20
October 2004
2. "Human rights court condemns Turkey over treatment of Kurdish militants", the European Court of Human Rights Tuesday ruled against Turkey for its treatment of six Kurdish trade-unionists who were given suspended prison sentences for criticising government policy.
3. "A glass half full as Turkey prepares for EU talks", Turkey edged closer to its strategic goal of membership in the European Union with the long awaited report of the European Commission two weeks ago.
4. "European Greens Support Turkish EU Bid", during a three-day parliamentary group meeting in Istanbul, Europe's Greens have come out in support for Turkey's EU bid and criticized proposed national referendums on its membership.
5. "Turkey downplays concern over current account deficit", Central Bank governor: Capital inflows to rise following December EU meeting.
6. "Kurd Demos Spark Ethnic Conflict Concerns", the call for a referendum on the right to self-determination by thousands of Kurdish demonstrators last week has sparked concern over their region's fate.
1. - AFP - "Third trial for Kurdish ex-lawmakers, but no more jail time risk":
ANKARA / 20 October 2004
Four former Kurdish lawmakers, including award-winning human rights activist Leyla Zana, go on trial Friday for the third time for alleged links with armed Kurdish rebels, but no longer face jail time even if they are convicted again, their lawyer said.
In a legal saga closely watched by the European Union, Zana and her colleagues have already been convicted twice -- in 1994 and 2004 -- and spent a decade in prison for membership in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK - now known as KONGRA-GEL), engaged in a bloody campaign against the government.
The four -- Zana, Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Dogan -- were unexpectedly released in June, just one month before an appeals court overturned their conviction on procedural grounds and ordered a new trial.
Their lawyer, Yusuf Alatas, said the new trial would be no more than a "formality" and stressed that whatever the outcome, his clients would not go back to jail, thanks to a recent overhaul of the country's penal code.
"It is impossible for them to be jailed again," Alatas told AFP.
"They have already served more time than required by the new penal code."
The defendants -- all members of the now-defunct pro-Kurdish Democracy Party -- will remain free during the new trial before a new court which replaces the state security courts, specialised tribunals abolished earlier this year in line with a series of reforms bringing Turkey up to EU standards.
Alatas predicted a lengthy process nonetheless, with the court addressing the procedural flaws described in the appeals ruling.
"It could stretch into months, or even years, because the court will have to collect all the evidence again," the lawyer said, adding that none of the defendants was obliged to attend the hearings.
The new trial will also be closely monitored by the European Union, which sees it as a test of Turkey's resolve to enforce democratic reforms ahead of a key decision by European leaders in December on whether to open accession talks with Ankara.
The four have been adopted as prisoners of conscience by the pan-European bloc and the European parliament awarded Zana its prestigious Sakharov human rights prize in 1995.
She was able to finally receive it in person last week after Turkish authorities gave her permission to travel abroad.
In a speech before the Europen parliament, Zana acknowledged that Turkey had enacted significant reforms to improve its ailing democracy, but said most of the changes remained "cosmetic."
She also appealed to the Turkish government to strive towards a peaceful solution to problems with its Kurdish minority, saying Turkey has nothing to fear from its Kurds.
Zana, the first Kurdish woman to be elected to the Turkish parliament, caused an uproar in parliament in 1991 when, after taking the oath in Turkish, she repeated it in Kurdish.
Three years later, Zana and her friends were sentenced to 15 years in jail for membership in the PKK at the height of the group's bloody campaign for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast.
They were allowed a retrial in March 2003 after the European Court of Human Rights in 2001 condemned their original trial as unfair.
The retrial upheld the original sentences, amid accusations by human rights activists and defence lawyers that the proceedings were once again flawed.
In July, the appeals court overturned the second verdict, paving the way for the third trial.
Since Zana's arrest, Turkey has enacted several EU-minded reforms
to grant cultural rights to its sizeable Kurdish minority, including
the right to broadcast and teach in their own language. 
2. - AFP - "Human rights court condemns Turkey over treatment
of Kurdish militants":
STRASBOURG / 19 October 2004
The European Court of Human Rights Tuesday ruled against Turkey for its treatment of six Kurdish trade-unionists who were given suspended prison sentences for criticising government policy.
