4 November 2004

1. "Kurdish politicians lend support to Zana's call for new party", a group of prominent Kurdish politicians said Wednesday they would support efforts by leading rights activist Leyla Zana to form a new party to struggle for the freedoms of the Kurdish minority in Turkey.

2. "Cicek: Ocalan has no privilages", Justice Minister Cemil Cicek in response to criticism by the influential military said yesterday that the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, had no privilages concerning his contacts with lawyers.

3. "Roth sees problems concerning 'minority issue'", Roth says the visit by German Greens MPs to Turkey aims at looking into the implementation of the country's EU-inspired reforms.

4. "Turkey: A true model for the Muslim future", while violence seems to consume so much of the Muslim world, a different kind of Islamic revolution is taking place in Turkey.

5. "Turkey Battels Eypanded Insurgency", Turkey has been battling what appears to be an expanded insurgency campaign. Turkish officials said the attacks have stemmed mainly from Kurdish insurgents and their allies.

6. "Claims of changes to Kirkuk’s demography denied by PUK", the Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Tuesday denied claims and press reports that Kirkuk’s demographic structure was changed, media reports here said.

1. - AFP - "Kurdish politicians lend support to Zana's call for new party":

ANKARA / 3 November 2004

A group of prominent Kurdish politicians said Wednesday they would support efforts by leading rights activist Leyla Zana to form a new party to struggle for the freedoms of the Kurdish minority in Turkey.

Zana and three other former Kurdish MPs, released in June after a decade in jail, said last month they would launch a new party, referred to as the Democratic Society Movement, to support Turkey's bid to join the European Union and achieve a lasting solution to the Kurdish question.

"We wholeheartedly support the Democratic Society Movement... We declare our determination to walk ahead together with those friends of ours," Ahmet Turk, the former head of a now-banned pro-Kurdish party, told a news conference.

He was speaking on the behalf of five other prominent Kurdish activists, who are either the incumbent leaders of pro-Kurdish parties or have led such movements in the past.

Turk hinted that the two main pro-Kurdish parties currently active in Turkey -- the Democratic People's Party and the Free Society Party -- were ready to dissolve themselves and join the new movement.

Zana has declined to say when the new party will be formally established and who will lead it.

Observers here have speculated that Zana and her supporters are trying to distance themselves from Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of armed Kurdish rebels fighting the Ankara government who has for years exerted influence on pro-Kurdish political parties.

Ocalan has been serving a life sentence since 1999. His Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), now also known as KONGRA-GEL, is blacklisted as a terrorist group by both the EU and the United States.

Zana, the 1995 winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights award, and her three colleagues were jailed in 1994 for collaborating with Ocalan's rebels.

They are currently being tried for a third time after the appeals court overturned earlier this year a ruling of a lower court which confirmed their sentences in a first retrial, made possible by reforms that Turkey has undertaken to catch up with EU democracy norms.

Even if convicted again, the four are not expected to go back to jail because of the time they have already served.

2. - Turkish Daily News - "Cicek: Ocalan has no privilages":

'We have not provided any privilages for the person there,' says Cicek referring to Ocalan

ANKARA / 4 November 2004

Justice Minister Cemil Cicek in response to criticism by the influential military said yesterday that the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, had no privilages concerning his contacts with lawyers.

Deputy Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug, said that Ocalan was able to run his outlawed group from his prison cell by sending messages through his lawyers, some of whom were subjected to legal investigations on charges of aiding and abetting the PKK.

Basbug urged for the completion of the investigations into Ocalan's lawyers alleged links to the outlawed group.

"We have not provided any privilages for the person there," Anatolian news agency quoted Cicek as saying. He was referring to Ocalan.

Bar associations had the power to probe if the lawyers' acts required dicipliniary punishment, he said.

Cicek confirmed that a number of investigations were launched into allegations that Ocalan was able to send orders to his outlawed group through lawyers. Neither the government nor politicians could take action on this issue, he added.

Ocalan has been the sole inmate in the prison on Imrali island since he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1999 for treason.

3. - Turkish Daily News - "Roth sees problems concerning 'minority issue'":

Roth says the visit by German Greens MPs to Turkey aims at looking into the implementation of the country's EU-inspired reforms

ANKARA / 4 November 2004

A group of German Greens members of parliament met with Fener Orthodox Patriarch Bartolomeos yesterday and discussed religious rights for minorities just weeks ahead of a key EU summit at which European leaders are due to decide whether to start memebership talks with Turkey, the Anatolia news agency said.

