26 November 2004

1. "Reforms in human rights slow to take hold in Turkey", it seemed an obvious case of police brutality: a young man beaten senseless by officers in an argument over littering.

2. "Europeans in no mood to welcome Turkey", too big. Too poor. Too Muslim.

3. "Erdogan Questioned on Mass Grave", Independent Deputy Sirin handed a question motion to Prime Minister Erdogan about a mass grave found in Diyarbakir and claimed to be of villagers who got lost 11 years ago. He demanded that the ministries, and army make their finding on the issue public.

4. "Turkey: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow?", for example, the report implied that if the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 - the basis of the Turkish State and its foreign relations - had been fully implemented after WWI, the bloodshed between Turks and Kurds might well have been avoidable.

5. "Ankara Warns U.S. to Observe “Red Line” Around Northern Iraq’s Turkmens", in the event, however, the “red line” was to prove quite invisible when Baghdad’s rule collapsed in northern Iraq. Kurdish forces occupied the region’s main cities, Mosul and Kirkuk, with the scant U.S. troops deployed in the region largely left looking on.

6. "Greek Cypriots Would Block Turkey’s EU Bid", many residents of Greek Cyprus are opposed to allowing Turkey to join the European Union (EU), according to a poll by Cyprus College published in Simerini. 62 per cent of respondents believe their government should veto Turkey’s accession, unless the Turkish government recognizes the Greek Cypriot administration.

1. - Associated Press - "Reforms in human rights slow to take hold in Turkey":

ANKARA / 26 November 2004

It seemed an obvious case of police brutality: a young man beaten senseless by officers in an argument over littering.

Yet it is the injured party, Kemal Yaradilmis, who found himself in a courtroom's dock, facing charges of disobedience and threatening behavior.

"The case is turned upside down," said his mother, Sehriban Yaradilmis.

Under pressure from the European Union, Turkey has carried out dramatic rights reforms in recent years. While incidents of torture have fallen sharply, reports of police abuse and failure to enforce the revised laws remain common.

Human Rights Association reported 692 abuse cases in the first six months of 2004, down from 972 in the same period in 2003.

Kemal's trouble began when he tossed a cigarette butt on the pavement while walking past a police station. After a dispute, Kemal ran and was chased by officers. He and his 17-year-old brother, Hasan, suffered broken arms in beatings, his family and a human-rights group said.

The court rejected two attempts by the family to prosecute the officers for the abuse.

2. - Chigaco Tribune - "Europeans in no mood to welcome Turkey":

Too big. Too poor. Too Muslim.

PARIS / 26 November 204

For most Europeans, the recent recommendation of the European Union's executive body to open membership talks with Turkey goes a step too far.

Although EU political leaders are expected to endorse the executive's recommendation at their Dec. 17 summit, public opinion in most of the EU's 25 member states is deeply opposed to Turkey joining the club.

Surveys indicate that a referendum on Turkish membership would fail in every major EU country.

In Germany, which has Europe's largest Turkish immigrant community, only 34 percent of the population is in favor of admitting Turkey. Opinion polls in France indicate that 75 to 80 percent of the French are against Turkey's membership.

"Turkey inspires exotic fears," said Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. "It's the great `other.'"

The present debate was framed two years ago when former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who headed the committee that drafted the proposed EU constitution, warned that admitting Turkey would mean "the end of the European Union." Turkey, he said, has "a different culture, a different approach, a different way of life."

Certainly, a country that is 99.8 percent Muslim, has 95 percent of it territory in Asia and shares borders with Iraq, Syria and Iran stretches the definition of "European."

And at a time when France, Germany, the Netherlands and other West European nations are struggling to integrate their ever-enlarging Muslim communities, Giscard's argument seems a diplomatic way of saying that the EU should remain a "Christian" club.

"The real question for Europe is religion, but for democratic people it's politically incorrect to speak of this too loudly," said Dominique Reynie, a French political analyst.

So the debate has shifted to more practical concerns: Would Turkey's economic backwardness and high unemployment uncork a flood of immigrants onto Europe's job market? Similar worries were voiced earlier this year when the EU took in 10 new members, most of them former Soviet satellites from Eastern Europe. The expected flood has not materialized.

