19
July 2007
2. "Turkey's Kurds battle legal hurdles on way to parliament", at the headquarters of Turkey's main Kurdish party, activists busily prepare election material: leaflets and posters, but also bizarre stencils and lengths of string that may help sway the outcome of the vote in the southeast.
3. "Turkish opposition rides nationalist wave in elections", a politician brandishes a noose and calls for a jailed Kurdish leader to be hanged; another accuses the prime minister of being a coward for not invading Iraq, a third says the premier is the biggest obstacle to Turkey's anti-terror effort.
4. "Turkey’s elections overshadowed by civilian-military row", it could be three to five years before civilian-military ties become what they should be.
5. "The Kurdish mountain army awaiting the next invasion of Iraq", hiding in the high mountains and deep gorges of one of the world's great natural fortresses are bands of guerrillas whose presence could provoke a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq and the next war in the Middle East.
6. "Analysis: Turkish Army on Southern Kurdistan Border Is Just"'Saber-Rattling'", recent statements by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari concerning a buildup of Turkish troops along the country's border have heightened international fears that a Turkish military incursion into Iraq's northern Kurdish region is imminent.
7. "Three Turkish Soldiers Killed In Rebel Mine Blast", three Turkish soldiers were killed and five were injured on Wednesday when a mine exploded in southeast Turkey.
8. "Continuing Abuse in F-type Prisons", according to the Contemporary Lawyers' Association, human rights violations and maltreatment continue in F-type prisons. Prisoners who file complaints are punished with isolation and the withdrawal of rights.
1. - AP - "Pro-Kurdish lawmakers seek to enter Parliament in Turkey's elections":
GAZIANTEP / 18 July 2007 / by Selcan Hacaoglu
Politicians who seek more rights for Turkey's minority Kurds are set to return to Parliament in elections Sunday for the first time since the 1990s, but their policy goals could meet fierce opposition amid intensified clashes with Kurdish militants.
Many Kurds hope the elections will mark a new era in their political struggle since the 1994 ouster of several Kurdish lawmakers from Parliament for ties to Kurdish militants.
Still, a permanent peace in the troubled southeast, a predominantly Kurdish region, seems a long way off as the government considers a cross-border operation against militant bases in northern Iraq.
The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP, is running all of its candidates as independents with the aim of circumventing a 10-percent vote threshold required for parties to win representation in Parliament. The lawmakers would then regroup under the party banner after the election. The DTP, which won 6.23 percent of votes in 2002 elections, hopes to gain at least 20 seats under the plan.
Several other parties have Kurdish legislators, but they have rarely addressed poverty and other concerns of their ethnic minority, and the presence of an ethnic Kurdish party in Parliament could focus attention on the issue. However, the presence of Democratic Society lawmakers is also a source of possible tension.
"We want peace and brotherhood, we want our rights," said Murat Bozkurt, a 32-year-old Kurd, as some 3,000 people danced and sang Sunday at an election rally of the party in Gaziantep, a city bordering Syria.
Volunteers showed illiterate, mostly elderly Kurds how to fold sample ballot papers to find the name of their candidate. Some supporters waved scarves of yellow, green and red, traditional Kurdish colors used by the terrorist group Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, on its illegal banner.
When taking the oath in parliament in 1991, Kurdish lawmaker Leyla Zana wore a hair band in those colors and spoke Kurdish in breach of a ban on speaking the language in official settings. Other legislators accused her of collaborating with the PKK. Zana was stripped of her immunity and served a decade in prison along with three other Kurdish legislators; some others fled to Europe.
At another party rally in Istanbul on Sunday, supporters chanted "Long live Apo," in reference to the nickname of imprisoned Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan, media reports said. The government accused several parties that preceded the Democratic Society Party of ties to Kurdish guerrillas and shut them down.
"The Democratic Society Party must reject the PKK terrorist organization... It should declare the PKK a terrorist organization," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Star television in an interview on Tuesday night. "As long as they don't say it, they will be regarded with suspicion."
