11 December 2006

1. "PKK threatens to end ceasefire with Turkey", the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) could call off a two-month-old unilateral ceasefire with Turkey if Ankara continues to crack down on the rebels and mistreat its Kurdish community, a senior rebel commander said Sunday.

2. "Turkish soldier killed in mine blast blamed on Kurdish rebels", a Turkish soldier was killed and 11 others were injured in a landmine explosion in southeast Turkey blamed on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), local security sources said Saturday.

3. "Turkish military confirms Kurdish rebel bomb attack led to helicopter crash", Turkey's military confirmed Friday that Kurdish rebels exploded a remote-controlled bomb beneath a helicopter, causing a crash that killed a soldier and wounded five others.

4. "Will Turkey’s ’silent revolution’ ever be enough for Europe?", from the beginning, Turkey's path to the European Union was a diplomatic minefield, with any number of issues threatening to blow up at any time. The country is large, 99 percent Muslim, prone to military coups and economic crises, and developed to European levels only in small pockets. It has problems with torture, violence, freedom of expression, corruption and minority rights. The vast majority of its land mass is in Asia Minor, where battles against Kurdish rebels have killed some 37,000 people. Most pressingly, it has 40,000 soldiers occupying part of another EU member country, Cyprus, which it invaded more than three decades ago.

5. "Turkish Offer Stir Political Agenda on Cyprus", Turkey's offer to open one port to Southern Cyprus doesn't impress the EU. Mati Vanhanen welcomes the move as a positive step but not enough. The chief of armed forces criticizes government's attempt and Southern Cyprus isn't happy either.

6. "Kurdish leader rejects Baker-Hamilton report", Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, a longtime Washington ally, has angrily rejected the Iraq Study Group recommendations, warning that any delay in deciding the fate of an oil-rich region the Kurds claim would have "grave consequences."

1. - AFP - "PKK threatens to end ceasefire with Turkey":

ANKARA / 10 December 2006

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) could call off a two-month-old unilateral ceasefire with Turkey if Ankara continues to crack down on the rebels and mistreat its Kurdish community, a senior rebel commander said Sunday.

"We have put everything on the line to maintain the ceasefire... despite attacks, oppression and acts of elimination against us. In the face of these developments, the ceasefire has rapidly become impossible to implement," Cemil Bayik was quoted by the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency as saying on its website.

"Everyone should know that we will reconsider our decision (for a ceasefire)" if the Turkish government does not cease its attacks against PKK rebels, improve the treatment of the Kurdish community and pave the way for dialogue, he added.

The PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish army since 1984, ordered a unilateral ceasefire from October 1, saying it hoped this would pave the way for a dialogue to resolve the conflict.

The truce, like the previous ones called by the PKK, was quickly rejected by Turkey but fighting has decreased markedly since then.

Ankara's actions since the declaration of the ceasefire "have long ago given us the right to use our legitimate right of defence and retaliation", Bayik said.

"But there is a limit to this. If that limit is exceeded, it will not be accepted and will be met with great resistance," he added.

Turkey says thousands of PKK rebels are sheltering in neighbouring northern Iraq which the militants use as a springboard for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.

Ankara has long pressed the United States and Iraq to stamp out the PKK presence in Kurdish-populated northern Iraq, where it says the rebels enjoy unrestricted movement and easily obtain weapons and explosives.

But the United States and Baghdad have been reluctant to crack down on the rebels, saying they are swamped by violence in other parts of the country.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since the PKK took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast.

2. - AFP - "Turkish soldier killed in mine blast blamed on Kurdish rebels":

DIYARBAKIR / 9 December 2006

A Turkish soldier was killed and 11 others were injured in a landmine explosion in southeast Turkey blamed on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), local security sources said Saturday.

The landmine was set off by remote control late Friday as a group of soldiers were on patrol on rural ground near the town of Lice, in Diyarbakir province, during an ongoing security operation, the sources said

The PKK called a unilateral ceasefire on October 1, saying it hoped to pave the way for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict.