The head of the delegation, German Alliance 90/Greens Party co-chairperson Claudia Roth, speaking at a news briefing at the German Consulate General after the meeting, said they came to Turkey to examine implementation involved with Turkey's European Union harmonization process.

"We have come here to look into the level of the realization of the reforms and to determine the places in light and in darkness," Roth was quoted as saying by Anatolia.

Roth said they had a positive impression of the reforms, however adding, "There are still problems being experienced on some issues such as the minority issue." She mentioned that they were going to the southeastern Anatolian province of Diyarbakir to get a first-hand look at the situation. "We will have contacts in Diyarbakir and gather information on the Kurdish issue," she said.

Roth and Winfried Nachtwei went to Diyarbakir last night, where they are to meet with Diyarbakir Governor Efkan Ala and Mayor Osman Baydemir at a dinner tonight. The visiting delegation will go to Sirnak during the day to ascertain whether German-produced military tanks were used for resettling Kurdish villagers as a German daily had reported last month.

The other members of the delegation -- Reinhard Butikofer, Krista Sager, Katrin Goring-Eckardt, Marieluise Beck, Ekin Deligoz and Rainder Steenblock -- were to depart for Germany today.

The German delegation met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul in Ankara earlier in the week as well as with former Democracy Party (DEP) parliamentarians Leyla Zana, Orhan Dogan, Hatip Dicle and Selim Sadak, who were released after 10 years' imprisonment following a EU-inspired reform abolishing the State Security Courts (DGMs), which had convicted them on charges of separatism.

"We believe that a positive decision will be made at the EU summit on Dec. 17 for starting negotiations with Turkey and that a date will openly be set for the start," Roth said after her meeting with Erdogan. She said their visiting Erdogan demonstrated the great importance they attributed to the relationship between Turkey and the EU.

Neither Roth nor Gul made any statements after their meeting. However, diplomatic sources told Anatolia that Gul emphasized during the meeting that Ankara expected to get a clear starting date for its entry talks at the Brussels EU summit and did not want any procedures other than those the union had applied to the other candidate countries.

Representatives of the Human Rights Association (IHD), the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TIHV) and Mazlum-Der were the nongovernmental organizations that met with the German delegation. The German Greens listened to their views on the "systematic torture" and "minority" issues.

Roth, who was known to the Turkish public for her harsh criticism over Turkey's human rights record in the past, has been a firm backer, together with her party, of Turkey's EU bid against the German unionist parties. The German Greens held their general assembly in Istanbul following the release of the EU Commission's report on Turkey as a gesture of support.

The EU Commission recommended that the EU Council set a date for the start of Turkey's entry talks. European leaders are to make a decision whether to open Turkey talks at a Brussels EU summit on Dec. 17.

4. - The New Nation - "Turkey: A true model for the Muslim future":

3 November 2004 / by Graham E. Fuller

While violence seems to consume so much of the Muslim world, a different kind of Islamic revolution is taking place in Turkey. We could say that a new "model" is in the making. It's not the example that Washington used to tout—Turkey as a "secular" Muslim nation, anchored in NATO and strongly pro-America. To the contrary, Turkey is becoming a model for the Middle East and the rest of the Islamic world precisely because it is breaking with this old stereotype.

Today, Turkey is run by the first democratically elected — and pragmatically successful — Islamic party in the Muslim world's history. A healthy plurality of Turks voted for the Justice and Development Party not because they wanted more Islam, but because they believed the party could get things done. And it has. The past two y ears have brought extraordinary changes, from needed democratic reforms to a wholesale remaking of the economy. At the same time, the country is loosening its old geopolitical moorings. NATO membership notwithstanding, Ankara told Washington "no" in attacking Iraq from Turkish soil. With negotiations likely to begin soon on joining the European Union, Turkey in the future will grow closer to Europe than to America. All together, we have a fascinating new dynamic.

Ironically, it's only with these successes that Turkey could at last become a true model for Muslims worldwide. The point is not that the country needs an Islam-oriented government to succeed. It is the possibility of having one, rotating in and out like any other party, that places Turkey's democracy on a truly representative and sound footing. Most other Muslim states in the world are racked by clashes between harsh dictatorships and Islamist parties, which now represent the primary opposition to authoritarianism. Turkey is the first Muslim state that has solved this problem by successfully moderating and integrating Islamists into the political system.

What about the old Turkish model? In fact, the famed "secularism" of the past was not really that at all, at least as Americans or Europeans would understand it. For all his brilliant reforms, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the saviour and founder of modern Turkey after World War I, suppressed Islam entirely in the public sphere; his Westernized elites often ridiculed it. Ataturk in effect performed a cultural lobotomy on the country. Public reference to the brilliant accomplishments of 700 years of the Turkish-Islamic Ottoman past were extirpated. Turkish politics over the last 80 years seethed as traditional elites, proud of their past and comfortable with their moderate Islam, fought for recognition in the new Turkish republic. The balance is now swinging back to a more normal center in which the Turkish Islamic past is increasingly reintegrated into the political order. This is a healing process of reconciliation, vital for democracy.

Turkey has never been stronger. The next test will be to see how this new government handles Islamic radicalism — or terrorism — and whether it can forge a more modern understanding of what role Islam should (or should not) play within the country's political order.

If the European Union is concerned about "cultural indigestion" in absorbing a Muslim country into its ranks, what better model could it find? Should the European Union be unable to accept the new Turkey, then its claims to genuine multiculturalism will have been shown to be empty. And yes, the West must acknowledge that what we are witnessing in Turkey is a modern, moderate form of "political Islam." The term cannot be reserved only for the crazies. Let's recognize the progress Islam has made.

Turkey's new independence from the United States is no less welcome. It will always value ties to America. But Turkey is no longer the predictably reliable ally who always says "yes." It is not only cultivating new relations with Europe, but reaching out to neighbors in the Middle East. While this may not please hegemonists in Washington, it is proof that Muslim nations can, in fact, combine Western and Islamic political values and join a community of Western nations without necessarily having a MADE IN THE U.S.A. stamp upon them. This is why a bold new Turkey has at long last become a true model for the Muslim future.

Fuller is a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA. His latest book is "The Future of Political Islam."

5. - Middle East Newsline - "Turkey Battels Eypanded Insurgency":

ANKARA / 3 November 2004

Turkey has been battling what appears to be an expanded insurgency campaign.

Turkish officials said the attacks have stemmed mainly from Kurdish insurgents and their allies. They said the strikes have included ambushes and bombings in major Turkish cities as well as near the border with Iraq.

The Kurdish Workers Party was said to be leading the insurgency campaign. Officials said PKK operatives have targeted police and army units as well as Turkey's energy sector.

Turkey has captured two PKK operatives said to have manufactured bombs to destroy oil pipelines. The semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Oct. 28 that the PKK members were captured in the eastern province of Batman and that authorities seized C4 plastic explosives.

6. - Xinhua - "Claims of changes to Kirkuk’s demography denied by PUK":

ANKARA / 3 November 2004

The Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Tuesday denied claims and press reports that Kirkuk’s demographic structure was changed, media reports here said.

Those who wanted to return to Kirkuk were the people sent away from the city during the rule of Saddam Hussein and not only Kurds,but also other groups like Turkmens and Assyrians were willing to return to Kirkuk, PUK’s office in Ankara was quoted as saying.

"We want a democratic, federal and united Iraq. Kirkuk is an Iraqi city, but geography, history and some documents show that Kirkuk is a Kurdistan city," the PUK office said.

It stressed that "we not only believe in this reality, but also believe that Kurds, Turkmens, Arabs, and Assyrians should live in peace and brotherhood in this city. We also believe that all natural resources of Kirkuk belong to all Iraqi people, and should be used by everybody."

Kirkuk, a northern Iraqi city sprawling near the Iraqi border with Turkey, has a large population of Turkmens, an ethnic community of Turkish descent, which enjoys Ankara’s support.

The Kurds are reportedly trying to chase the Arabs out and many want the city to become the capital of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.

Ankara feared that the Kurdish control of oil fields in Kirkuk -- among the richest in Iraq -- could encourage Iraqi Kurds to break away from Baghdad, and in turn fan separatist sentiment among Kurds in southeast Turkey and trigger turmoil in the region.

It was reported that Turkey had reached an agreement with the United States regarding Kirkuk in northern Iraq. But Turkish Deputy Chief of General StaffIlker Basbug Tuesday refuted the reports.