6 June 2006

1. "Nine Turkish soldiers killed or injured in armed attack north of Turkey", Turkish military sources said Monday that a Turkish soldier was killed in an armed attack launched by the PKK party against a military army patrol in north Turkey.

2. "Children of the repression", Turkish Kurd teenagers turn to the PKK after enduring years of State brutality.

3. "34 Torture Investigations in Diyarbakir", Lawyer Analay says "Diyarbakir incidents show officials are not sincere in zero-tolerance policy for torture". Calls for 34 investigations launched into police torture allegations to be followed up and not be inconclusive like others.

4. "6 Press and Freedom Cases This Week", Istanbul courts to be busy this week with journalists, jurist and publisher on trial. Journalist Magden to appear at court on June 7, columnist Belge, reporter Saymaz, Selek and jurist Kaplan on June 8 and Peri Publishing House owner Onal on June 9.

5. "Turkish Author Pamuk Calls For Free Debate Of Armenian Issue", Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk made a plea today for freedom of expression particularly in relation to the dispted 1915 Relocation Campaign.

6. "Court arrests 3 military officers, 1 civilian for plotting against top politicians", three military officers and a civilian have been charged by an Ankara court for allegedly planning an attack on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Anatolia news agency reported this weekend.

1. - KUNA - "Nine Turkish soldiers killed or injured in armed attack north of Turkey":

ISTANBUL / 5 June 2006

Turkish military sources said Monday that a Turkish soldier was killed in an armed attack launched by the PKK party against a military army patrol in north Turkey.

The Turkish Ikhlas News Agency said the attack occured at the main street in the province of Bingol, noting that the Turkish army is currently combing the area in search for the assailants.

It added that the assailants were taken to the nearest hospital for treatment.

The Turkish army and the PKK clashes, ended up in the killing of some 37, 000 people since the separatist movement started in 1984 in South East Turkey that is mostly Kurdish populated.

2. - The Guardian - "Children of the repression":

Turkish Kurd teenagers turn to the PKK after enduring years of brutality.

DIYARBAKIR / 5 June 2006 / by Ian Traynor

Sevder is seething. Growing up in poverty and squalor, he has seen schoolmates shot dead by Turkish security forces and had to put up with the vulgar taunts of Turkish policemen towards his mother and sisters. His grudges have been nourished by endless tales of family and friends burnt out of their villages in the hills and decanted into the slums of Diyarbakir.

"We've had enough," says the 17-year-old Kurd, wearing a Ronaldinho Brazil T-shirt and crouching in the heat and dirt of the teeming city, a couple of hours from the Iraqi and Syrian borders.

Sevder and his friends are part of a new wave of militancy among young Turkish Kurds. "There is a different generation now in Diyarbakir," says Sezgin Tanrikulu, a lawyer. "These youths are aged 14 to 20. They've grown up in this place feeling they don't belong. We can't communicate with them."

Hisyar Ozsoy, an anthropologist and expert on Kurdish politics, says: "There is something new here. These are the children of serhildan [the Kurdish word for intifada or uprising]."

Turkey's long war with its repressed minority of Kurds, who comprise up to 20% of the population of 73 million, runs in cycles. After dying down seven years ago, it is now spiralling into a new and threatening phase.

Subversive nationalist elements within the Turkish security apparatus appear to be exploiting the conflict to try to destabilise the country and at the same time Kurdish warlords, clan leaders and political elites are also stirring up trouble in internal power struggles.

Meanwhile the successes of Kurdish autonomy in neighbouring northern Iraq are exerting a magnetic attraction on the Kurds of south-eastern Turkey eager to share in the freedoms enjoyed across the border.

For Sevder and his friends Cevat and Sinan, their debut as street fighters in a new youth-led intifada came two months ago during three days of disaster in Diyarbakir that left 10 dead, hundreds injured, hundreds more arrested and beaten and plenty of scores to be settled.

The rioting erupted during the funerals of four of 14 Kurdish guerrillas ambushed and killed by Turkish security forces. The guerrillas, from the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) that is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, Europe and the US, have a tight grip on this city of one million people, rewarding loyalty, punishing "traitors" and enforcing discipline.