The party officially disavows secession and says it respects the territorial integrity of the country but wants Turkey to be more democratic and recognize the rights of Kurdish minority.
Analysts say demands by ethnic Kurdish lawmakers in parliament could spark tensions with nationalists, making it more difficult to expand Kurdish rights despite pressure from the European Union.
On Wednesday, supporters of the Democratic Society Party threw stones at the office of the Nationalist Movement Party in the eastern town of Dogubayazit and dispersed when police fired warning shots. The clash reportedly erupted when nationalists responded to slogans chanted by the Kurdish marchers in support of Ocalan.
Turkey is refusing demands for recognition of a distinct Kurdish culture and opposes Kurdish education, arguing it could divide the country on ethnic lines. The minority makes up 20 percent of the country's 70 million people. Some Kurds urge accommodation with the Turkish state, while others take a militant view.
In recent years, Turkey allowed limited rights to education and broadcasts in the Kurdish language to boost its chances of joining the European Union, but most Kurds say they fall short of their expectations.
"There are no quick gains for ethnic Kurdish lawmakers. They will inevitably engage in heated debates with nationalists on many issues," said Nihat Ali Ozcan of Turkey's Economic Policy Research Institute. "The fact is they ... will be regarded as the political wing of the PKK in Parliament."
Some Kurdish candidates have given mixed signals on whether to adopt a softer tone.
"We will definitely avoid causing tensions in this country while pursuing a policy for peace," said Vakkas Dalkilic, an independent candidate in Gaziantep, a booming industrial city.
"But the Kurdish identity is not recognized and the
bans on the Kurdish language must be lifted." 
2. - Turkish Press - "Turkey's Kurds battle legal
hurdles on way to parliament":
DIYARBAKIR / 17 July 2007
At the headquarters of Turkey's main Kurdish party, activists busily prepare election material: leaflets and posters, but also bizarre stencils and lengths of string that may help sway the outcome of the vote in the southeast.
Creativity is at work to fend off the impact of a recent law that complicated voting rules for Sunday's election and which Kurds believe aims to take advantage of the region's high illiteracy rate to hamper their vote.
Zeynel Bagir, a party activist, placed a stencil over a ballot paper containing a long list of names. A circle revealed the name of a Kurdish candidate -- the only place left for an illiterate voter to put the stamp.
"We will print about 100,000 stencils and distribute them to the people," Bagir said. "Our volunteers will teach them how to use it."
Another option the Democratic Society Party (DTP) is considering is to provide their voters with strings of specific length. When stretched from the left of the ballot paper, the string will lead to the box where the stamp should go, Bagir explained.
Fourty-five percent of women and 19 percent of men in the mainly Kurdish southeast are illiterate -- well above the national average of 20 and four percent, respectively.
The DTP, which enjoys a strong support in the region, has fielded 60 candidates to run as independents in a bid to circumvent a 10-percent national threshold required for parties to enter parliament.
The threshold has blocked pro-Kurdish parties from entering parliament, even though Kurds have become lawmakers on other parties' tickets.
As soon as the DTP announced its new election strategy in May, the outgoing parliament, in a rare show of unity, responded with a legal amendment that raised a new barrier.
The names of independents now figure on the same ballot paper as all the parties running, resulting in a long and complicated ballot paper that would confuse illiterate voters. Earlier, independent candidates had separate voting slips, which voters simply put into envelopes.
"The fact that we were forced to stand as independents is in itself a manifestation of undemocratic practice," said Selahattin Demirtas, one of about 20 to 30 Kurds expected to make it into the 550-seat parliament.
His woes do not end there: Demirtas cannot address his electorate in Kurdish because Turkish is the only legal language of the election campaign.
"It is so hard to have a real dialogue with the people. Sometimes I feel I fail to get my message through," he said as he toured impoverished villages near Diyarbakir.
The 34-year-old lawyer still greets the villagers in Kurdish before switching to Turkish for his speech.
But the questions come in Kurdish: one man asks Demirtas whether he would help the jobless relatives of a local party activist if elected. One woman complains that their only source of water is the fountain on the village square.
