12 March 2004

1. "Spying Order From Turkish Generals Sparks Wide Protest", lawmakers and rights groups decry the move to keep tabs on civilians. Measure, publicized by a newspaper, also targets backers of EU and U.S.

2. "Young Kurds balk at a unified new Iraq", Kurdish leaders are aware of the problem. "During this 12 years [of self-rule] we have produced a generation that knows nothing about Arabs and has no sympathy for the Arab nation," said Neshirwan Mustafa, one of two deputy Kurdish leaders on the Governing Council.

3. "Kurds celebrate new cultural, political rights", minority say they have paid their dues in former regime, and now it is time to collect.

4. "Scores of Iranian Kurds arrested after demo", around 100 Iranian Kurds were arrested after staging demonstrations to show their solidarity with Iraqi Kurds following the signing of Iraq's new interim constitution, two ethnic Kurdish MPs told AFP.

5. "Deadline looms for a solution on Cyprus", the UN envoy for Cyprus Alvaro de Soto warned yesterday in Athens that talks aimed at reuniting the island will not continue beyond 1 May, when the island joins the EU.

6. "Greece and Turkey to hold Cyprus talks in Lucerne on March 24", negotiations on reunifying Cyprus, involving Athens and Ankara as well as the island's Greek and Turkish parts, are to open in the Swiss city of Lucerne on March 24, Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat said here Thursday.

1. - Los Angeles Times - "Spying Order From Turkish Generals Sparks Wide Protest":

Lawmakers and rights groups decry the move to keep tabs on civilians. Measure, publicized by a newspaper, also targets backers of EU and U.S.

ANKARA / 12 March 2004 / by Amberin Zaman

The country's powerful generals have ordered local officials to spy on individuals, a move seen as the latest step by the military to continue its watchdog role over civilian life.

The Land Forces Command demanded information on terrorist groups, but military leaders said officials should also monitor a host of unlikely troublemakers such as "pro-European Union and pro-Americans, rich kids, ethnic minorities, Satanists, magicians and people who practice meditation," according to a document published this week by the daily newspaper Hurriyet.

The document, circulated to Interior Ministry officials in January, has sparked a storm of protest from lawmakers and rights groups, who accuse the military of breaching the constitution. It has also created unease among Turkey's allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and raised fresh questions as to whether the military supports this predominantly Muslim nation's push to become a full member of the European Union.

The controversy grew Wednesday, when the Turkish general staff confirmed the accuracy of the reports about the document.

In a statement, the military said it had asked authorities to "gather intelligence because it was necessary to make plans to take effective measures against incidents that could arise." The statement also said the order would be reexamined, but gave no details.

Self-appointed custodians of the secular republic founded by soldier-turned-statesman Kemal Ataturk 81 years ago, the military has seized power three times since 1960. In 1997, it pushed out Turkey's first Islamist-led government on thinly supported charges that the latter was seeking to impose religious rule.

EU leaders say the role of the generals in domestic politics needs to be drastically curbed before Turkey can join the 15-nation bloc.

"This incident reveals once again that the military views itself as the sole protector of the state and apparently most Turkish citizens as its enemies," said a senior EU diplomat, who requested anonymity.

A U.S. official said he was "perplexed that the Turkish military would seek information about those who support the United States, which is a close ally of Turkey."

Mehmet Altan, spokesman for a pro-EU lobby group based in Istanbul, termed the military's measure "criminal" and called for legal action against the generals.

In a surprise move, the main opposition pro-secular Republican People's Party, known for its close links to the military, has demanded a parliamentary inquiry.

Since coming to power in November 2002, the government, which is led by an Islamist party, has already taken some steps to dilute the influence of the National Security Council, where top generals have long dictated national and foreign policy. Unlike its Western counterparts, the Turkish military does not take orders from civilian authorities.

Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said he had no knowledge of the document.

Some analysts here say the document, reportedly leaked by intelligence sources in the Turkish police, exposes the degree of anti-Western sentiment among nationalists in the military.

Tensions between the U.S. and the military have simmered since Turkey's parliament prevented U.S. troops from using the country as a staging area in the war that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Hostility toward the U.S. has sharpened recently amid fears that Washington is secretly encouraging establishment of an independent Iraqi Kurdish state that would fan separatist passions among Turkey's own restive Kurdish population.

