1. "Torture Defendants are Mostly Acquitted", the June, July and September reports of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation show that defendants facing charges of torture are mostly acquitted.

2. "'Mother Tongue' Problem in Children's Rights", Prof. Polat said Turkey still didn't pass harmonization laws about the Children's Rights Convention, 15 years after adopting it. According to Polat, institutions responsible for serving children have many shortcomings.

3. "EU, Turkish leaders meet ahead of crucial December decision", Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul meets here Wednesday with EU leaders in the last high-level talks between the two sides in the run-up to December 17 when Turkey faces the moment of truth on its bid to join the European Union.

4. "Gül tells Powell time to act on PKK", Turkey says time has come for talks on how to eliminate the PKK presence in Iraq’s north and laments Turkish people’s sympathy for US wears thin over slowness to act against the group.

5. "More than 1,000 Iranian Kurd refugees fled camp in Iraq: UNHCR", more than 1,000 Iranian Kurds have fled a refugee camp in Iraq and are missing amid insecurity near the Iraqi flashpoint town of Ramadi, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday.

6. "Iraq's Hoshyar Zebari: guerrilla turned statesman", foreign minister is blunt on country's future: 'If we lose, the region will be hell'.

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1. - Bianet - "Torture Defendants are Mostly Acquitted":

The June, July and September reports of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation show that defendants facing charges of torture are mostly acquitted.

ANKARA / 25 November 2004

According to the reports for the last four months of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TIHV), most police officers, which stood trial for death under detention, torture and bad treatment, were acquitted, while some were handed the lowest possible punishment. Many trials lasted for years.

Following are some examples taken from the report:

Human Rights in Turkey: September 2004 Report

Trials on Deaths under Detention

Birtan Altinbas: On September 10, a Turkish court ruled on the case in which police officers Naip Kilic and Ahmet Bastan were being charged for the death of Birtan Altinbas while he was under detention.

The court acquitted retired police officer Naip Kilic and sentenced retired police officer Ahmet Bastan to eight years in prison for "accidentally killing a person." The sentence was then reduced to four years, five months and 10 days in prison.

Trials and Probes on Torture and Bad Treatment

Siddik Onay: According to lawyer Sehmus Kabadayi, the preliminary inquiry about the torturing of Siddik Onay, who was detained in Diyarbakir on May 25, 2002, has still not been completed after 2,5 years.

Kabadayi said that forensic medical reports proved that Onay, who was detained along with another person known as "Kurd Mustafa," was tortured. The lawyer added that Onay applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) with torture complaints.

"In very comprehensive cases where collecting evidence takes time, an inquiry period can last two years," said lawyer Kabadayi. "But our case is not like that. We already had all the evidence and presented it to the prosecutors."

Senol Gurkan: On September 9, an Ankara court continued to try police officers Murat Dedeoglu (the son of Ibrahim Dedeoglu, who was charged for the death of Birtan Altinbas under detention), Rifat Dogru, Gurah Ayhan, Atanur Arslan, Erdal Simsek, Ahmet Horoz, Tekin Tasliova, Recep Comert and Mustafa Usul, for torturing university student Senol Gurkan for six days during which he was under detention.

At the same time the Ankara prosecutor's office dismissed proceedings about Kadri Tuncel, who allegedly tortured Senol Gurkan at the Ankara Police Headquarters. Senol Gurkan had identified Kadri Tuncel who was sitting among audiences during the hearing on November 5, 2003.

The Ankara prosecutor's office decided there was no ground for legal action against Tuncel citing the fact that, "the case was already in opened and in progress, Tuncel's name had not been mentioned during the questioning, Gurkan did not identify Kadri Tuncel when he looked at the photographs of suspects, and that he identified him two years after the incident."

Ferhat Kaya: Ferhat Kaya, the local head of the Democratic People's Party in Ardahan, was detained on May 5. Eleven police officers were later sued for "bad treatment" of Ferhat Kaya during the time of his detention.

A court on September 27, ruled that there was not enough evidence and acquitted police officers, Nebile Karaman, Ergun Karakus, Ercan Yaman, Osman Kocabas, Ozer Celik, Karaman Edis, Sener Emir, Yalcin Yildiz, Selim Cam, Recep Cesur and Yunus Ulus.