"Of course, we all support the PKK," says Cevat, 17. "Every family here has someone in the PKK. "

The rioting in March and the brutal response of the Turkish security forces have worked as an effective recruitment drive for the PKK. "We're fed up of the discrimination. It doesn't have to be like this," says Cevat. "But every time they do something like this, more people go into the mountains."

"Going into the mountains" is a common phrase in Diyarbakir. It means going to join the PKK fighters, thought to number around 5,000, in their bases in nearby northern Iraq.

At least 100 local youths have gone into the mountains in the past month, says Mr Ozsoy. "Guys I know have just disappeared. They're like ghosts. You would see them in the cafes and now they're not here."

Selamettin Ata, a 44-year-old grocer whose seven-year-old son, Enes, was shot dead by Turkish police on March 30, said at least 90% of the city sympathised with the PKK. Enes had told his father he was going to visit his aunt 200 metres away. He became curious about the protests and went to take a look - only to receive a bullet in the heart. Enes was the youngest of the 10 civilians to be killed during a 48-hour period. The oldest was 78. Five of the dead were teenagers, one of whom died from a cracked skull. Another 500 people were wounded.

The clashes were the worst experienced here in more than a decade. Their consequences and the general poverty in a city simmering with pent-up frustration help to explain why a youth-led intifada could explode with greater force at any time.

During and after the trouble, 180 under-18s were detained. According to a report from the Diyarbakir bar association based on witness statements and medical reports, all of them were subjected to severe abuse in detention.

"Mistreatment and illegal torture was applied. The unlawful behaviour of the police lent a new dimension to the situation," the report says.

The teenagers said they had been repeatedly beaten, threatened with death and rape, stripped naked, immersed in cold water, subjected to high pressure hosing and had cigarettes stubbed out on their bodies.

Three-quarters of the detainees were originally from hill villages surrounding Diyarbakir, their militancy a legacy of the dirty war that peaked in the early 1990s in this region when the Turkish army used a scorched earth policy to depopulate thousands of Kurdish villages in the mountains.

As a result 1.5 million Kurds were displaced, pouring into cities such as Diyarbakir, which has tripled in size in little more than a decade. Unemployment is almost 70% and there are estimated to be 28,000 children spending most of their lives on the streets - 700 of them scratching a living from combing the city's rubbish dumps.

The Turks emptied the mountain villages partly to try to destroy the rural base of the guerrillas. Instead, they have created an urban guerrilla movement.

Faced with this crisis, the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to be at a loss. Mr Erdogan has won plaudits for coming to Diyarbakir twice during the past year, signalling a policy shift towards conciliation and concession. But he has not followed up the promises and the Kurdish political leadership is disenchanted.

The Democratic Society party (DTP), the main Kurdish nationalist party generally seen as the PKK's political wing or the Kurds' Sinn Féin, runs 56 town halls across south-eastern Turkey. But the real power in the region is wielded by the Turkish military and Ankara bureaucrats dispatched as regional governors.

The Turkish electoral system is structured to keep the Kurdish nationalists out of parliament in Ankara. A party needs 10% of the national vote to enter parliament. The DTP, which gained 45% of the vote across much of the south-east in the last election in 2002, cannot obtain 10% nationally.

In the absence of political channels, the men of violence on both sides hold sway. The children of Diyarbakir are growing up to swell the ranks of the "terrorists".

In the centre of Diyarbakir hangs a red and white banner draped across a main road. "Happy is he who is a Turk," it reads, a mockery to Selamettin Ata mourning the death of his son. "I'm not allowed to say I'm a Kurd and be proud of it," he says.

Backstory

Kurds, a 20 million-strong mountain and tribal people of Sunni Muslims, are divided between northern Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey, which has the biggest community, of up to 15 million - the exact figure is not known. After a long history of uprising and brutal suppression through the 20th century, the current Turkish-Kurdish conflict erupted in 1984, with Abdullah Ocalan, the charismatic guerrilla leader of the Kurdistan Workers' party, leading the rebellion.

A long dirty war followed, with Turkish death squads and ruthless Kurdish guerrillas sowing terror. Thousands of Kurdish villages in the south-east were torched and 1.5 million Kurds uprooted before the Kurds called a ceasefire in 1999 after Ocalan, Turkey's enemy number one, was arrested and incarcerated. The war resumed in 2004 when the rebels called off their truce. The conflict is currently escalating. In 20 years , it has resulted in around 40,000 deaths.

3. - Bianet - "34 Torture Investigations in Diyarbakir":

Lawyer Analay says "Diyarbakir incidents show officials are not sincere in zero-tolerance policy for torture". Calls for 34 investigations launched into police torture allegations to be followed up and not be inconclusive like others.

DIYARBAKIR / 5 June 2006 / by Kemal Ozmen

A total of 34 preparatory investigations have been launched against police officers in Diyarbakir related to allegations of torture and mistreatment of children and adults during and after the March 28-April 1 disturbances in the city this year.

Diyarbakir Bar Association Children Rights Center lawyer Cengiz Analay welcomed the investigations and told Bianet that "even if with a delay it appears for now that what should be done against torture and mistreatment, is being done. But the 24 torture files that have been opened should not end up inconclusive like the others".

Analay said that as the city Bar Association they are following this issue closely and are waiting for the result of the 34 investigations with interest. He said they insisted that torturers not be left unpunished.

"No reason can justify torture" Analay said, stressing that torture is banned by the Turkish constitution as well as international conventions to which Turkey is a part of, and is a crime against humanity.

"We see it as unacceptable that the crime of torture which is regarded as a crime against all human beings, has been widely committed during the March 28 incidents" he said.

Zero-Tolerance not sincere

Analay said that although officials previously promised zero tolerance against torture and there was a decrease in torture incidents with the European Union accession period, "it has come out in the open with the incidents on March 28 in Diyarbakir that this was a temporary situation and that the promises made by officials on all platforms were not sincere".

"Many people were detained and arrested in the incidents that on March 28 started off from the province of Diyarbakir and spread to nearby provinces and districts. In interviews we conducted with those detained, they told us that they were subjected to many inhuman treatments and that they were tortured in detention centers. Doctor reports, their statements to the prosecutors and photographs taken by ourselves confirms this," Analay explained.

Law change not enough

Analay added that amendments in the law would not be enough to change the position on torture and said that in order to prevent torture, preventative measures should be effectively taken but where torture was recorded, the culprits should be punished in the most severe way.

The Diyarbakir Bar Association had applied to the provincial Governor's Office and requested investigations to be launched in 72 separate instances of torture under custody claims.

During the incidents in Diyarbakir between March 28 and April 1, 2006, a total of 10 people including five children were killed as result of disproportional force used by the police and hundreds of others were wounded. 213 children and 364 adults were placed under custody where they were subjected to mistreatment and torture.

4. - Bianet - "6 Press and Freedom Cases This Week":

Istanbul courts to be busy this week with journalists, jurist and publisher on trial. Journalist Magden to appear at court on June 7, columnist Belge, reporter Saymaz, Selek and jurist Kaplan on June 8 and Peri Publishing House owner Onal on June 9.

ISTANBUL / 5 June 2006 / by Erol Onderoglu

Istanbul courts will be busy this week hearing six cases against journalists, a jurist, sociologist and publisher in a judicial marathon that will once again put press freedoms and the freedom of expression in Turkey under the spotlight.

Journalist Perihan Magden is to appear at court on June 7 while cases against columnist Murat Belge , reporter Ismail Saymaz and sociologist Pinar Selek will be heard on June 8.

Jurist Hasip Kaplan, who was on trial last week, will stand before the court once again on June 8 while Peri Publishing House owner Ahmet Onal also tried last week will be at court again on June 9.

The Initiative Against Thought Crimes has described the cases as "an ongoing festival" and issued an appeal for as many people to attend the hearings as possible.

Magden's case on June 7

On trial for her article "Conscientious Objection Is A Human Right" that appeared in the "Yeni Aktuel" magazine, the case against journalist Perihan Magden will continue at Istanbul's 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance at 10:30 on June 7, Wednesday.

Magden is charged under article 118 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) for "discouraging the people from military service".

Belge to appear at court

A day after the Magden case is heard, "Radikal" newspaper writer Prof. Dr. Murat Belge will appear at court charged under article 288 of the TCK for his article titled "A Court Verdict".

Belge is accused of attempting to "influence justice" by criticising an administrative court decision that postponed a controversial conference in Istanbul related to Ottoman Armenians.

Belge will appear before the Istanbul Bagcilar 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance on June 8, Thursday at 10:30.

Selek held responsible for explosion

The same day Belge stands before judges, Pinar Selek who is known for her researches into children outcast from society and the Kurdish problem, will face charges holding her responsible for a bomb explosion at Istanbul's historic Spice Market.

Selek will appear before the 12th High Criminal Court at the Besiktas Justice Hall at 14:00 on June 8, Thursday, where she is charged under article 125 of the TCK and faces life time imprisonment if found guilty.

Kaplan on trial for TV remarks

Again on June 8, the Beyogu 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance will hear the case against jurist Hasip Kaplan who is on trial for remarks he made on private Flash TV's "Alternatif" program.

Charged under TCK article 216, Kaplan is accused of "inciting hatred and enmity" with his remarks and his hearing is listed to start at 10:00.

Saymaz faces "influencing justice" case

Another case that will be heard on June 8 is that against "Radikal" newspaper reporter Ismail Saymaz in relation to his news report titled "Torture allegation involving 11 year old child".

Saymaz, similar to Belge, is charged with influencing justice. The former chairman of the Contemporary Journalists Association (CGD) Istanbul Branch is listed to appear before the judge at 10:35, at the Bagcilar 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance.

No end to cases against publisher Onal

Peri Publishing House owner Ahmet Onal who was sentenced on May 31 in relation to another book is to be tried on June 9 at the Fatih 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance on charges of insulting modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk by publishing the book "Being an Alawite in Dersim".

The book, authored by Munzur Cem and Huseyin Baysulun, is only one of 27 charges levelled against the publisher up till now.

The Turkish language ÇETELE web site gives updated information on all freedom of expression and opinion cases that have been opened in Turkey.

5. - AINA - "Turkish Author Pamuk Calls For Free Debate Of Armenian Issue":

5 June 2006

Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk made a plea today for freedom of expression particularly in relation to the dispted 1915 Relocation Campaign.

The acclaimed Turkish writer was in Moscow to promote the Russian translation of his book, "Istanbul: Memories And The City."

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen died in orchestrated killings during World War I, and describe the events as genocide. Turkey argues that 100,000 Armenians and 520.000 of Turks were killed in civil strife when the Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers.

It is almost impossible to discuss the 1915 events in Armenia. Last year a Turkish researcher was arrested and put into prison when he wanted to study the Armenian archives. No Turkish book has been translated to Armenian lanuguage on the issue.

6. - The New Anatolian - "Court arrests 3 military officers, 1 civilian for plotting against top politicians":

ANKARA / 5 January 2006

Three military officers and a civilian have been charged by an Ankara court for allegedly planning an attack on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Anatolia news agency reported this weekend.

The four were among a dozen people detained last Tuesday following a raid on a house in one of Ankara's suburbs. Police seized explosives and drawings of the neighborhood in which Erdogan's home is located as well as pictures of various branches of the Bim supermarket chain owned by Cuneyt Zapsu, one of Erdogan's top aides.

The court charged Captain Murat Eren, non-commissioned officers Yasin Yaman and Erkut Tas as well as businessman Yunus Akkaya with "forming an illegal gang aimed to disrupt the country's unity" and possession of explosives, Anatolia said. The other suspects were released after questioning.

If found guilty, the four face a maximum of 15 years in prison.

The Turkish military chided police on Saturday for not informing military authorities about the officers' detention. In a written statement, the military said it found out about the detentions from the media the following day.

The military statement sharply contradicted police, who said on Friday that "there were no problems with the military," and that they were "working in harmony." The military described the fact that the information about the police operation was leaked to the media before the information was shared with the military as "striking."

The two officers were apparently turned over to the military following their interrogation and the military separately detained a third officer who is reportedly related to the group.

A military court earlier arrested and imprisoned the three officers pending trial on charges of "hiding and embezzling military equipment," the military statement said. It said other allegations were being handled by civilian courts.