The Strasbourg-based court ruled that Turkey had not respected the right to free expression of the six, who were fined and given suspended terms of 10 months by a state security court in Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey in November 1995.
It also ruled that the trial had not been fair since a military judge had been on the bench.
The six were found guilty of criticism of the Turkish government then in office, which they accused in a press release of failing to respect the basic rights of citizens and "identifying itself with a logic of extermination".
The court said that certain passages in the statement, published in May 1993, were particularly virulent, painted a highly negative picture of government anti-terrorist policy and were hostile in tone.
"But they do not advocate the use of violence, armed resistance or uprising, and it is not a matter of a discourse of hatred."
Turkey was ordered to pay between 2,000 and 5,000 euros (2,500 and
6,225 dollars) to each of the plaintiffs.
3. - The Daily Star - "A glass half full as Turkey prepares
for EU talks":
19 October 2004 / by Philip Robins*
Turkey edged closer to its strategic goal of membership in the European
Union with the long awaited report of the European Commission two
weeks ago. The commission recommended that the EU start accession
negotiations with Turkey, albeit under certain conditions. Attention
now switches to the European summit on Dec. 17 to see if this cautiously
positive view of the EU's bureaucracy is endorsed by its altogether
flightier politicians.
It was indeed the headline conclusion of the report that, well, grabbed the headlines. Friendly Europeans, who had awaited the Turkish reaction with apprehension, breathed a sigh of relief as leading members of the government in Ankara expressed satisfaction at the recommendation. Ankara's reaction was no doubt based on the belief that a number of the EU's members will now vote in December in line with the commission's thinking. For the uninterested, like the Baltic states, to do so is a policy default option. For EU members moderately skeptical of the prospects of a converging relationship with Turkey the commission at least provides their decision with political cover.
Mainstream opinion formers in Turkey's civil society also pronounced the glass to be half full. Gone, for the moment at least, was the bitter hectoring of the relationship of old, when every equivocation and caveat emerging from the European side was greeted with serial suspicion and charges of duplicity, insincerity and prejudice.
As for the "certain conditions" included in the EU Commission document, a tough but fair report had been widely assumed. As expected, the commission praised Turkey, and in particular the current government, for the raft of liberal reforms that have been adopted over the last three years. But while Turkey was regarded as having "substantially progressed" in its political reforms, the relevant legislation and its implementation were adjudged needing "to be further consolidated and broadened." In spite of the positive changes, this "must do more" list was a long one, embracing many of the hoary old issues of Euro-Turkish relations, from freedom of expression, religion and the fight against torture, to women's, trade unions' and minority rights.
In recognition that much has yet to be done but that a bald rebuff to Turkey would cause more harm than good, the commission offered negotiations, but within a rolling process of conditionality. In case of a serious and persistent breach of the liberal principles of the EU in the future, the commission reserved the right to recommend the suspension of talks. Moreover, it emphasized their open-ended nature, there being no guarantee for Turkey that membership would be achieved at the end of the process. For both of these apparently tough positions the EU had a precedent: the year-long suspension of Slovakian accession talks prior to the recent "big bang" accession of 10 states, and the UK's slow and uncertain path to membership in the early 1970's.
Even at its least encouraging, the Turkish reaction did not flinch. Perhaps here the reception was a knowing one. After all, the liberally inclined cosmopolitan intellectuals of Istanbul, who dominate much of the media, and the post-Islamists of the Justice and Development Party-led government, who still fear military intervention in domestic politics, also have a vested interest in the continuation of the current reform-mindedness.
The apparent intention of the EU Commission to keep up the pressure for reform throughout the expected 10 years or more of the negotiation process is ultimately born of experience. European politicians still remember Turkey's many failures to deliver on reformist promises in the past. The most egregious example was arguably the abandonment by Tansu Ciller's government of promised reforms after the EU had lifted pressure through its agreeing the 1996 Customs Union with Turkey. For some Turks at least, there is no such thing as homegrown reform; only reform driven from outside.