Muslum Turfan, Ahmet Turan, Dincer Erduvan: Muslum Turfan, Ahmet Turan, Dincer Erduvan, all employees of the Kizil Bayrak (Scarlet Flag) and Ekim (October) magazines were detained on November 11, 1998.

Police officers Mehmet Hallac, Seref Bayrakci, Mahmut Yildiz and Ahmet Okuducu were sued for torturing the detainees. On September 30 an Istanbul court acquitted the police officers, citing lack of adequate evidence.

Human Rights in Turkey: July 2004 Report

Trials and Probes on Torture and Bad Treatment

A group of human rights activists were detained in June 2003 in the province of Bingol as they tried to set up a "Table of Peace," for the "establishment of societal peace." A decision to dismiss the proceedings against police officers Oktay Kilic, Adem Tekinay, Sezgin Gundogdu and Nuri Mete, who allegedly treated the activists badly, was lifted in July.

Tahir Yildiz, Ismail Yuncu, Salih Duran, Salih Yuncu, Erol Kirci, Ali Macit, Ali Gokpinar, Yunus Gurbuz, Nurettin Aydin, Tahsin Horzum, Orhan Kaymakci, Ramazan Danaci, Ragip Uysal, Ramazan Karaaslan, Abdullah Parlar, Ayar Cakir, Hasan Ayyildiz: Tahir Yildiz, Ismail Yuncu, Salih Duran, Salih Yuncu, Erol Kirci, Ali Macit, Ali Gokpinar, Yunus Gurbuz, Nurettin Aydin, Tahsin Horzum, Orhan Kaymakci, Ramazan Danaci, Ragip Uysal, Ramazan Karaaslan, Abdullah Parlar, Ayar Cakir and Hasan Ayyildiz were detained for "theft" in March 2000 in the provinces of Burdur and Afyon.

Nine police officers stood trial for torturing the detainees. On July 2 a Burdur court sentenced paramilitary police commander Hikmet Batur to six years in prison for "torturing, threatening and individual's freedom and not allowing a detainee to see his/her lawyers."

Intelligence officer Sedat Sukru Anafarta and an officer of the paramilitary police intelligence department, Mustafa Turkoz was sentenced to two years in prison for "torture." The court acquitted four other paramilitary police members.

Human Rights in Turkey: June 2004 Report

Ozgur Unal: Police Officers Hakan Izmir, Hayri Gunturk, Yakup Kadri Ozturk, Salih Koksal, Engin Ayisik, Ekrem Cirakoglu and Huseyin Duran are being charged for the death of Ozgur Unal, who died on August 22, 2001 at the Edremit Police Headquarters. The last trial on June 16 was postponed to July 13 to wait for the Forensic Medical report. On March 11, 2004, seven police officers were acquitted in the Ozgur Unal trial.

Trials and Probes on Torture and Bad Treatment

Gokhan Bicer: On June 16, a Diyarbakir court acquitted two police officers, Ismail Icen and Fatih Resat Gurbuz from the anti-terrorism unit, standing trial for torturing Gokhan Bicer, who was detained in 2002.

Gokhan Bicer was detained on February 2002, together with Devran Ak, for "chanting slogans in favor of the illegal terrorist organization."

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2. - Bianet - "'Mother Tongue' Problem in Children's Rights":

Prof. Polat said Turkey still didn't pass harmonization laws about the Children's Rights Convention, 15 years after adopting it. According to Polat, institutions responsible for serving children have many shortcomings.

ISTANBUL / 25 November 2004 / by Erhan USTUNDAG

Professor Oguz Polat, who is known for his work on Children's Rights, said harmonization laws about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children were still incomplete 15 years after the convention's approval.

The Convention on the Rights of Children was passed by the General Board of the United Nations (UN) on November 20, 1989. Turkey signed the conventions with reservations on 1990 but the convention went into effect only after five years.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is concerned by the fact that Turkey accepted articles 17, 29 and 30 with reservations and believes that children belonging to the minority groups set out by the Lausanne agreement, and Kurdish children may be negatively affected by Turkey's reservations.

With these reservations, Turkey rejects to;

"encourage mass communication media to pay special care and attention to the language needs of children belonging to minority groups or local communities,"

"improve the child's respect to his/her parents, cultural identity, language and values, the national values of his/her country of origin, and to civilizations other than his/her own,"

"not deprive a child belonging to a racial, religious or language minority group or local community of the opportunity to take advantage of his/her own culture together with other members of his/her community, of the right to believe in and practice his/her own religion, and to use his/her own language."

Prof. Polat said that the New Turkish Penal Code (TCK) still embraces the idea of punishing children instead of rehabilitating them and added that this mentality was against the Convention on the Rights of Children.

Polat spoke to bianet about the main problems about children's rights in Turkey. According to Polat, setting up a parliamentary committee about children who work on the streets, is a positive development, but by no means adequate.

"This commission should have been a "children's rights commission,'" said Polat. "It should have had a more comprehensive approach and evaluate children's rights as a whole."

According to Polat, the Social Services and Children Protection Board (SHECEK) cannot carry the weight that's on its shoulders anymore. On the one hand, it is not able to train enough experts, and on the other hand, appointments with a political agenda has blocked the functioning of the board.

"Two issues, drugs and child pornography, which are not taken very seriously at the moment, will grow to become major issues in the future," said Polat.

1999 National report and shortcomings

The following are shortcomings according to the evaluation of a report Turkey handed to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1999:

"There are shortcomings under the titles of; respecting the views of the child, the higher interest of the child, the child's right to live in connection with honor crimes, the registering of births, the child's freedom of opinion and right to form associations, the child's right to not undergo torture or other inhumane behavior, family setting and alternative care, handicapped children, health and health services, displaced children, economic exploitation, children who live on the streets, and child justice system."

The committee thinks that Turkey's cooperation with UNICEF to encourage girls to go to school, its approval of the conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO), campaign to recognize the Convention on the Rights of Children and allowing non-governmental organizations to participate in the preparation of the report, are positive.

The committee also;

* demands that the differences in detaining children before the trial is
overcome,

* wants that there is adequate coordination between the local administrations in the South East, volunteering sectors, and the central administration, in monitoring the implementation of the UN Convention, and proposes that necessary resources are put to use,

* more resources should be allocated from the budged for children, resources should be put to use for needy children,

* an independent mechanism should be set up to accept complaints of children whose rights were violated,

* the State Institute of Statistics (DIE) should gather orderly data in
related fields so that these data can be utilized in determining necessary
policies,

* effort should be spent so that the requirements of the UN Convention is expanded to rural areas, there should be cooperation with non-governmental organizations, the convention should be included in the school curriculum and those who work with children should be trained.

Turkey has still not handed the UN the national report due 2002.

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3. - AFP - "EU, Turkish leaders meet ahead of crucial December decision":

THE HAGUE / 24 November 2004 / by Sibel Utku Bila

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul meets here Wednesday with EU leaders in the last high-level talks between the two sides in the run-up to December 17 when Turkey faces the moment of truth on its bid to join the European Union.

Gul was to discuss his country's prospects of starting accession talks with the so-called EU "troika," comprised of the current Dutch presidency, the next one, Luxembourg, and the European Commission.

The EU side was to be represented by the foreign ministers of the Netherlands and Luxembourg, Bernard Bot and Jean Asselborn, Dutch European Affairs Minister Atzo Nicolai, the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana and new enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn.

The gathering, held twice each year, has a special importance this time as it comes just days before EU leaders meet in Brussels on December 17 to make a decision on the explosive issue of whether to open membership negotiations with Turkey, a candidate since 1999.

A Europe-wide debate on whether the vast and relatively poor Muslim nation should be given the green light has been raging since October when the European Commission, the EU executive arm, said that Ankara had fulfilled the required political criteria and was ready to start accession talks.

While the British and German governments have expressed strong support for Ankara, another EU heavyweight -- France -- remains sceptical amid a deep rift among its leadership.

For Turkey, Wednesday's meeting will be an opportunity to hear from the Dutch presidency about how member nations are shaping their positions ahead of the December 17 summit, a Turkish diplomat said.

The two sides will also discuss how the democracy reforms that Turkey has adopted in order to align with EU norms are being implemented on the ground.

Brussels has often charged that the implementation of many amendments has been uneven and ineffective. The Turkish side, for its part, is expected to renew complaints that harder conditions are being put forward to Ankara than to other candidates.

Turkey has been irked by several recommendations that the European Commission made in its otherwise favorable report of October 6.

The document said that accession talks with Turkey would be open-ended and mentioned the possibility of permanently barring Turkish nationals from moving freely in the bloc, if their country becomes a member one day.

It also suggested that the EU should screen Turkish law to see how compatible it is with EU legislation, a procedure which would delay the actual opening of talks.

Turkey, an official membership candidate since 1999, demands that accession talks start in the first half of 2005.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bot recently estimated that if negotiations start next year, they could be completed in about 10 years.

Asked whether Turkey's entry into the EU by 2015 was realistic, Bot replied "yes."

Turkey's opponents, who maintain that the populous Muslim nation is not fit for EU membership, say Ankara should be given a special partnership status rather than full membership. Turkey has categorically rejected such a prospect.

Another thorny issue is Ankara's refusal to acknowledge the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot government of EU member Cyprus, which, for its part, has hinted it could use its veto power to block Turkey's bid.

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4. - Turkish Daily News - "Gül tells Powell time to act on PKK":

Turkey says time has come for talks on how to eliminate the PKK presence in Iraq’s north and laments Turkish people’s sympathy for US wears thin over slowness to act against the group.

ANKARA / 24 November 2004

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül stated he took Turkey’s complaints over U.S. slowness in acting to eliminate the presence of a few thousand militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq to Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday.
Gül told the outgoing Powell the issue was a serious matter for Turkey. The United States has pledged that there would be no place for terrorists in Iraq, but no concrete steps have to date been taken.

Expressing Turkish unease over U.S. inertia over the issue, Gül said Turkey was now expecting steps from the United States and said Washington should heed Ankara's calls. The foreign minister was earlier quoted as saying by private NTV television that the United States had lost the Turkish people's support over its lack of action on the PKK issue.
The issue of the PKK presence is a matter for the Iraqi interim government as well. Iraq’s interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari called for a border arrangement with Turkey and Iran on Monday, on the sidelines of a two-day Sharm el-Sheikh conference on Iraq in Egypt that aimed to establish a mechanism similar to the one already created between Iraq and Syria.

Any such mechanism is intended to prevent the infiltration of militants from neighboring countries’ territories into Iraq. In the case of Turkey, the issue is related solely to the PKK presence as there is no infiltration from Turkey into Iraq.
Diplomatic sources said Ankara was warm towards the Iraqi proposal because this could pave the way for steps to eliminate the PKK presence in Iraqi territory. Foreign Minister Gül has proposed talks in the near future on border security, given the possibility that terrorist activity could spill over from Iraq into Turkey unless measures are taken to prevent it.
The interior ministers of Iraq are set to meet on Nov. 30 to discuss border security and Zebari’s proposal is likely to be taken up at the meeting.
Gül also discussed increasing attacks on Turkish drivers operating in Iraq with Powell and expressed Turkey’s concerns on the issue.

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5. - AFP - "More than 1,000 Iranian Kurd refugees fled camp in Iraq: UNHCR":

GENEVA / 23 November 2004

More than 1,000 Iranian Kurds have fled a refugee camp in Iraq and are missing amid insecurity near the Iraqi flashpoint town of Ramadi, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday.

More than 30 percent of the 4,200 Iranian Kurds in the Al Tash camp fled after a police station in the camp was attacked by armed fighters last week, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

Water and electricity to Al Tash, west of Baghdad, have also been cut off, the UNHCR added, citing reports from its local partner agency in Iraq.

"UNHCR has received alarming reports that up to a third of the refugees at Al Tash camp in Iraq have fled because of fighting around Ramadi last week," spokesman Ron Redmond said.

"It is not clear yet where they have gone," he added. Redmond said the refugees might be heading to northern Iraq or be trying to reach the Jordanian border further west.

But he said there had been no reports of new arrivals of refugees in Jordan.

The UNHCR pulled out of Iraq after the deadly car bomb attack on the UN's Baghdad base in September 2003.

It had been helping about 150,000 refugees in Iraq at the beginning of the year, most of them Palestinians, but the numbers have dropped by more than 30,000 since then.

Ramadi lies in the middle of an area dominated by the Sunni Muslim minority and is considered a bastion of the anti-US insurgency sweeping Iraq.

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6. - The Daily Star - "Iraq's Hoshyar Zebari: guerrilla turned statesman":

Foreign minister is blunt on country's future: 'If we lose, the region will be hell'

BAGHDAD / 24 November 2004 / by Borzou Daragahi

For years, Hoshyar Zebari was a guerrilla diplomat, shuttling secretly between different countries in sometimes futile attempts to build up goodwill for Iraq's Kurdish minority as well as procure weapons, recruits and political support for the Kurds' decades-long armed struggle against Saddam Hussein.

Now as Iraq's foreign minister at this week's summit on Iraq's future at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the affable, plain-talking Zebari has come in from the cold, speaking with candor about his past triumphs and future hopes for forging a democratic Iraq and the consequences of failure.

The stakes, for both Iraq and the world, are high, he says.

"If we lose, the region will be hell," Zebari said at his office in the Iraqi Foreign Ministry building in Baghdad. "It will be a graveyard for democracy."

Zebari describes himself as a soldier carrying out the orders of his boss, Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which rules the northwestern half of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish enclave. Indeed, through the 1980's, Zebari was a Peshmerga, battling Saddam Hussein from the mountains of Kurdistan. Saddam executed two of his brothers in retaliation for Zebari's activities. His warrior years, he says, prepared him well for life as Iraq's top diplomat.

Last month in Baghdad, his guards defused a car filled with hundreds of pounds of explosives heading for his convoy.

"The one strain is that here you are always on alert," says the 52-year-old native of Aqrah, an Iraqi town near Mosul.

Though he travels in diplomatic circles across the world, his old habits die hard. Underneath his suit, he packs a Smith & Wesson. "This is small and very effective for self-defense," he says, fidgeting with the revolver. "It's not an offensive weapon."

Zebari, educated in Jordan and England, built a reputation for himself as a hardworking Kurdish political leader among the Iraqi exiles and regional political leaders with his excellent command of English and his ability to be both soft-spoken, while remaining straightforward. He was long the London representative for Iraq's rogue Kurds.

Once, after a visit to Tehran several months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he announced before the press that he'd met with Iran's ultra-secretive clerical rulers and learned that they supported "regime change" in Iraq.

He described details of his trip, naming those with whom he'd chatted and disclosing outcomes of conversations with some of Iran's most mysterious figures: the chiefs of intelligence, defense and the expediency council.

A few weeks later he was wrapped in a trench coat on a barren Kurdish mountain road at dusk, awaiting a convoy carrying Danielle Mitterand, the wife of the late French president and a longtime champion of the Kurdish cause.

His critics mention his role as a high-ranking member of a political party that once teamed up with Saddam against a rival Kurdish group and has had fractious relations with other Iraqi factions. Despite this, he was chosen as the speaker for the Iraqi opposition conference just before the war in northern Iraq, his voice bluntly trying to explain the goals of the opposition to skeptical journalists, U.S. politicians and exile groups.

These days, he says, he uses candor with world leaders. In numerous recent trips to Iran and Syria, both countries said to be supporting insurgents in Iraq to subvert Washington's aims, he holds frank discussions with both countries' leaders, whom he knows intimately following years of back-channel talks.

"I have told them, 'The U.S. is now your neighbor ... and you want them out,'" he says. "'We, as Iraqis, want foreign troops out. If you want these forces out, help the Iraqi government accelerate the democratic process. If you have a representative government through elections, this government will not let these troops on its soil to fight you.'"

He says he's particularly upset at Gulf states like Qatar, who publicly claim to want peace and democracy for Iraq, but allow fiery clerics calling for jihad and television stations like Al-Jazeera - which he likened to a mouthpiece for the insurgency - operate from their soil.

He said he plans to raise these issues at Sharm el-Sheikh.

"I will explain, 'We need more from you;'" he said, "'more cooperation, more intelligence sharing, more coordination to fight terrorism, to prevent people from crossing your borders. And that's what we expect from you.'"

But he concedes that Iraq's security woes cannot be blamed on Iraq's neighbors alone.

"We need to perform, to be more aggressive, to have a very clear security plan. And that depends on us, on our resources. And then, if they insist on continuing to interfere, that will be an act of war."