Last week, top generals, including Land Forces commander Aytac Yalman, were among those who applauded a Turkish academic's call to cut ties with "imperialist America and the EU" and instead forge alliances with Russia and China.

Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, the mild-mannered chief of general staff, is seen as a countervailing force to such hawks.

Ozkok's moderate stance has been sharply criticized by military hard-liners, who accuse their boss of being too soft on the country's Islamist-rooted government. Analysts say he was probably unaware of the leaked directive. Others point out that, until recently, no Turkish newspaper would have had the courage to print it on its front page.

"The key question now," said the European diplomat, "is whether the fact of its being publicized will change anything. The military's statement rather suggests that it won't."

2. - The Globe and Mail - "Young Kurds balk at a unified new Iraq":

SULEIMANIYA / 10 March 2004 / by Stephanie Nolen

The students in Classroom 7 at the Suleimaniya School of Art are bright, articulate, engaged, enthusiastic. And for their government, they represent a huge problem.

These students are a new generation of Kurdish Iraqis. Now in their late teens and 20s, they have grown up in the Kurdish autonomous zone, established after the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

They have studied in Kurdish, applied for their driver's licences from a Kurdish government, gone to Kurdish hospitals and Kurdish banks, and they all carry cellphones that operate on Kurdish networks.

Unlike the older generations, they speak no Arabic. In fact, a quick survey reveals that none has actually met an Arab.

"I saw one in the market once," ventured 17-year-old Soma Qassem.

And they are, as a group, frankly mystified as to why Kurdish leaders have joined Iraq's new Governing Council, making plans for the integration of the Kurds' self-governed area back into Iraq.

"We want Kurds to be independent," Ms. Qassem said. "We never want to mix with the Arabs again."

"We're different," added her friend Avan Ghulam, 20. "Kurds and Arabs have different culture." And there is a specific difference, she thinks, between Kurds of her generation and the Arab Iraqis they are now asked to view as their fellow citizens: "They were raised on fighting and cruelty."

Added Ari Omer, 21: "They were ruled by a ruthless regime so they were taught, and they learned, viciousness and ruthlessness."

The students have seen the remains of Saddam Hussein's Iraq on the news, and it doesn't interest them. "We are against the Kurdish leaders -- we want independence," said Nigar Osman, a passionate 21-year-old wearing a stylish blue head scarf. "We want a Kurdish self-governing state."

Kurdish leaders are aware of the problem. "During this 12 years [of self-rule] we have produced a generation that knows nothing about Arabs and has no sympathy for the Arab nation," said Neshirwan Mustafa, one of two deputy Kurdish leaders on the Governing Council. "The new generation wants more. They accuse us of betraying them."

About half the four million Kurds in northern Iraq are under the age of 20. Mr. Mustafa believes the Kurdish leadership must convince the young citizens of the benefits of being part of the new Iraq. The leaders argue that the Kurds will benefit if issues such as defence, foreign affairs and finance are managed on a national Iraqi level (while civil affairs remain a strictly Kurdish concern) and, of course, from having access to trade with the rest of the country and the revenue from its massive oil reserves.

Such points are largely lost on the students in Classroom 7. They grew up hearing their parents' stories of Mr. Hussein's persecution of the Kurds, the deportations and executions, and the infamous attack with chemical weapons in 1988.

"I feel much luckier than my parents. I haven't lived through what they did," Ms. Osman said. "I've had freedom of thought, freedom of choice."

And they believe their government should be pushing to preserve that. "Now people are hearing the voice of the Kurds, their demands are being heard," Ms. Qassem said.

None of the students said they had ever considered, until the past year, that their future might lie in Iraq. While life has changed little in Suleimaniya since the war, the world has been remade around them.

"We don't have a choice, we're going to have to learn Arabic if we want to go to college," Ari Omer, 21, said.

Ms. Qassem added: "I want to keep studying drama. So, I suppose I'm going to Baghdad."

3. - Turkish Daily Nerws - "Kurds celebrate new cultural, political rights":

Minority say they have paid their dues in former regime, and now it is time to collect

SULEIMANIYAH / 12 March 2004

Publicly, Kurds celebrated this week’s signing of a new Iraqi transitional law that guarantees them cultural and political rights.

But Kurdistan’s crisp, cool mountain air and cacophony of construction obscures deep anxieties about the major issues left unresolved by the law, a precursor to an Iraqi constitution slated to be drafted and ratified after the American-led occupation forces hand over the country’s authority to a transitional government on July 1.

Many of Iraq’s 4 million Kurds, who fought side-by-side with US troops in capturing oil-rich cities such as Khaneqin and Kirkuk, say they’ve paid their dues, enduring former leader Saddam Hussein’s violence and racial policies as well as sacrificing martyrs in the last war.

Now, they say, it’s time to collect. “If not now when?” asks Sara Kamal, 28, an English instructor at the University of Suleimaniyah.

“We have suffered a lot, now it’s time for us to speak and show our own voice and get our rights. We deserve more,” she added.

Iraqis have controlled this mountainous swath of northern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. From the rubble of wars and neglect, they built up the Kurdistan Regional Government, a relatively prosperous, liberal and secure autonomous zone ruled by Governing council members Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani.

In contrast to the rest of Iraq, the Kurds enthusiastically took part in the war to overthrow Saddam, who had subjected them to several ethnic cleansing campaigns and sprayed chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabja and other villages in 1988.

Voicing rare criticism of Talabani and Barzani, they said they felt their leaders had betrayed them, not winning enough for the Kurds in the Baghdad negotiations over the future of Iraq.

Specifically, Kurds want Kirkuk and Khaneqin included in a future government, the 50,000-man Peshmerga militia enshrined into law and control over northern Iraq’s natural resources, which include considerable oil and water reserves.

“We should have gotten more,” said Mola Bakhtiyar, a Kurdish politician.

Not all Iraqi Kurds are dissatisfied. Nechirwan Mustawfa, a journalist and adviser to Talabani, said he’s overjoyed with the transitional law.

“For the first time I feel Iraqi,” said Mustawfa, who fondly recalls his days as a Baghdad University student in the 60s. “For 80 years we fought in Iraq for our natural rights. Now I can relax,” he said.
But among the young generation, there is generally no love lost for Arabs, no identification with the Iraqi nation and many consider Baghdad the wellspring of 80 years of anti-Kurdish policies. “We have different skin color,” said Aryan Dara, a student at the university.

Kurds are deeply suspicious of any future Baghdad-government dominated by Arabs.

“The Arabs will simply elect another version of Saddam,” said Mahmoud Fallah, a taxi driver. “It was the government of Baghdad that wronged us in the previous decades.” Thousands of Kurds have signed a petition calling for a Kurdish referendum on the status of northern Iraq.

“We want to let the people decide whether we’re a part of Iraq or something else, like a new state,” said Amanj Saeed, who runs a health center and collected signatures for the petition.

Their separatist tendencies have long worried Turkey, Iran and Syria, all home to large restless Kurdish minorities.

They view Iraqi Kurds’ demands for autonomy as a dangerous inspiration for their own Kurds.
“What the Kurdish street doesn’t understand is that there’s a big difference between declaring and sustaining a Kurdish state,” said Fareed Asasard, director of the Kurdistan Strategic Studies Center.
“They would like an independent state. But no one would recognize or back up such a state,” he added.
Barham Salih, the prime minister of the eastern half of Kurdish Iraq, said he’s taking on critics publicly in a series of televised town hall meetings. Instead of nationalism, Salih has voiced a vision of Kurdish Iraq as part of a global economic and cultural community.

His government is about to set up a wireless internet network for local high schools. It hired a Turkish firm to build the city’s airport for commercial air traffic.

Indeed, Northern Iraq is booming with so much construction activity that Kurds are thinking about importing laborers from the Arab parts of Iraq.

Turkish, European, American and Iranian businessmen have filled up vacancies at all the city’s hotels.
Delegations from different countries ­ Czechoslovakia and Russia this week ­ have come to visit, attempting to curry favor with Iraqi Kurds.

“We’re trading with the rest of Iraq and our neighbors without inhibition,” Salih said.

“We want to send the message that prosperity in Iraqi Kurdistan is good for our neighbors,” Salih added.

4. - AFP - "Scores of Iranian Kurds arrested after demo":

THERAN / 11 March 2004

Around 100 Iranian Kurds were arrested after staging demonstrations to show their solidarity with Iraqi Kurds following the signing of Iraq's new interim constitution, two ethnic Kurdish MPs told AFP.

"Over the past few days, residents of several Kurdish towns have taken to the street to show their joy and their solidarity with the Iraqi Kurds, who have gained the right of autonomy after years of repression," said Jalal Jalalizadeh, a deputy from the western Iranian town of Sanandaj.

"In many of the towns, security forces acted quickly, but unfortunately in some towns the demonstrators committed riotous acts and the police arrested around 100 people as a result," he said.

According to the MP, unrest was seen in the towns of Mahabad, Boukan and Marivan, with some protestors demanding "democracy in Iran and autonomy for Iranian Kurdistan".

Under the interim Iraqi constitution signed in Baghdad on Monday, Iraqi Kurdistan will retain its federal status, while Kurdish is recognised as one of the two official languages of Iraq.

On Wednesday, the hardline Jomhuri Islami newspaper also reported unrest in Kurdish towns, and quoted a police statement from Marivan as saying that a politician barred from standing in last month's parliament elections was among those detained.

The paper also said the demonstrators destroyed a statue of a young Iranian killed in the1980 - 88war with Iraq and used by the Islamic regime here as a symbol of devotion and sacrifice to the revolution.

"Apparently the inhabitants did destroy the statue," Jalalizadeh said. "For several years they have been asking for the erection of a statue of the great poet of Marivan, Mohammad Khanegh who died 30 years ago, but this has been refused."

Another Sanandaj MP, Bahayedin Adad, said that in the town of Boukan some 20 people were arrested, and 15 injured.

Iran has an estimated six million Kurds, and successive central governments in Tehran have consistently shown little mercy towards any moves in the Kurdish regions towards independence.

The area was the scene of heavy fighting after the 1979 revolution between Kurdish separatists and the regime.

The Islamic regime has also in the past made deals with the two main Iraqi Kurd parties -- the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) -- that Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based across the border are kept on a tight leash.

Iran Monday welcomed the signing of Iraq's interim constitution but failed to comment on its contents, which as well as guaranteeing Kurdish autonomy give only a supporting role to Islam.

5. - EUobserver - "Deadline looms for a solution on Cyprus":

12 March 2004

The UN envoy for Cyprus Alvaro de Soto warned yesterday in Athens that talks aimed at reuniting the island will not continue beyond 1 May, when the island joins the EU.

Despite this looming deadline, three weeks of talks in Nicosia between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders have not led to an agreement and both sides blame each other for the lack of progress in the negotiations.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan set a tight timetable for the talks - Greek and Turkish negotiators may step in to the talks if there is no agreement by 22 March.

If the deadlock continues, Mr Annan will settle all the remaining issues in a bid to submit the final plan to referendums in both communities on 20 April.

However, Kofi Annan admitted that talks are proceeding at a slow pace.

''The parties are moving ahead slowly", he said on Thursday.

"We will stick to the timetable that we have agreed to which also entails my own involvement if the parties do not reach an agreement between themselves by the 22nd, 23rd of March. So it is likely, yes, that I will be involved''.

But Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash said he wanted more time for the negotiations.

"The issue of making us act quickly is continuing. I have said previously that haste makes waste and I repeat that the devil takes a hand in what is done in haste", he said in a TV broadcast on Wednesday.

6. - AFP - "Greece and Turkey to hold Cyprus talks in Lucerne on March 24":

ANKARA / 11 March 2003

Negotiations on reunifying Cyprus, involving Athens and Ankara as well as the island's Greek and Turkish parts, are to open in the Swiss city of Lucerne on March 24, Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat said here Thursday.

Under the peace plan drawn up by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, negotiations between the "motherlands" -- Greece and Turkey -- will open if the Greek and Turkish Cypriots have failed to reach a deal in ongoing talks by March 22.

Talat confirmed the current talks in Nicosia looked set to wind up by that date, in comments to reporters after meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. If Athens and Ankara also fail to reach an accord within the first week of talks, Annan will have the final word on outstanding issues.

The text will be then put to a public vote on both sides of the island in referendums scheduled for April 20. If all efforts fail, only the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot government in the south will join the European Union on May 1, while the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north will be left out in the cold.

Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkey invaded it and occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting it with Greece.