In spite of the positive outcome of the commission report, things could easily have gone wrong right up to the last minute. A clumsy attempt by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to hitch a retrograde clause outlawing adultery onto the country's newly reformed penal code seemed for one moment to have given the anti-Turkish groups in the EU the excuse they needed to block Ankara's progress. Erdogan's subsequent attempt to withdraw the new code in its entirety - apparently oblivious to its centrality for the commission - suggested ignorance of the very basis on which accession negotiations might take place.
Then, just five days before the report's publication date, the Turkish government allowed a foreign ministerial meeting of EU and Organization of the Islamic Conference states to collapse. Though the Turkish contingent swore that it had been ill used by the Dutch presidency, leading for the EU, the fact that such a worthy initiative had fallen over the old issue of northern Cypriot representation was reminiscent of the bad old days. Lofty matters such as the symbolism of a Turkish meeting place between the European and Islamic worlds in a city, Istanbul, resonant with importance for both, were allowed to founder because of the most parochial of issues.
And so, with the commission report out of the way the countdown begins anew. In order for EU-Turkish relations to stay on track, the December summit must do three things. First, it must name a date on which accession talks will actually begin rather than some more convoluted equation such as a date on which to consider a date. Second, that date must take into account Turkish domestic sensitivities as well as internal dynamics in France and Germany, which probably means negotiations starting sometime before the end of 2005. Third, the EU must resist the temptation to introduce new elements into the list of political conditionalities already detailed by the commission.
The EU Commission report has certainly made it more likely that Turkey will receive its much-coveted date in two months time. But the closer the date gets, the more hysterical the debate in Europe is likely to be. With the final decision in the hands of 26 sets of politicians, almost anything is possible.
* Philip Robins is a lecturer in politics and international relations
at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Antony's College.
His "Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy Since the Cold
War" (Hurst & University of Washington Press) was published
last year. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
4. - Deutsche Welle - "European Greens Support Turkish EU Bid":
19 October 2004
During a three-day parliamentary group meeting in Istanbul, Europe's Greens have come out in support for Turkey's EU bid and criticized proposed national referendums on its membership.
Europe's Greens, once Turkey's most vocal critics and now the staunchest supporters of its EU membership, began a three-day parliamentary group meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday by airing strong criticism against any plans to hold national referendums on whether Ankara should join the bloc.
"We are against holding referendums in one country about another country," Greens group president Daniel Cohn-Bendit said. "There are seven million Turks living in Europe, so the real question in the referendum will be, 'Do you like Turks -- do you like Muslims?'"
He singled out President Jacques Chirac, criticizing his proposal to amend the French constitution to allow referendums on future EU members as "foolish" and "ridiculous."
"How can a democratic president, even Chirac, say what will happen in 10 years' time?" Cohn-Bendit asked at a press conference at the opening of the meeting. "Are they going to have referendums on the memberships of Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia? The French will go crazy," he said. "This is ridiculous. Don't waste our time with what will happen in 10 years."
Cohn-Bendit was flanked at the press conference by co-chair Monica Frassoni of Italy, Dutchman Joost Logendijk and Germany's Cem Özdemir, both of the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary committee.
Special negotiations must be accepted
Cohn-Bendit urged Turkey to accept the fact that it is different from other candidate countries and that a special negotiating process is needed to allow it into the EU. A generally favorable European Commission report on Oct. 6 advises EU leaders to agree at a Dec. 17 summit in Brussels to launch membership talks with Turkey.
"When you say, 'We want equal treatment,' you do not mean it," Cohn-Bendit said. "Turkey is not Malta, it is not Romania, it is not Bulgaria. It is a big country, it is a proud country, and its entry into the EU will be an important event."
"Critical friends"
He said the Greens had arrived in Turkey as "critical friends" in hopes that many issues that remain to be ironed out -- the situation of the Kurds and other minorities, women's rights, the Armenian massacres -- could be "openly discussed among friends."
"We must have uncomfortable discussions on, for example, Cyprus and the role of the army," Frassoni said, adding: "The process of building a European democracy is not finished."
The Greens support Turkey's EU membership, the Italian MEP said, but so does Italy's conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- "his reasons are not the same as ours," she added.
"What is the Greens' message to Turkey," asked Özdemir, who is of Turkish origin. "The message is that we are here and not somewhere else. If Turkey is today at another point than where it was several years ago, it is also because of civil society, not only because of politicians," he said.