The truce, like previous ones called by the rebels, was rejected by Turkey, but fighting has decreased markedly since then.

More than 37,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984.

3. - AP - "Turkish military confirms Kurdish rebel bomb attack led to helicopter crash":

ANKARA / 8 December 2006

Turkey's military confirmed Friday that Kurdish rebels exploded a remote-controlled bomb beneath a helicopter, causing a crash that killed a soldier and wounded five others.

The guerrillas blew up the device as the helicopter was taking off, causing it to wobble and then crash to the ground Thursday near the town of Genc in southeastern Bingol province. The helicopter had ferried soldiers to the site to hunt down Kurdish guerrillas in the area.

Kurdish guerrillas fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey frequently stage attacks with remote-controlled bombs.

The fighting has claimed the lives of more than 37,000 people since 1984, when the rebels first took up arms against the Turkish state.

4. - AP - "Will Turkey’s ’silent revolution’ ever be enough for Europe?":

ISTANBUL / 10 December 2006

From the beginning, Turkey's path to the European Union was a diplomatic minefield, with any number of issues threatening to blow up at any time.

The country is large, 99 percent Muslim, prone to military coups and economic crises, and developed to European levels only in small pockets. It has problems with torture, violence, freedom of expression, corruption and minority rights. The vast majority of its land mass is in Asia Minor, where battles against Kurdish rebels have killed some 37,000 people. Most pressingly, it has 40,000 soldiers occupying part of another EU member country, Cyprus, which it invaded more than three decades ago.

At a summit this week, European leaders look likely to partially suspend membership talks with Turkey because of its refusal to trade with or recognize Cyprus. But with so many other issues to deal with, Turks are buckling down to a long, hard slog.

"We'll continue to move forward," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week as rumors swirled that negotiations on key membership issues were about to be cut off. "Look, before they were talking about a 'train wreck' - there was no train wreck. Now they're just saying the train has slowed. ... We'll continue on our way."

Indeed, Cyprus may turn out to be one of the least of Turkey's problems in its membership bid.

When European leaders granted official candidate status to Turkey in late 1999, they knew it was a leap of faith to believe the country would ever actually join. Seven years and several thousand EU-backed reforms later, that remains the case.

Ask what has to change for Turkey to become a member and the EU's response is simple.

"Everything," says Rick Flint, spokesman for the EU delegation to Ankara, the Turkish capital. "The EU harmonization process changes everything."

However, the fact that Turkey has embarked upon a fundamental transformation to become part of European society often gets overlooked in Europe's capitals.

The prime minister already takes credit for what he calls a "silent revolution," and he travels the country boasting of his government's accomplishments since 2002 - like more than doubling GDP per capita from US$2500 to US$5500.

Cabinet members are cheerfully optimistic that Turkey will reform even more, that it will be suitably "European" sometime around 2015 - the timeframe most analysts believe is necessary for Turkey to meet minimum membership requirements.

Already, fundamental changes have taken place.

The EU Information Center in Istanbul says the number of EU-backed reforms, from constitutional amendments to low-level directives, is in the many thousands. Measures have been taken against torture. The death penalty has been abolished. Military influence in politics has been limited. Kurds have been given more rights, and the government is paying more attention to their concerns.

Laws that would have been an embarrassment to a modern democracy are gone, such as the legal concept of the man as "head of the family" - so that now women in Turkey can have a say in family decisions, including filing for divorce. Although other laws that can make Turkey the object of international derision - like one that makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime - persist.

Yet as the country's leaders pass wave after wave of reforms to harmonize with the EU, they are being confronted with the magnitude of their challenge - not only in Brussels but also at street level in their own country. For there, more than in any previous EU candidate country, they are tackling not just laws and regulations, but fundamental ways of working and interacting, and ways of thinking.

