5 October 2004

1. "Turkey: Progress on Human Rights Key to EU Bid", in an assessment of Turkey's progress in meeting human rights benchmarks, Human Rights Watch said today that press freedom, freedom of religion and respect for minorities in the country remain far from perfect, but show continued improvement.

2. "Turkey eases repression of its Kurds", knocking on Europe’s door. Muslim Turkey reinvents itself in a quest for admission. Its motivation is the EU. Limits remain, though.

3. "Turkey faces moment of truth", for 40 years the European Union has promised Turkey closer ties. Now the moment of truth is approaching: the moment when the EU shows how serious it is about Ankara's membership.

4. "Turkey At The EU's Door", official pronouncements sound friendly, but popular opposition is rising.

5. "Turkey's homosexuals come out for their rights", long oppressed in a largely conservative society, Turkey's homosexuals are timidly coming out for their own share of freedoms as the country's bid to join the European Union is spreads the gospel of human rights and tolerance.

6. "Pity the Kurds", largely ignored in the current coverage of the crisis in Iraq is the continuing plight of the Kurdish people.

1. - Human Rights Watch - "Turkey: Progress on Human Rights Key to EU Bid":

BRUSSEL / 4 October 2004

In an assessment of Turkey's progress in meeting human rights benchmarks, Human Rights Watch said today that press freedom, freedom of religion and respect for minorities in the country remain far from perfect, but show continued improvement. The Turkish government needs to take steps to eradicate torture in police stations and facilitate the return of hundreds of thousands of Kurds displaced in the 1990s.

On October 6 the European Commission will publish its 2004 Regular Report on Turkey's progress toward European Union membership, with a recommendation whether or not the candidacy should move to the next step. The Turkish government hopes that the European Council on December 17 will give the green light for membership negotiations to begin.

Since 1999 the Turkey's EU candidacy, combined with a general reduction in political violence and strong growth in civil society, has helped to fuel reforms.

"Turkey is now ahead of some EU member states in its legal protections for detainees," said Jonathan Sugden, Turkey researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The Turkish state resisted these changes for more than two decades, but their recent achievements have finally brought international credit."

However, local governors and prosecutors have not yet adapted to the new approach to freedom of expression. Consequently, criticism of state authorities and manifestations of ethnic identity still run the risk of official persecution. Broadcasting and teaching in minority languages such as Kurdish are still very limited. However, recent achievements indicate that Turkey can meet international standards for these freedoms in forthcoming months and years.

Human Rights Watch said that areas of critical concern remain and that these should be addressed before December:

Unlawful detention for exercising the right to free expression. Three people are currently serving prison terms for expressing their nonviolent opinions, and Human Rights Watch is calling for their immediate and unconditional release. Hakan Albayrak, a journalist at Milli Gazete, is in Kalecik prison serving a 15-month sentence under Law No. 5816 regarding Crimes Committed Against Atatürk, for suggesting that Atatürk had not been buried with proper ceremony.
Persistent reports of ill-treatment in police custody, and some allegations of torture (see briefing paper "Eradicating Torture in Turkey's Police Stations:" Analysis and Recommendations at http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/turkey/2004/torture/).
Internal displacement continuing for a decade or more. The government's resistance to partnership with U.N. agencies in building a credible system for the return of the 380,000 Kurds burned out of their homes by security forces in the conflict with the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in the early 1990s. (see briefing paper "Last chance for Turkey's displaced?" at http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/turkey/2004/10/).
Human Rights Watch said that a crucial catalyst in the reform process has been the prospect of EU membership. Integration with Europe, seen by many within Turkey as the realization of the ideals of the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, has been a powerful imperative. It has overridden resistance to change, as well as a monolithic view of Turkish society that has long dominated the state machinery at the price of respect for human rights.N. agencies in building a credible system for the return of the 380,000 Kurds burned out of their homes by security forces in the conflict with the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in the early 1990s. (see briefing paper "Last chance for Turkey's displaced?" at http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/turkey/2004/10/).