Issues on contention
Another message from the Greens to Turkey's politicians is "don't panic," Logendijk said. He added the Commission report contained elements Turkey and the Greens both disagree with, such as the open-ended nature of the talks and mention of permanent derogations concerning this country, such as barring its citizens from free circulation in Europe.
"But," he said, "don't lose your focus; don't lose sight of the main point: (membership) negotiations should begin next year."
The meeting of the joint Greens/European Free Alliance group next
goes into a series of panel conferences covering aspects of Turkey-EU
ties. Panelists include German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer his
Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gül, Kurdish activist Leyla Zana
and Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.
5. - The Daily Star - "Turkey downplays concern over current account deficit":
Central Bank governor: Capital inflows to rise following December
EU meeting
19 October 2004
Turkish Central Bank governor Sureyya Serdengecti downplayed concerns
Monday over the country's current account deficit, insisting he was
confident that the trend of falling inflation would continue.
Serdengecti, speaking ahead of an investor forum in London, said he expects capital inflows into Turkey to rise on any positive decision at EU entry talks in December.
"There is a strong relationship between growth and current account, and we see a relative slowdown in the second half which makes us more confident on the current account," Serdengecti said.
Investors have been worried by the growth of the Turkish current account deficit this year. The gap hit $9.8 billion for the period from January to August, compared with a year-end target of $10.8 billion.
The government has set a deficit target of 4 percent of GDP for this year and next.
"We are quite confident on the CPI target despite the negative impact from oil," Serdengecti said. "In fact, some people are calling for a downward revision to the 2005 target. The outlook depends on agricultural prices, which have helped us so far but may not help us so much in the future."
Turkish consumer price inflation is expected to end the year at 9.7 percent, according to the Central Bank's survey of expectations earlier this month, below a previous forecast of 10.5 percent.
Serdengecti said he expected talks with the International Monetary Fund on a new lending program to be concluded by the end of October to replace the existing ones expected to end in February.
Serdengecti's comments came as Ankara reiterated its aim to bring annual inflation down to 8 percent next year.
At an Ankara news conference unveiling the details of a draft deficit budget, Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan said economic growth would achieve 5 percent in 2005, although officials say the actual figure could exceed 10 percent.
The draft budget allocates a third of official spending to interest payments on the public debt, Unakitan added. The 2005 budget, to be debated in Parliament soon, will be the last one to be calculated in quadrillions of Turkish liras as the country is poised to wipe six zeroes off its inflation hit national currency on Jan. 1.
The finance minister said the budget deficit was expected to fall to 29,137 trillion lira ($19.6 billion) in 2005 from an anticipated 33,987 trillion lira this year. He added that GNP was seen to be amounting to $298.4 billion next year.
The budget's primary surplus, which excludes interest payments on Turkey's heavy domestic debt, was seen rising 13.35 percent to 24,048 trillion lira next year from 21,219 trillion forecast for 2004.
A high primary surplus is central to Turkey's loan accord with the IMF.
Unakitan said interest payments would decline to 56,440 trillion lira in 2005 from 58,537 trillion this year.
In the latest development in Turkey's privatization plans to make headway with a tight austerity program backed by the IMF, Ankara plans to sell off state land at up to one-seventh of the going market rates to attract foreign investors. The decision is seen as part of Turkey's European Union accession bid.
In and around Ankara alone, officials have identified 53.2 million square meters of land suitable for sale.
Its current market value stands at $54.5 million, but they plan to sell at around $10.1 million, Anatolia said.
"Our aim is to increase tax revenue by expanding the city's industrial capacity and to increase employment," said Cemal Boyali, the deputy head of the Ankara revenue office.
"That is why we will give the land away at one-sixth or one-seventh
its current value." The decision follows a legal amendment allowing
the finance ministry to reduce the prices of Treasury land for any
industrial investment worth $10 million or more and providing employment
to at least 50 people.
6. - Institute for War and Peace Reporting - "Kurd Demos Spark Ethnic Conflict Concerns":
KIRKUK / 19 October 2004 / by Soran Dawoodi
The call for a referendum on the right to self-determination by thousands of Kurdish demonstrators last week has sparked concern over their region's fate.