The EU has called this an "evolution in mentalities," and sent a small army of EU representatives to work with Turkish counterparts in government, business and the nonprofit sector to reshape everything from agriculture - to which about half of Turkey's 79 million hectares (195 million acres) of land is devoted - to finance, cultural rights and diplomatic policy.

In 2006, projects in Turkey cost the EU half a billion dollars (nearly half a billion euros), a number expected to at least double soon, says Caner Demir of the EU Information Center in Istanbul. But officials know that's a drop in the bucket.

They also know that most of the work is ahead of them. Without enforcement capability, the reformed laws and regulations are little more than fancy writing in thick books. Look through the EU's most recent progress report, and one sees the difficulties ahead.

"Implementation is not appropriate," the document says about the country's legal reforms, and it continues in several different categories, including women's rights: "implementation remains a challenge"; Kurdish rights: "implementation raises several concerns"; agriculture: "implementation is seriously at risk." The list goes on.

And though the barrage of EU criticisms and setbacks has dampened the Turkish public's enthusiasm for membership, the succession of one EU "crisis" after another seems not to have discouraged Turkey's tough-skinned politicians, who knew from the start that the road ahead would be a treacherous one.

5. - Bianet - "Turkish Offer Stir Political Agenda on Cyprus":

Turkey's offer to open one port to Southern Cyprus doesn't impress the EU. Mati Vanhanen welcomes the move as a positive step but not enough. The chief of armed forces criticizes government's attempt and Southern Cyprus isn't happy either.

ISTANBUL / 8 December 2006*

The Finnish prime minister, whose country holds the European Union (EU) presidency, says a concession by Turkey does not go far enough to break the Cyprus deadlock.

"What Turkey has said is not enough." said Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen.

Turkish Foreign Ministry replied with a cautious optimism saying, "Turkey is prepared take further steps but expects a similar attitude from other parties".

Vanhanen: Turkey must open all ports

Turkey has offered to open a major port to traffic from Southern Cyprus. Turkey, which controls Northern Cyprus, is trying to reinvigorate its EU membership bid.

Vanhanen said Turkey must open its ports to all member states equally:

"Each country must comply with the EU criteria and hold its promises" said Vanhanen adding that the reform process which led to the beginning of accession negotiations with Turkey must regain its pace.

On the other hand, newspaper headlines in the southern part of the divided island unanimously say that the offer is "unacceptable".

EU summit next week

Mr. Vanhanen said the Turkish move was a positive signal, but did not fulfill Turkey's customs obligations. Ankara refuses to recognize the government of Greek-speaking Cyprus.

Then the EU heads of government will have to decide at a summit on 14-15 December.

"The Union has certain conditions and they must all be fulfilled," said Mr Vanhanen. "Turkey cannot become a member until all the open questions are resolved."

Until now, Turkey has always insisted that the EU must first end the economic isolation of Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus.

Last week, the European Commission recommended freezing eight of the 35 chapters in Turkey's EU accession negotiations, because of a failure to make headway over Cyprus.

Turkey has been urging the EU to end the isolation of northern Cyprus by allowing trade through Ercan airport and the port of Famagusta.

Currently the only flights to northern Cyprus are routed via Turkey.

Army reaction to government bid

The Turkish offer - made verbally earlier this week - has provoked controversy within Turkey, where chief commander of armed forces General Yasar Buyukanit, complained that the army had not been consulted.

Turkey has 40 thousand troops in Northern Cyprus.

Gen Buyukanit described the offer as a departure from the official line and said he had first heard about it on television.(EU)

* This article is summoned from BBC and ntvmsnbc.

6. - AP - "Kurdish leader rejects Baker-Hamilton report":

BAGHDAD / 8 December 2006 / by Hamza Hendawi

Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, a longtime Washington ally, has angrily rejected the Iraq Study Group recommendations, warning that any delay in deciding the fate of an oil-rich region the Kurds claim would have "grave consequences."

Barzani, president of the 15-year-old autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, also faulted the U.S. bipartisan commission for not visiting his region, saying that was a "major shortcoming that adversely influenced the credibility of the assessment."

"We think that the Iraq Study Group has made some unrealistic and inappropriate recommendations for helping the U.S. to get out of these difficulties (in Iraq)," Barzani said in an e-mailed statement received Friday.

A hard-line Kurdish nationalist, he declared: "We are in no way abiding by this report."

Barzani also charged that the high-profile panel, which released its report Wednesday, had ignored a letter he sent it outlining Kurdish views.

"It seemed as if they had not read it at all," he said.

President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, said he agreed with Barzani's assessment, according to a statement issued Friday by his spokesman, Kameran Garadirdung, who quoted Talabani as saying some of the report's recommendations ran contrary to Iraq's national interests.

He said the report, prepared by a commission led by former Republican secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and former Democratic congressman, Lee Hamilton, sought to give too much authority to the central government and Iraq's neighbors a say in the country's affairs.

Iraq's Shiite-dominated government said the report's recommendations, which provided the Bush administration with options for a change of strategy in Iraq, generally agreed with its own milestones to deal with the country's many security and economic woes.

A Kurdish bloc led jointly by Barzani and Talabani is part of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ruling coalition.

Barzani also criticized the report's calls for a far-reaching amnesty to opposition groups and the reinstatement of Saddam Hussein loyalists in their old government jobs as part of national reconciliation efforts. Such calls, he said, rewarded "those who are against the political process and have conducted acts of violence."

Iraq's Kurds and Shiites combine for about 80 percent of Iraq's 26 million population. They suffered the most under Saddam's ousted Sunni-led regime. The Kurds and Shiites are Iraq's strongest proponents of federalism, enshrined in a new constitution adopted last year.

Sunni Arabs, however, see federalism as a prelude to partitioning the country into a Kurdish north, a Shiite south, leaving them in a central Iraq bereft of oil and other natural resources. They have also opposed purging members of Saddam's now-ousted Baath party from government jobs and the armed forces, saying this was a roundabout way to punish members of their community.

Iraq's constitution stipulates that the fate of the northern, oil-rich city of Kirkuk be decided in a regional referendum by the end of next year.

The city is claimed by the Kurds, who want to annex it to their self-rule region, but Kirkuk's Arab and Turkomen residents reject that claim and the city has been plagued by sectarian violence and insurgent attacks since 2003.

"Given the very dangerous situation in Kirkuk, international arbitration is necessary to avert communal violence," the Iraq Study group said in its report. "A referendum on the future of Kirkuk (as required by the Iraqi constitution before the end of 2007) would be explosive and should be delayed."

Barzani countered: "Any delay in the implementation of this article will have grave consequences and it will in no way be accepted by the people of Kurdistan."

Underlining the sensitivities involved in any bid to curtail Kurdish autonomy, Nechirvan Barzani, the region's prime minister, has said talks concluded with the Baghdad government this week failed to produce an agreement on his demands for control of oil resources in the region.

"We demand that the signing of contracts to develop oil fields in Kurdistan should be handled by the Kurdistan region," he said, according to Dow Jones Newswires. The comments were made Thursday in the Kurdish city of Irbil.

Barzani, the Kurdish president, also rejected a recommendation that Iraq's constitution be reviewed with the help of U.N. experts, a move the panel said was essential to national reconciliation. He said any such review should be carried out in line with mechanisms provided for in the document.

In a thinly veiled threat of Kurdish secession, he said: "everyone should realize that the territorial integrity of Iraq is linked to adhering to the constitution."

Sunni Arab politicians want the constitution to clearly state Iraq's Arab identity, restrict the extent of regional autonomy and place restrictions on the purge of Baathists from government jobs.

Barzani also criticized the report for what he said was the emphasis it gave to strengthening the central government at the expense of regional authority.

"This is contrary to the principles of federalism and the constitution that forms the basis upon which the new Iraq is built," he said.