"Real prospects for EU membership came at a time when political violence declined and civil society grew stronger. This has helped drive Turkey's recent reforms," said Sugden, "A strong push on police supervision and decisive steps to involve the international community in efforts for return of the displaced will get Turkey where it really needs to be for December."

To read a press advisory on the issue, please see: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/10/04/turkey9433.htm

2. - Philadelphia Inquirer - "Turkey eases repression of its Kurds":

Knocking on Europe’s door. Muslim Turkey reinvents itself in a quest for admission. Its motivation is the EU. Limits remain, though.

DIYARBAKIR / 4 October 2004 / by Ken Dilanian

Start a conversation in the capital of Turkey’s Kurdish region, and prepare for a hair-raising tale.

The kindly older man in the cafe was burned out of his village by government forces. The jovial filmmaker was tortured with electricity. The chain-smoking women’s rights activist was jailed and beaten when she protested the unsolved murder of her husband.

During an ugly 15-year war that cost nearly 40,000 lives, thousands of activist Kurds were gunned down by death squads or snatched and never heard from again. A million villagers were displaced in a systematic campaign to deny support to the Kurdish guerrillas, who committed their own share of atrocities.

But now, previously inconceivable change is afoot. Almost as compelling as the stories of oppression in this poor southeastern city is the evidence that Turkey is reining in its state-sponsored brutality and lifting the cultural and political clamps long placed on its Kurds.

Turkey is doing this, observers agree, mainly because it wants so badly to join the European Union.

Although the latest war was the most violent, Kurds have resisted state repression since the birth 81 years ago of modern Turkey, whose founders denied the Kurds’ very existence; they were referred to in school textbooks as "Mountain Turks." For decades, it was illegal to speak Kurdish in public, so worried was the state that its 12 million Kurds - 18 percent of the population - would try to break away and form their own nation. Kurds were not even allowed to name their children in their own language, and they routinely were imprisoned for things they said or wrote.

But now, after a blizzard of legal reforms, once-banned Kurdish-language films are selling briskly for about $2 each on video discs. Kurdish-rights advocates can press claims against the government without being dragged off in the night. Jailed former members of parliament - who were charged with treasonous links to rebels but called political prisoners by the European governments - have been released. None of this was imaginable even three years ago.

The capture of Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999 - and a subsequent five-year cease-fire - paved the way, halting Kurdish attacks on Turkish soldiers and the subsequent reprisals. But Turkey’s desire to join the EU, which requires members to adhere to specific human-rights standards, was the chief catalyst for long-sought changes.

"For us, the EU is so important, because it means more freedom and democracy," said Selahattin Demirtas, the Kurd who chairs the Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey.

To the chagrin of many here, fighting has resumed. The Kurdish guerrillas, members of the PKK (the Kurdish initials of the Kurdistan Workers Party), found sanctuary in northern Iraq after Turkey denied their request for amnesty and, in June, began staging attacks on Turkish soldiers. Nevertheless, the reforms have continued.

But changes in the law have not necessarily meant changes in the mind-sets of deeply nationalist generals and bureaucrats, not all of whom embrace the new approach. Kurdish-language broadcasts, for example, have been approved only for state-run radio and TV, for just two hours a week, and only for adult programming.

And the legal changes have their limits. It remains illegal to speak Kurdish in a government office or to give a political speech in Kurdish. Turkish registrars still won’t accept Kurdish names using the letters w, x and q, which are not part of the Turkish alphabet.

Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir said he is facing criminal charges for saying, "Hello, how are you?" in Kurdish during a campaign stop in a village last year.

Sezgin Tanrikulu, who chairs Diyarbakir’s bar association, has been charged with abusing his legal responsibilities because he sued Turkey in the European Court of Human Rights.

The human-rights association, meanwhile, catalogued 505 claims of abuse or torture by police in the Kurdish region in 2003.

"We have seen improvement, and one example is that I am still here," Demirtas said, pointing to the portraits hanging on his office wall of four former human-rights activists who were killed. "But it’s not enough."

Demirtas said police now use torture methods that don’t leave evidence - sexual humiliation and food deprivation instead of electric shocks and dental drills. The government denies using torture "systematically" but acknowledges individual cases and recently has toughened penalties for police abuse.

Although attitudes are softening somewhat, the response by large swaths of Turkish society to Kurdish complaints is to dismiss them as the propaganda of terrorist sympathizers. There has been little investigative reporting of the kind directed at U.S. excesses in Vietnam or Britain’s in Northern Ireland. Turks seem much more concerned about U.S. conduct in Iraq than about how their own soldiers acted in the Kurdish region.

Newspapers often say that Kurds forced from their villages have "fled" fighting between Turkish troops and PKK rebels. The government has agreed to compensate some of the displaced but has not acknowledged blame for their losses.

Seyfi Tashan, who directs the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute at Ankara’s Bilkent University, summed up a common view.

"Whatever you can say about our military, they are tough guys, but they did a job, they did a good job, and they brought peace to that region," he said. "You cannot blame the military for how they fought the war. A war is a war. Is there a clean war?"

There certainly wasn’t one for Mehmet Ali, 51, who said his family of 15 and two other families were ordered out of their small village of Darli in 1993.

"They kicked us out and burned our houses," he said, sitting in a Diyarbakir coffee shop. "In the village we were really happy. We had animals, crops. Here there are no jobs."

Diyarbakir’s population has doubled to more than a million in the last decade as it absorbed such refugees. There are shopping malls and a Burger King here, but most people are struggling in a place where the unemployment rate is more than 60 percent. Thousands of women have turned to prostitution.

The city feels like a colonial outpost. Although the vast majority of citizens are Kurds, many of the well-armed police and gendarmerie are ethnic Turks. As everywhere in Turkey, public buildings are adorned with the likeness of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded a Turkish Republic in 1923 that ordained all its citizens to be Turks.

It remains illegal to criticize Ataturk. Mayor Baydemir, an elected Kurd (the region’s governor is an appointed Turk), shrugs uneasily when asked about the irony of working at his desk under a large portrait of the father of modern Turkey. "That’s dangerous territory," he said.

The lingering problems will provide ammunition to those who oppose Turkey’s admission to the EU. But Kurds in the southeast want EU membership more than anyone.

Indeed, hundreds of thousands of them have moved to Istanbul and assimilated into Turkish society. Some have been killed by guerrillas while serving in the Turkish army. And many, if not most, of Turkey’s Kurds say they don’t view a separate Kurdish state as a realistic option.

"We are Kurdish, but we are citizens of the Turkish Republic, and happy to be so," said Seyhmus Akbas, president of the local business association. What they have long wanted are cultural and political rights. Now they’re getting some.

Mehmet Misait Alpaslan, 33, is an example of how some things have changed - and others haven’t.

In 1993, after he published a book of Kurdish poetry, he was imprisoned for eight months and was tortured with electric jolts to his mouth, he said. These days he is directing films in the principal Kurdish dialect. But he doesn’t dare make a movie about what happened to Turkey’s Kurds.

A Kurd-owned Diyarbakir radio station played a song last year whose lyrics mentioned Turks killing Kurds, and it now faces suspension of its license for a month.

Said Seuda Kaplan, 26, a disc jockey at the station: "The state of emergency has been lifted, but the mentality still exists."

3. - The Financial Times - "Turkey faces moment of truth":

BRUSSELS / 4 October 2004 / by Daniel Dombey

For 40 years the European Union has promised Turkey closer ties. Now the moment of truth is approaching: the moment when the EU shows how serious it is about Ankara's membership.

Senior officials of the 30 European commissioners will try today to hammer out what Brussels should say about starting talks with Ankara.

The issue is immense. As an "impact assessment" paper prepared for this week says, Turkish membership would differ from all previous EU enlargements "because of the combined impact of Turkey's population, size, geographical location, economic, security and military potential" - not to mention its identity as a secular Muslim country.

The paper also says Turkey could receive between €16.5bn and €27.9bn ($20.5bn-$34.6bn, £11.4bn-£19.3bn) in subsidies by 2025. The recommendation on which the commissioners finally settle, to be issued on Wednesday, will dominate the debate ahead of a final decision by EU leaders at a December summit. The central question is not whether Turkey should join but instead how easy its path to membership should be - and whether that process could yet be halted.

Turkey's eventual accession has been official EU policy since 1999. The seven or so dissenting commissioners also accept that there is no majority within the Brussels body to block the decision that Turkey has "sufficiently fulfilled" the democratic and human rights criteria to begin talks.

Similarly, Austria and Cyprus, perhaps the countries most concerned about Turkish accession, are unwilling to veto any decision by the December summit without support from elsewhere. By contrast, the UK, Germany and France have all pushed for accession negotiations to begin and most member states have made clear they will follow the Commission's recommendations.

Most observers agree Turkey has not yet completely met all the criteria for talks to begin, which is why sceptics are pushing for additional conditions.

A Commission report on Turkey, which emphasises Ankara's reforms over the past half decade, says that "although torture is no longer systematic, cases of torture and in particular ill-treatment continue to occur and further efforts will be required to eradicate such practice". One way of dealing with such important unresolved issues is a new EU approach to negotiations - insisting on achievements on the ground, as well as commitments over the negotiating table, before talks can concluded. In the past negotiations have focused on commitments made by countries rather than concrete progress in adopting EU law.

Another, complementary, approach is to insist that Turkey make further progress before the start of talks, perhaps next year.

Günter Verheugen, the enlargement commissioner, is likely to accept the need to "monitor" Turkey's progress before the start of any talks - but will steer clear of any call to set new tests.

That way, Turkey's march towards the EU could be delayed if the country does not continue with its reforms. However, no new EU-wide decision would be necessary for talks to begin.

But some of the other commissioners have been keen on setting tougher conditions. Any new condition would be taken as a "no" by Ankara and could weaken Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister.

4. - The Businnes Week - "Turkey At The EU's Door":

Official pronouncements sound friendly, but popular opposition is rising

4 October 2004 / by John Rossant

Turkey's decades-long quest to join the European Union looks set to take a great leap forward. On Oct. 6 the European Commission in Brussels is due to release its opinion on whether Turkey has met the legal conditions to start negotiations on becoming a full EU member. Then, in mid-December, Europe's 25 political leaders are scheduled to give their formal consent to opening negotiations. Advertisement

Listen to the official noise coming out of Brussels and Ankara, and it sounds as if Turkey has nothing to worry about. For Günter Verheugen, the EC's Enlargement Commissioner, "no remaining obstacles are on the table." Conservative Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has turned getting a green light from Europe into a personal political crusade, is similarly upbeat: "There is no reason not to receive a positive answer," he told reporters after returning from a round of talks in Brussels on Sept. 23.

Don't think this is the end game, though. Far from it. Anxieties about the wisdom of incorporating Turkey into the EU are rising across Europe. In recent weeks influential EC commissioners like Franz Fischler and Frits Bolkestein have warned about the consequences of letting an overwhelmingly Muslim Near Eastern state of 75 million into the EU. Given demographic trends, Turkey would be the most populous EU. nation in barely fifteen years.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin voiced similar reservations in late September, and outgoing EC President Romano Prodi is known to be deeply concerned about Turkish EU membership. French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a likely presidential candidate in 2007, is calling for a national referendum on Turkish EU membership.

No one is denying that Turkey has made enormous progress in making sure its laws and institutions conform to European norms. The death penalty was abolished in 2002, and the Turkish military has a reduced political role. That means the EC is likely to rule in October that Turkey has fulfilled the criteria demanded of aspiring EU members.

But the growing jitters could have an impact on the December decision -- the key one if Turkey is to begin formal negotiations in mid-2005. Recent polls by the German Marshall Fund suggest that only about one-third of Europeans support Turkey's entry into the EU. Sylvie Goulard, a former top adviser to the EC President, argues that a green light to Turkey in December in the face of rising popular opposition could create a backlash against European integration itself. That in turn could undercut attempts to win approval for Europe's draft constitution in a series of referendums in 2005 and 2006. "You can't spread democracy without respecting it," says Goulard, referring to the way EU leaders often make important decisions behind closed doors.

Europe's major league politicians such as France's Jacques Chirac, Germany's Gerhard Schröder, and Britain's Tony Blair are strongly in favor of giving Turkey a green light. But the ground is shifting under them. Angela Merkel, the forceful head of Germany's opposition Christian Democrats, is set to use a Nov. 4 summit of European center-right political leaders to seek support for her vision of a "special status" for Turkey rather than full membership. And although its votes aren't binding, the European Parliament may also take up the issue in advance of the EU's end-of-the-year summit.

One solution being discussed is to give Turkey a go-ahead in December, while making it clear that membership in the EU is not guaranteed at the end of negotiations. That would be quite a switch. No country has begun accession negotiations and then failed to win full EU membership. Yet an open-ended solution has attractions for both sides. It would allow Erdogan to continue with far-reaching economic reforms, opening the way to badly needed foreign investment. And it would give European leaders temporary political cover from a voter backlash. But given the volatile political climate within Europe, that may be a difficult balancing act. Turkey's entry into the EU? It's far from a sure thing.

5. - AFP - "Turkey's homosexuals come out for their rights":

ANKARA / 5 October 2004

Long oppressed in a largely conservative society, Turkey's homosexuals are timidly coming out for their own share of freedoms as the country's bid to join the European Union is spreads the gospel of human rights and tolerance.

Ali Erol recalls the days back in 1994 when a group of aspiring homosexual activists went to the Human Rights Association, one of Turkey's leading rights groups, to seek support for their newly-found organization, KAOS GL.

"They showed us the door, saying, 'Your fancies and indulgences are of no interest to us'," he said in the KAOS GL office in downtown Ankara. "Today, we work side by side."

The homosexual movement in Turkey is still in its fledgling stages, but gays and lesbians are increasingly outspoken: they are expanding their networks, organizing conferences and film festivals and taking part in May Day marches.

KAOS GL's Umut Guner believes Turkey's drive to improve human rights in line with EU standards is also forcing officials -- albeit slowly -- to overcome prejudices against homosexuals.

Some time ago, he says proudly, government agencies invited KAOS GL alongside other civic groups to work in commissions on health care and AIDS prevention.

In a milestone move earlier this year, gay and lesbian activists were for the first time received in the Turkish parliament to convey their appeals for legal protection.

Their main demand -- to make discrimination "on the basis of sexual orientation" a jailable offense -- was first included in the draft of a major reform overhauling Turkey's penal code, which the EU was pressing for.

The amendment would have marked the first political victory here for the movement and made Turkey the first Muslim nation to guarantee legal protection for gays and lesbians.

But the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a conservative grouping with Islamist roots, dropped the plan -- making homosexuals happy at a time when the government has yet to deliver on promises to its own religious electorate might have been a step too far.

"To blame the AKP alone would be misleading," Erol said. "There cannot be real progress as long as society does not openly face the issue of homosexuality."

For Kursad Kahramanoglu, the Turkish co-head of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), Turkey is far ahead of other Muslim nations when it comes to tolerance for homosexuals.

Most Muslim countries punish homosexuality, some with death, whereas in Turkey, homosexuals today figure among the country's top singers, television personalities and fashion designers.

Still, prejudice is strong in daily life. Activists say most of them risk their jobs if they disclose their sexual identity and there are no laws to protect their rights.

The Turkish army, they complain, is the only NATO force to still consider homosexuality a psychological disorder, and the police are notoriously harsh with transsexuals and transvestites.

Kahramanoglu, a former philosophy student based in London, believes Turkey's bid to join the EU is an opportunity for homosexuals to integrate the mainstream human rights movement.

"The EU process is encouraging people to speak out and it is changing official attitudes," he said. "It is a pity, however, that so many things in Turkey change not because the people demand it, but because they are EU criteria."

6. - The Harvard Crimson - "Pity the Kurds":

4 October 2004 / by Mark A. Adomanis*

Largely ignored in the current coverage of the crisis in Iraq is the continuing plight of the Kurdish people.

The slaughter of Saddam’s gas attacks in the late 1980’s stands out in the public consciousness, yet few have a historical perspective broad enough to truly understand the duration and severity of the oppression that has been foisted upon the Kurds.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the Kurds are victims of one of history’s greatest ongoing tragedies; they’ve been consistently tortured, killed, oppressed and forcibly unsettled for well over a century. And while there are certain similarities between the mistreatments of the Kurds and the repression of other minorities—the Armenians and the Jews come immediately to mind—the Kurds are unique in that they have no state of their own. They were promised a state in the Treaty of Sevres in the aftermath of the First World War, but Kemal Ataturk’s ascension to power in Turkey prevented this from happening.

A sizeable presence in the Middle East, the Kurds number roughly 20 million and reside in a broad swathe from Southeastern Turkey, to Northern Iraq and Western Iran. The largest concentration of Kurds in the region—around 10 million—resides in Turkey and comprises upwards of 20 percent of the country’s population.

For being such a substantial minority in Turkey, the Kurds enjoy little in the way of representation or freedom. The Turkish government severely repressed Kurdish culture to such an extent that children couldn’t even be given Kurdish names until as little as a decade ago. But because of its desire to join the European Union, the Turkish government has begun publicly imploring the acceptance of the Kurds residing within its borders. These efforts though, for the most part, disguise the ongoing draconian regulation of the Kurds. Just this past July, several Kurdish activists were charged by Turkish police for speaking in their native tongue at a political rally. While the trumped-up charges were later dropped because of massive international outcry, the fact that they were levied at all demonstrates clearly that Kurds still have a long road to full equality.
The terrible suffering of the Kurds continues apace in the cauldron of postwar Iraq, as the recent massive car bombing in the unofficial Kurdish capital of Kirkuk and the beheading of three Kurds by insurgents have gruesomely illustrated. These two vile acts are merely small additions to the long list of outrages suffered since the removal of Saddam Hussein. Kurds stand out as targets not only because of their ethnicity and language, but also because of their staunchly pro-American actions. The Kurds are deeply grateful for America’s creation of the “no fly zone,” which enabled them to enjoy at least some sense of autonomy after the First Gulf War ended. The Kurd’s famed peshmerga militias played a significant part in Operation Iraqi Freedom and continue to battle against the terrorists waging a guerilla campaign.

While our policing of the no-fly zone allowed the creation of a nominally independent Kurdish nation, we owe the Kurds a far greater historical debt. This is primarily because they are one of the few reliable allies we have in the region; the proto self-government centered on Kirkuk has been resolutely and nearly unflinchingly pro-American over the past decade. However, our reasons for further helping the Kurds are not limited to their current assistance to our cause. Twice in the past century the Kurdish people have responded to the calls of American presidents to overthrow their oppressors, only to rise up and be slaughtered by the thousands. While the Kurds heeded Woodrow Wilson and George H.W. Bush, if the only outcome of following American desires is mass slaughter they would be wary of aiding us in the future; and the Kurds occupy too strategically important an area to risk loosing as allies.

Virtually every other people that have suffered as greatly as the Kurds have come out of the experience possessing a nation of their own, but the Kurds remain stateless. No country that lies within the traditional Kurdish homeland grants full freedom or protection—as of today there is still no nation where the Kurds can truly be Kurdish. If we can salvage little from our invasion of Iraq, a true Kurdish homeland where the Kurds can live in peace and with dignity should be at the top of the list.

* Mark A. Adomanis ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a government concentrator living in Eliot House.