Some protestors at the rallies, which took place both in Kurdistan and in Europe, even called for a completely independent Kurdistan ? with oil-rich Kirkuk as its capital.
The demonstrations renewed concerns over potential ethnic conflict in Kirkuk, with Mohammed Khalil, an Arab representative on the Kirkuk city council, warning the situation would be "impossible to control" if unrest was triggered.
The Kurdish Referendum movement was established last year by prominent Kurds, who launched a widespread campaign to collect signatures demanding a vote on self-determination.
According to organisers, as many as two million signatures were collected, and letters outlining the goals of the campaign have been sent to the Kurdish parliament, Iraqi president Sheikh Gazi al-Yawer, British premier Tony Blair, US president George Bush, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, among others.
But little has come of it all, and Almaz Fadhil, a lawyer and organiser of last week's demonstration in Kirkuk, expressed her resentment over the policies of the interim Iraqi government.
"We are annoyed and upset," she said. "They [the government] have not achieved anything for the Kurds up to now."
Fadhil said she has demanded the return of tens of thousands of Kurds who were deported from Kirkuk by the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
But the Turkomen Shiite Council, TSC, the country's largest group of Muslim Turkomen, claims the Kurds already are "enjoying facilities and privileges from the occupiers and the government".
In Kirkuk, with its mixed ethnicity of Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen and Assyrians, the issue of the deported Kurds remains troublesome and complicated.
Issues of ethnicity sometimes create divisions in the city or its administrative council, which is comprised of two representatives from each ethnic group.
After the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein last year, thousands of Kurds returned to Kirkuk, seizing former army bases and other public buildings.
The Kurdish representatives in the city council used the Transitional Administrative Law, TAL, to call for an end to the problem of those deported by Saddam's regime.
In an attempt to resolve the issue, the city council formed a committee for the returnees and undertook several actions on their behalf, including gifts of land to those who had been deported and had their own property confiscated by the regime.
According to Kurds, the confiscated land and property had been given to Arab settlers, brought in by the Saddam regime as a means of altering the city's ethnic balance.
But with the number of Kurds in Kirkuk now increasing, Arabs and Turkomen are expressing concerns, and are even accusing the Kurds of settling thousands of non-Iraqi Kurds in the city.
Khudir Galib, the Turkoman representative on the Committee of the Deported Kurds, said the Kurds are working to create a "security belt" by forming residential compounds around Kirkuk.
"It is an historic mistake and it has severe consequences," he said.
Galib said the Kurds are trying to change the demographic structure in their favour prior to a census and general elections.
The exact number of Kurds deported under Saddam remains unclear.
Sungol Omar Chapook, a leading Turkoman politician and former member of Iraq's now disbanded Governing Council, said the number of expelled Kurdish families comes to around 500 while Kurdish sources put the figure at 200,000.
Adding to the confusion, the former Coalition Provisional Authority, CPA, said 50,000 Kurds had been deported under Saddam and that half of them had returned to Kirkuk since the end of the war.
But Arabs and Turkomen say that such big numbers also include Kurds who were deported from Irbil, Sulimaniya as well as Kurds who fled to Iran, Syria and Turkey.
The Arab and Turkoman representatives in the city council say the Kurds are inflating the numbers of their deportees and if all those alleged to have been expelled return to Kirkuk, the demographic balance will change to the Kurds' advantage.
In any case, last week's demonstrations put the Kurds on a collision course with the TSC which has called upon Iraq's Shiite religious authority, the Marjiya, to block Kurdish efforts at independence.
In particular, the TSC wants the Marjiya to prevent application of Article 58 of the TAL until general elections have been held in January 2005.
Under the terms of Article 58, a majority of the population in any three provinces can reject a permanent constitution for the entire nation even if a majority of Iraqis vote for it.
Many people believe that Article 58 effectively grants the Kurds a veto since they dominate the three provinces of Arbil, Suleimaniyah and Duhok.
The fear is that the Kurds will use their veto as a bargaining chip for their own independence, and efforts are underway to weaken the Kurdish position.
In a letter sent to the Marjiya, the TSC went so far as to describe Kurdish attempts to control Kirkuk as "a seizure which is not different from the Zionist seizure of Jerusalem".
Rallies provoke fears of unrest in the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk.