation. The first is a dark circle of old men in traditional Kurdish costumes seated on the ground. The others depict two stages in the last great Kurdish tragedy. Refugees trudge a serpent's path through the mountains in one, and the same refugees sit forlornly beside open tents in the other.
Mohammed Ihsan, who is 38 and took his doctorate in law from the University of London, tells visitors what the pictures mean. "He is teaching them to be Kurds," Ihsan says of a man smoking a cigarette in the first portrait. "He" is Mullah Moustafa Barzani, the father of modern Kurdish nationalism who died a defeated warrior in Washington in 1979.
The next two in the triptych depict the escape and arrival of 1991, when the Kurds having rallied to the Americans who instigated and betrayed their revolution fled over the border to Turkey and Iran. Ihsan knows about the flight of 1991. He was part of it. "It was a good thing," he says of a time when thousands of Kurds died. "It united us." The fourth and fifth panels the present and future have yet to be painted.
Iraqi Kurdistan today might be represented by peasants rebuilding the villages that Saddam Hussein destroyed, towns governed by Kurds rather than Arab appointees from Baghdad or Kurds picnicking under their own flag. What would the artist see in the future: an independent state, a province within a federal Iraq or another flight to the mountains? The Kurds fear chaos in the USbacked, interim-governed Arab Iraq is spreading north. Some Kurds would welcome this as the excuse to secede from Iraq and declare the Kurdish independence most want. Others, mainly in the leadership, believe secession would lead to a permanent state of war with the Arab south and, eventually, the loss of all their gains since 1991.
Dr Mohammed Ihsan is minister for human rights in the two north-western Kurdish provinces governed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed by Massoud Barzani, son of the legendary Mullah Moustafa. The third Kurdish province, Suleimania, is under the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), whose leader is Jalal Talabani. Mr Barzani and Mr Talabani have agreed to unite their Kurdish administrations after the January elections, if there are elections.
Both Kurdish zones have human rights ministries, whose officials have full access to jails and prisons, promote women's and children's rights and preach civil rights in schools. Human rights have become paramount to a people whose basic right that to life was abused for 30 years by Baghdad with the complicity of the Kurds' American and British allies. Ministries of human rights do not figure in the Arab world or in the other two states where Kurds live in large numbers, Turkey and Iran. Whatever happens in the rest of Iraq, the Kurds are determined never to return to horrors of the past, even under fellow Kurds.
"Welcome to Kurdistan of Iraq" says the banner over the bridge from Turkey. It would be easier for the Kurds to erase "of Iraq" than to paint out Kurdistan. "Iraq means nothing to me," Dr Ihsan says. "I am not proud of Iraq." Kurds would fight and die for Kurdistan; but they would desert the army as many did in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war rather than die for Iraq. Even in Mosul, where they are fighting Arab insurgents, they say their goal is to protect Kurdish neighbourhoods and Erbil, which is less than an hour's drive away.
Hiro Talabani, the wife of the PUK leader Jalal, says that people cannot forget what the Arab armies of Saddam Hussein and his predecessors did to the Kurds. "But, believe me," she adds, "we will go through it again, if our future goes back to our Arab brothers. There is a little Saddam in the mind of every one of them."
Nowhere is the divergence between the Kurdish leadership and the populace so evident as over the issue of independence. Kurdish leaders have drawn red lines, minimum demands to guarantee their self-government within Iraq and to prove to their electorate that autonomy is almost as good as full independence.
No stable Arab government in Baghdad not that one is emerging would accept the Kurds' conditions for remaining part of Iraq. The first Kurdish demand is for control of the oil city of Kirkuk, whose Kurdish majority was reduced or eliminated. The Arabisation programme, an Arab version of Zionist land confiscation, dispossessed Kurds and replaced them with Arab Shia settlers. All Kurds say Saddam's ethnic cleansing must be reversed, the Shia compensated and sent back to the south and Kirkuk incorporated into the Kurdish administrative area.
Another red line means reversing Saddam's provincial boundary changes that merged parts of Kurdish provinces into Arab governorates. Restoring the pre-Saddam boundaries would add as much as 25 per cent to the existing Kurdish zone above the Green Line that they have controlled since 1991. It would also give the Kurds significant mineral wealth.
Another red line has been drawn around the Iraqi armed forces: no Iraqi army may enter the Kurdish zone without the approval of the Kurdish parliament. A whole generation here and the young are a majority has never seen an Arab soldier or policeman. Those old enough to remember would be more adamant in preventing their return.
Some of these demands were incorporated into the Transitional Administrative Law the Kurds signed with Baghdad on 8 March this year. Kurdish autonomy is hovering perilously close to independence. The Arabs, weaker than the Kurds at present, are unlikely to accept Kurdish dictates forever.
The Arabs see the Kurds, whom they used to dismiss as illiterate mountaineers, taking too much. The Kurds themselves see their leaders giving away their freedom. Mr Barzani and Mr Talabani must be sensitive to their own people, who elected their parties in 1992. "There is public opinion here," says the KDP minister of state Falah Moustafa Bakir in Erbil. "It does not want Kurds to make concessions."
Two million of the four million Kurds living in the Kurdish regional government zone signed a petition demanding a referendum on independence. A recent opinion survey, in the independent weekly Hawaliti (Citizen), showed 44 per cent would vote against the two ruling parties, the KDP and PUK, in regional parliamentary elections.
One reason is the perception that the parties are conceding too much to Baghdad. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Kurdish official acquiescence to Baghdad's demand that nothing be done to return Kirkuk's Kurdish former residents to their homes. Thousands of these internally displaced people went back to Kirkuk, to live in shanty towns. Some are in hovels in the local football stadium, including the confines of the men's lavatories. Most of them say they cannot live much longer without running water, electricity, clinics, jobs or schools.
Kurdish leaders may be leaving the status quo in Kirkuk to make a success of federal Iraq, but it is a federal state their followers do not want. Most Kurds are uneasy about committing Kurdish peshmergas (guerrilla fighters) to the federal army and the Iraqi National Guard. The deputy commander of the PUK's peshmergas, Moustafa Sayed Kadir, told me of plans to transfer 32,000 peshmergas from the PUK and KDP to the Baghdad government. "They will serve inside and outside Kurdistan," he said.
When I suggested that large numbers of Kurdish peshmergas fighting in Arab areas would provoke Arab hostility, he agreed, "You're right. It's crazy to send 10,000 peshmergas to Arab Iraq. I don't want Arab soldiers here or peshmergas there. We have no choice. This is the tax we pay as a result of our Iraqi-ness."
The gravest danger of asking peshmergas to fight for the US in Iraq is to the estimated two million Kurds who live outside the Kurdish zone. "Arabs are starting to see the Kurds as they see the Israelis," says the law professor Nouri Talabany, who heads the Kurdish election commission. And the insurgents have accused the Kurds who had Israeli help for their rebellions in the late 1960s and early 1970s of working with Israeli agents in Iraq.
Mr Barzani and Mr Talabani deny the charge, saying they need no Israeli help. Extremist mullahs have called on followers to kill Kurds because of the Kurdish alliance with the Americans. Many Kurds have been killed in Baghdad, Mosul and other cities because they are Kurds. Hundreds of Kurdish and Christian families have fled the Arab areas for security within the Kurdish protectorate. This trickle is a momentary function of insecurity under the US and the Iraqi interim government, or it is the start of a massive population transfer. "We are a different nation," the KDP chief, Massoud Barzani, says. "Kurds are not Arabs. We happen to live in a place called Iraq. Federalism gives us the right to control our areas. The time is past for the centre to control Kurdistan. We are giving up many of our rights to live in a united Iraq. They are not giving up anything."
Iraq is in fact, if not in law, two countries. Kurds refer to their area as Kurdistan and the rest as "Iraq". If the insurgents win and the Americans leave, the Arabs may try to punish the Kurds for their "betrayal" of Iraq by having become America's Gurkhas.
One day, while I was with a Kurdish government minister, a call came from a minister in the Baghdad government. The Kurdish minister became angry and told him: "Your authority stops at Baquba." Baquba is a town just south of the Green Line between Kurdish and Arab Iraq.
If Baghdad tries to extend its authority north of Baquba, there will be one more war to add to the others that erupted when the US and Britain invaded. Then, the artist can complete his series in harsh shades of charcoal.
CENTURY OF CONFLICT
1918 British forces occupy the oil-rich Ottoman vilayet of Mosul, bringing extensive Kurd population areas under British rule
1943 Mullah Mustafa Barzani leads second uprising
1946 August British RAF bombing forces Kurdish rebels over border into Iran after second uprising
1958 14 July Monarchy overthrown in a coup. Iraq is declared a republic.Constitution recognises Kurdish "national rights" and Mullah Mustafa Barzani returns from exile
1961 KDP is dissolved by the Iraqi government after Kurdish rebellion in north.
1979 President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr is succeeded by Vice-President Saddam Hussein. Mullah Mustafa dies, his son Massoud Barzani takes over at KDP
1980 Outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq. KDP forces work closely with Iran
1988 Iran-Iraq war draws to a close, Iraqi forces launch the "Anfal Campaign" against the Kurds. Tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians and fighters are killed. Thousands more die in a poison gas attack on the town of Halabjah near the Iranian border.
1991 Iraqi forces expelled from Kuwait, Kurds rise up against Saddam but the rebellion halted as US refuses support; 1.5 millions Kurds flee but Turkey closes the border forcing hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in mountains.
1991 April Coalition forces announce a "safe haven"
on the Iraqi side of the border. Aid agencies launch a massive aid operation
to help the refugees