Turkey making strides

Over the past decade Turkey has modernized, democratized and, in significant ways, moved closer to Europe, said Guillaume Parmentier, a scholar at the French Institute of International Relations. At the same time, he said, a high birth rate among the rural peasantry of Turkey's Asian territory has made the country more Asian in character.

Misgivings about Turkey's human-rights record and the tendency of its generals to see themselves as the ultimate political authority linger, but a Turkish government with Islamist roots insists it has made the necessary reforms.

"Turkey is changing but Turkey also is good at window dressing," said Olivier Roy, one of the leading French commentators on the Middle East. "The changes have to be real, not just nice words written into the law."

Turkey's sheer size is another concern. With a population of nearly 70 million, Turkey already eclipses France and Britain, and at its current growth rate it will overtake Germany, the EU's most populous member, in the next two decades. Under the EU's system of proportional representation, Turkey would have the most votes.

Despite those fears, Turkey has supporters in Europe who point out that Europe, with its declining birthrates, needs to bulk up on Turkish immigration and that attempting to maintain the EU as a Christian club is a dubious policy for an increasingly multiethnic continent. Excluding Turkey, they say, would send the wrong signal to the Muslim world.

They also note that Turkey's considerable military muscle is an asset for the EU.

"For strategic reasons, you want the janissaries on the inside, guarding the gates of the EU, not on the outside," Heisbourg said. The janissaries were the elite warrior class of the Ottoman Empire.

Heisbourg added two other reasons that the EU should say yes to Turkey.

"First, Turkey wants to be part of Europe, and that in itself is very important," he said. "Second, we promised them."

The European Commission's recommendation to open accession talks with Turkey was larded with qualifications. The process is expected to take at least 10 years, and any backsliding on democratization or human rights would bring it to an immediate halt, said EC President Romano Prodi.

At the same time, no candidate country ever has been rejected once the talks start.

This realization added urgency to the political debate in France.

"Neither Europe nor Turkey are ready for membership," said Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who opposes the idea. "Turkey remains very far from Europe politically, economically and socially."

Political cover for Chirac

French President Jacques Chirac says he favors Turkey's admission but he covered his political flanks by proposing a referendum on the question.

"Very strange and very bizarre, I think, to propose a judgment of one people on another," Reynie said. "It risks the clash of civilizations we say we want to avoid."

It would not, however, be without precedent. France insisted on a referendum in 1972 before allowing Britain to join the European Common Market, the EU's predecessor.

3. - Bianet - "Erdogan Questioned on Mass Grave":

INdependent Deputy Sirin handed a question motion to Prime Minister Erdogan about a mass grave found in Diyarbakir and claimed to be of villagers who got lost 11 years ago. He demanded that the ministries, and army make their finding on the issue public.

ISTANBUL / 25 November 2004

Emin Sirin, an independent lawmaker from Istanbul, asked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan about a mass grave found in the Kepre field in the Alacakoyu village of Diyarbakir's Kulp district.

Sirin, in a question motion handed to the presidency of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM), asked if allegations in the media by Suleyman Atalay, that the mass grave is of the villagers who got lost 11 years ago, had been investigated.

Sirin asked what the related ministries, army and the paramilitary police officers found as a result of their investigations, and demanded to know whether the officials had the intention to investigate these allegations if they already had not.

Emin Sirin answered bianet's questions about the issue. He said he had read the allegations in the "Ulkede Ozgur Gundem" (Free Agenda in the Country) newspaper about ten days ago and decided to hand the parliament a motion since no official statement had been made.

Sirin, who resigned from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) after being elected a lawmaker, wants to know if the Interior Ministry, National Defence and Justice Ministries, the General Staff, Paramilitary Police Commandership, and the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) has investigated whether Suleyman Atalay's allegations are true.

According to media reports, Atalay said: "They raided the village in 1993. There were about 300-350 soldiers. They held us for five days. They picked some people among us and took them away. We never heard from those they took away again."

"If the related institutions have investigated the issue, what are their findings?" asked Sirin. "If these allegations have not been investigated, do they have the intention to do so?"

Sirin said the feeling of brotherhood he had for Turkey's 70 million people and his sense of citizenship led him to be sensitive about the issue. "Such sensitivities have nothing to do with nationalism," said Sirin. "If we, 70 million people, are going to live in a democratic country governed by the rule of law, we definitely have to investigate such claims, set light on them and punish those who are guilty, even if they are among senior state officials."

4. - Newropeans Magazine - "Turkey: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow?":

LONDON / 26 November 2004 / by Dr Harry Hagopian

An exhibition currently at the German Historical Museum on the Unter den Linden in Berlin entitled Myths of the Nations has attracted considerable attention with its displays of how people from different nations have formed and reformed the narratives of their experiences both of WWII and the Holocaust over the past sixty years. The purpose of the exhibition is to impress upon the visitor that national memory is really the past continuously re-interpreted through the present.

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For example, the report implied that if the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 - the basis of the Turkish State and its foreign relations - had been fully implemented after WWI, the bloodshed between Turks and Kurds might well have been avoidable. To justify this argument, which is volatile in Turkey however mild it might be perceived elsewhere, the report cited article 39 of the treaty that allows Turkish nationals to use “any language they wish in commerce, in public and private meetings and all types of press and publication”. It added that those articles supposedly protecting non-Muslim minorities have been read too narrowly: as well as covering Jews, Armenians and Greeks, these articles should have been applied, for example, to Syrian Orthodox Christians. More controversially, still, it suggested replacing the term “Turk” with a more inclusive word to cover all ethnicities and faiths such as Turkiyeli [of Turkey].

This report provoked a furore within the Turkish establishment. The Turkish authorities have gone so far as to investigate whether the board members who drafted this report committed treason, and there is every possibility that both authors of the report might end up being prosecuted under article 305 of the new penal code approved in September 2004 providing for up to ten years’ imprisonment for those who engage in unspecified “activities” against Turkey’s “national interest”. But what might such activities be? In a footnote, this discriminatory law deems “anti-national” anyone who describes as “genocide” the killing of Armenians in 1915 [during the Armenian Genocide] or advocates a withdrawal of Turkish troops from Cyprus.

A long road of improvements lies ahead of Turkey with respect to civil liberties and fundamental rights. If it wishes to become member of the Club of 25, and to be seen as a democracy wherein human and minorities’ rights are not squelched systemically, it is imperative that Ankara proceed in its reforms and commitments to include ipso facto the recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the lifting of the economic blockade against Armenia. Instead of legislating laws in its penal code that would outlaw any mention of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by its predecessor Ottoman regime, it should move forward to recognise this genocide as much as adopt the recommendations of the panel it set up.

Despite its aspirations toward democracy and its manifestations toward reform, Turkey still refuses to admit that internal repression and external emancipation are contradictory dual facets of the same coin. They create tensions and lead to conflict. Much like the poster at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, Armenians cannot simply expunge their collective memories and national sacrifices for the sake of political expediency. Turkey would be wrong to insist upon EU membership without coming clean on this chapter, much as the EU would also be complicit in applying double-standards by obfuscating the truth and editing history if it goes along with this strategy for the mere sake of creating an expedient south-eastern EU-drawn insular zone. Indeed, it is almost axiomatic that nowhere in the world can human rights be stifled forever since history has a way of unmasking the truth eventually. For instance, an international conference In History and Beyond History - Armenians and Turks: a thousand years of relations organised by The Institute for Venice & Europe of the Giorgio Cini Foundation took place in Venice from 28-30 October 2004. Eminent scholars from different countries focused on the placement of the Armenian case within the frame of the genocides of the 20th century, the sense of guilt associated with this genocide and how best to explain this genocide to the Turkish public opinion after years of denial and amnesia.

Some commentators have recently opined that Turkey’s adhesion to the EU would constitute a message of hope, peace, prosperity and democracy. I welcome hope, peace, prosperity and democracy, and I hail those lofty ideals anywhere in our broken and polarised world. Nor, for that matter, am I impermeable toward Turkish membership of our European Union.

However, I simply cannot accept such membership that is spun at the expense of another people or their history. To make the point clearer, let me refer to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament that examined last week a brief seven-page provisional report (to be voted on in Brussels on 22 November 2004) entitled Turkey’s progress toward accession. Presented by the Dutch MEP Camiel Eurlings, the report calls upon the Governments of Turkey and Armenia to start a process of reconciliation [] in order to overcome the tragic experience of the past. It also requests the Turkish government to reopen the borders with Armenia as soon as possible. Currently under review are 483 amendments to the Eurlings Report that were tabled by five different groups at the European Parliament. They include demands for the explicit recognition of the Armenian Genocide in accordance with the European Parliament resolution of 18 June 1987 (Doc. A2-33/87) that called upon Turkey to recognise the Armenian Genocide as a pre-condition to its European candidacy.

In one of his first articles entitled Vous êtes formidables that addressed French colonialism in Algeria, the philosopher and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in 1956 that crimes committed in our name imply by necessity our personal responsibility since it will have also been in our power to stop them. As far as the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is concerned, Ottoman Turkey was capable of stopping those massacres. It did not do so, and thereby bears responsibility for them. I therefore hope that Turkey will no longer shirk away from this onus when it is knocking at the EU doors and when Armenians across the world are preparing to commemorate in 2005 the 90th anniversary of their sorrowful tragedy.

* Ecumenical, Legal & Political Consultant; Armenian Apostolic Church - London

5. - wrmea.com - "Ankara Warns U.S. to Observe “Red Line” Around Northern Iraq’s Turkmens":

22 November 2004 / by Jon Gorvett*

Iraqis from Tal Afar wait at the entrance of their battered northern town Sept. 15 to be allowed to retun home. More than 56 people were said to have been killed and 152 wounded in five days of heavy fighting between U.S. forces and resistance fighters (AFP photo/Mujahed Mohammed).

WITH BOMBS falling on the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar in mid-September, Turkey’s political, military and civil organizations seemed for once united in their reaction. As the largely Turkmen inhabitants of the besieged town appealed to their ethnic Turkish brethren for support, Ankara issued its strongest warning yet to Washington, and thereby highlighted a growing anxiety here over the future of northern Iraq.

“I told [U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell] that what is being done there is harming the civilian population, that it is wrong, and that if it continues, Turkey’s cooperation on issues regarding Iraq will come to a total stop,” an unusually outspoken Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters on Sept. 13.

His comments came after U.S. and Iraqi forces had surrounded and attacked Tal Afar in what was described as an anti-terrorist operation. According to coalition officials, the town was being used as a base for militants crossing the border from nearby Syria on their way to attack coalition forces in other parts of Iraq.

In several days of fighting, involving air strikes by U.S. planes, hospitals in the town reported 56 dead, while Turkmen groups claimed 120. Hundreds more were injured. Many buildings also were destroyed and, Turkmen sources in Tal Afar told the Washington Report, electricity and water had been cut off. Several thousand Turkmens had fled into the surrounding countryside and to towns as far away as Mosul and Kirkuk.

There have been many such operations since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq back in April 2003. This, however, was the first time the country’s ethnic Turkmen population had suffered the direct effects of such assaults.

Turkey has long seen the Turkmens, who constitute a sizeable minority in northern Iraq, as a community it is obliged to protect for historical and ethnic reasons. Indeed, for many years, Ankara had viewed them as basically Turks, arguing that the distinction between Turkmens and Turks had been introduced by the British at the end of World War I, as part of London’s justification for occupying the former Ottoman territory of Messopotamia.

Ankara also has cited protection of the Turkmens as a reason for Turkish involvement in Iraq—particularly in order to prevent northern Iraq’s large Kurdish majority from completely dominating the region. This, goes the received wisdom in Ankara, might precipitate the breakup of Turkey’s southeast, which also has a large Kurdish population. Turkey maintained troops in northern Iraq throughout the 1990s, and was closely involved with Turkmen organizations such as the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF).

In the lead up to the U.S.-led invasion, Ankara warned that there was a clear “red line” around the Turkmens that the U.S. should not cross—with Turkey’s General Staff warning that any such transgression would trigger a Turkish military intervention.

In the event, however, the “red line” was to prove quite invisible when Baghdad’s rule collapsed in northern Iraq. Kurdish forces occupied the region’s main cities, Mosul and Kirkuk, with the scant U.S. troops deployed in the region largely left looking on.

To the Turkmens, who are primarily an urban group located in these and other towns and cities, this represented a colossal disaster.

“Since last year, on April 10, the red line has been crossed,” says Asif Sertturkmen, the ITF’s London representative. “The Kurds were not supposed to enter Kirkuk, but tens of thousands of them did. The first thing they did was destroy all the land and property registration offices.”

Now, with elections due in Iraq come January, Turkmen groups allege that Kurdish groups have been moving even more people into Kirkuk in order to alter irreversibly the city’s ethnic balance, further marginalizing the large Turkmen population there.

It is an allegation apparently supported by U.S. military sources as well. A mid-September AP report quoted U.S. Army Major Mike Davey of the 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division in Kirkuk as saying that some 20,000 Kurds had arrived in the city in August alone. “They want this area back,” Davey said of the Kurds. “It’s a very visible presence.”

Yet, as is often the case, the ethnic argument depends a great deal on the ethnicity of those advancing it. The two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), point out that, prior to the U.S.-led invasion, the Baghdad regime had followed a policy of Arabization in Kirkuk and other towns in the region.

This had led to an altering of the ethnic balance in favor of Arabs, who had been given land and other incentives throughout northern Iraq in order to marginalize the Kurdish and other populations. Many Kurds had left Kirkuk and other settlements as a result of this policy—and now they are moving back.

The ITF’s Sertturkmen challenges this view. “Up to the 1940s,” he said, “towns like Kirkuk and Erbil had Turkmen majorities. Not anymore. Now, if you go to Kirkuk, there are Kurdish flags everywhere. Ask a Kurdish taxi driver for some address and he won’t have any idea where it is, as he doesn’t come from there. Before, 30 of the local districts were Turkmen, now it’s only one. In Tal Afar, for example, there used to be a Turkmen mayor, but he’s now been replaced by a Kurdish one.”

In this context of ethnic tension, it is perhaps little surprise that the battle of Tal Afar has been seen by many Turkmens—and Turks—as the latest development in a Kurdish policy of changing the ethnic balance of the region. The operation forced many Turkmens to flee, while, many here argue, also delivering a message that the Kurds have the backing of the U.S., while the Turkmens are on their own.

Such arguments also underline how little faith is placed in official U.S. explanations for operations in Iraq these days. Few seem to credit the idea that this was an anti-terrorist operation.

“There were no problems before,” according to Suphi Saatci, general secretary of the Kirkuk Foundation, a Turkmen group in Turkey. “Turkmens had never been a problem for the U.S. forces, and this was clearly a Turkmen town. Using claims of terrorism, they went in and killed people.”

Gul’s warning also may have had some effect. The day after his remarks, the U.S. announced an end to its operation. Turkey plays a vital logistical role in supplying U.S. forces, with convoys of trucks crossing over from Turkey to northern Iraq every day. Kidnappings and executions of Turkish drivers by Iraqi militant groups also have been borne by Turkey, although some Turkish trucking companies have pulled out as a result.

Yet, as in 2003, the question remains how far Ankara might really be prepared to go over the Turkmens. The answer to that may largely depend on the extent of the veracity of Turkmen claims of ethnic cleansing, and whether current friction explodes into something far more dangerous and damaging.

“Kirkuk is the key to avoiding civil war in Iraq,” Lt. Col. Jim Stock of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division recently told AP. “Kirkuk is to Iraq what Kosovo is to the Balkans.”

A very worrying thought for Ankara—as well as for the coalition and Iraqi authorities.

* Jon Gorvett is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.

6. - CPOD - "Greek Cypriots Would Block Turkey’s EU Bid":

26 November 2004

Many residents of Greek Cyprus are opposed to allowing Turkey to join the European Union (EU), according to a poll by Cyprus College published in Simerini. 62 per cent of respondents believe their government should veto Turkey’s accession, unless the Turkish government recognizes the Greek Cypriot administration.

Relations between the Greek majority and the Turkish minority in Cyprus have been frayed since 1974, when a Greek-sponsored attempt to seize the government was met by military intervention from Turkey. In the skirmish, the Turks gained control of almost two-fifths of the island, which in 1983 declared itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

In March, United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan presented a reunification proposal, which called for a federation of two states—one Greek and the other Turkish—with a loose central government. In an April island-wide referendum, 75.8 per cent of Greek Cypriot voters rejected Annan’s proposal.

Greek Cyprus joined the EU on May 1. The Turkish government has never acknowledged the Greek Cypriot administration. More than 30,000 Turkish soldiers occupy the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

On Dec. 17, EU leaders will decide whether to initiate accession talks with Turkey.