Demirtas answers patiently -- in Turkish.
To compensate where his message may fail, a Kurdish-speaking imam steps in.
He tells villagers to support the Kurdish candidates and not the ruling, Islamist-rooted Justice and Development (AKP) party, which is equally popular in the largely conservative southeast.
"In real Islam, all people are equal, but that's not how the AKP acts," the Muslim cleric says. "They use religion to manipulate the pure feelings of the Kurdish people."
Demirtas's visit ends with Kurdish folk dances as music blares from the loudspeaker of his van. The villagers see him off with victory signs and waving banners of red, yellow and green, the traditional Kurdish colours.
"The law does not prohibit the use of Kurdish music
in election campaigns," Demirtas says, adding: "I will continue
to at least greet the people in Kurdish."
3. - AFP - "Turkish opposition rides nationalist wave in elections":
ANKARA / 18 July 2007 / by Sibel Utku Bila
A politician brandishes a noose and calls for a jailed Kurdish leader to be hanged; another accuses the prime minister of being a coward for not invading Iraq, a third says the premier is the biggest obstacle to Turkey's anti-terror effort.
With the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) leading the opinion polls for legislative elections Sunday, opposition parties are lashing out at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's failure to quell renewed bloodshed by separatist Kurdish rebels in the southeast.
The secularist army, often at odds with the AKP's Islamist roots, has upped pressure on Erdogan with public appeals for an incursion into neighbouring Iraq, where the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, takes refuge.
Funerals of soldiers killed by the PKK have turned from usually solemn ceremonies into anti-AKP protests during which ministers are booed and the government tagged "murderers."
"The terrorism problem is right at the heart of the elections," political scientist Fuat Keyman said.
Public anger boiled over in May when a suspected PKK militant blew himself up in Ankara, killing nine people.
"The opposition is exploiting the people's security fears. The problem of terror, the slain soldiers have become political material, which is not healthy at all," commented Mehmet Ozcan of the Ankara-based think tank USAK.
The opposition finds fertile ground in a society where nationalism is already on the rise, analysts say, pointing at Turkish exasperation with US inaction against PKK bases in Iraq and strong opposition in Europe to mainly Muslim Turkey's bid for EU membership.
The main beneficiary of rising nationalist sentiment will be the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which is expected to go over the 10-percent national threshold and return to parliament after a five-year absence, polling expert Hakan Bayrakci told the Internet newspaper Forum.
"The MHP will pass the threshold thanks to the rise of terrorism," he said. "Otherwise, it would have had a very hard time" getting into parliament.
While the MHP's nationalist campaign is no surprise, the main opposition Republican People Party's (CHP) endorsement of a similar agenda has stunned many and left a big void in the centre-left of Turkish politics.
The CHP, expected to be the second force in parliament after the AKP, "drifted away from its social-democrat identity. It is hard now to even call it a democratic party," Keyman said.
The traditional voice of pro-Western, secular Turks, the CHP is now opposed to EU reforms to expand free speech and minority rights and leads calls for an incursion into northern Iraq.
The opposition's reliance on "exaggerated and populist" nationalism reflects its failure to offer efficient economic policies to rival the AKP, whose four and a half years in power have resulted in economic stability and strong growth, Keyman said.
The prospect of no centre-left voice in the new parliament gave rise to an unprecedented grassroots movement that nominated an outspoken human rights defender, Baskin Oran, as an independent candidate from Istanbul.
Oran, a respected international relations professor and a close associate of slain ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, says he is campaigning for the rights of "all the oppressed and alienated" -- from Kurds and non-Muslim minorities to the unemployed and homosexuals.
He focuses on expanding Kurdish rights as a means of ending the insurgency in the southeast.
"Nationalism harms the nation most, because it triggers
counter-nationalism," one of his campaign slogans says.
4. - AFP - "Turkey’s elections overshadowed by civilian-military row":
It could be three to five years before civilian-military ties become what they should be.
18 July 2007 / by Hande Culpan
WHEN an on-line statement in April by Turkey’s military blocked presidential elections, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called snap polls, but the vote Sunday is unlikely to resolve the matter of who really runs the country, analysts say.
The election campaign has been dominated by the impact of the statement posted late at night on the General Staff website, a powerful reminder of the clout the armed forces still carry in Turkey’s democracy and of how far they could go to preserve their grip.
“The genie is out of the bottle and it will take time to put it back in. It could be three to five years before civilian-military ties become what they should be,” commented political and foreign affairs expert Professor Ihsan Dagi.
With Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) leading opinion surveys by a large margin, a fresh confrontation with the generals could be in store after the elections.
The crisis erupted in April when Erdogan tried to install his right-hand man, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, as head of state amid secularist fears that the AKP still has a secret Islamist agenda and is seeking to undermine the strict separation of state and religion.
The army, which has toppled four governments since 1960, threatened to intervene to defend the secular order. The presidential election in parliament was called off on a ruling from the Constitutional Court.
This was not a crisis over Turkey’s secularism, but over its political system in which the president keeps the government in check, with the military appointed as an all-dominating guardian, political commentator Ali Bayramoglu said.
“What we see is a power struggle,” he said. “It began with the military resisting against the threat of seeing its custodian’s role reduced if the AKP secures the presidency,” he said.
The military’s discomfort is rooted in the past five years during which the AKP enacted reforms aimed to ease the country’s entry into the European Union, some of them clipping the army’s wings.
It also embraced a strict free market policy, turning Turkey into a high-growth country with record foreign direct investment and a desire to open up to the world.
“In such a rapidly changing society, one cannot talk of the army having a special role,” Dagi said.
But in its counterattack, the army found an ally in millions of Turks who took to the streets in mass demonstrations - many organised by pro-secular associations with memberships crowded with retired officers - with slogans against the AKP, the EU and globalization.
“When you look at the big picture, Turkey is a stable country with five years of growth behind it; when you look at the little picture, for millions of middle-class Turks who perceive the AKP as a threat, it is not stable at all,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkey research programme at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The run-up to the election has also seen generals try to corner the government on the highly sensitive issue of mounting violence by separatist Kurdish rebels.
The military pressed for authorization to attack rebel bases in neighbouring northern Iraq; Erdogan firmly said the decision lies with the government and told the military to mop up terrorist elements at home before going on a cross-border chase.
“This was an attempt to legitimize a more militaristic structure in Turkey and thus restrict the political arena under the pretext of security,” Dagi said.
Once the new parliament is formed, its first job will be to elect the next president and the make-up of the house will determine how smoothly Turkey will weather the process, Cagaptay said.
If the AKP comes to power with a sufficient parliamentary majority to elect the next president on its own and does not seek a consensus candidate, trouble is likely.
Such power could embolden the AKP and turn it into “Islamists on steroids”, as perceived by anti-AKP nationalists and the left, Cagaptay said.
“In other words, you would have an AKP that has swallowed the center-right, one of the most powerful currents in Turkish politics,” he said.
Last month, the AKP rushed through parliament legislative amendments for the president to be elected by popular vote, but Erdogan has since said that the next head of state will be elected by parliament and that he will seek a consensus with the other parties on the right candidate for the job.
“If everyone has learned their lesson and there is
consensus on the next president, there will not be a crisis. If that
is not the case, it is difficult to say what will happen,” Bayramoglu
said.
5. - The Independent - "The Kurdish mountain army awaiting the next invasion of Iraq":
QUANDIL MOUNTAINS / 18 July 2007 / by Patrick Cockburn
Hiding in the high mountains and deep gorges of one of the world's great natural fortresses are bands of guerrillas whose presence could provoke a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq and the next war in the Middle East.
In the weeks before the Turkish election on Sunday, Turkey has threatened to cross the border into Iraq in pursuit of the guerrillas of the Turkish Kurdish movement, the PKK, and its Iranian Kurdish offshoot, Pejak.
The Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, warns that there are 140,000 Turkish troops massed just north of the frontier.
"Until recently, we didn't take the Turkish threat that seriously but thought it was part of the election campaign," says Safeen Sezayee. A leading Iraqi Kurdish expert on Turkey and spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Mr Dezayee now sees an invasion as quite possible.
The Iraqi Kurds are becoming nervous. The drumbeat of threats from Turkish politicians and generals has become more persistent. "The government and opposition parties are competing to show nationalist fervour," says Mr Dezayee. Anti-PKK feeling is greater than ever in Turkey.
Most menacingly, Turkey is appalled that the Kurds are key players in Iraqi politics and are developing a semi-independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
After the election, Ankara may find it impossible to retreat from the bellicose rhetoric of recent weeks and will send its troops across the border, even if the incursion is only on a limited scale.
If the Turkish army does invade, it will not find it easy to locate the PKK guerrillas. Their main headquarters is in the Qandil mountains which are on the Iranian border but conveniently close to Turkey. It is an area extraordinarily well-adapted for guerrilla warfare where even Saddam Hussein's armies found it impossible to penetrate.
To reach Qandil, we drove east from the Kurdish capital Arbil to the well-watered plain north of Dokan lake. In the town of Qala Diza, destroyed by Saddam Hussein but now being rebuilt, the local administrator Maj Bakir Abdul Rahman Hussein was quick to say that Qandil was ruled by the PKK: "We don't have any authority there." He said there was regular shelling from Iran that led to some border villages being evacuated but he did not seem to consider this out of the ordinary. "The Iranians do it whenever they are feeling international pressure," he said.
We hired a four-wheel drive vehicle and a driver in black Kurdish uniform who was from Qandil. Just below the mountains, we were stopped by the paramilitary Iraqi Frontier Guards. A red-white-and-black Iraqi flag, a rare sight in Kurdistan, flew over their headquarters which is built like a miniature medieval castle.
Kurdish officials close to Qandil are strangely eager to disclaim any authority over their own sovereign territory. In a stern lecture, after consulting with his superiors by phone, Lt- Col Ahmad Sabir of the Frontier Guards said we could go on but "we have no control beyond this point and no responsibility for what happens to you. You may meet PKK, Iranians on the border or shepherds with guns."
The road to the mountain climbs up the sides of steep hills dotted with small oak trees, past hamlets with flat roofs made from mud and brushwood.
The road is at first pot-holed asphalt, then broken rock and finally, after crossing a bridge over a mountain torrent, it gives up being a road at all and becomes a track, parts of which had been swept away by avalanches.
The first sign of the PKK was a sentry box confidently in the open with two armed men in khaki uniform who confiscated our passports and mobile phones. Driving on, we came to a strange and exotic mausoleum to the PKK dead. Its walls are painted white and red and inside the gates are ornamental ponds and flowerbeds overlooked by a white column 30ft high, on top of which is miniature yellow star in metal or concrete, the symbol of the PKK.
The cemetery, built in 2002, holds 67 graves and stands in the middle of the deserted Marado valley inhabited only by grazing cattle. "Just three of those buried here died from natural causes," says Farhad Amat, a PKK soldier from Dyarbakir in Turkey who is in charge of the mausoleum.
Founded in the 1970s, the PKK fought a lengthy but ultimately unsuccessful guerrilla war in south-east Turkey in which at least 35,000 people died. A Marxist-Leninist separatist Kurdish organisation, its leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in 1999 and its 4,000 well-trained fighters sought refuge in northern Iraq.
The inscriptions on the grave-stones tell the tragic history of the PKK. Almost all of those who died were Turkish Kurds, many of them very young. For instanc,e a girl fighter whose nom de guerre was "Nergis" and real name Khazar Kaba was just 16 when she was killed on 30 July 2001.
At a PKK guest house by a brook shaded by ancient trees, we met several women guerrillas, who, contrary to patriarchal Kurdish traditions, play an important role in the PKK. They were wearing uniform and with them was an Iranian Kurdish family consisting of a mother, father and son. Their presence was unexplained until we were leaving when the father, Agai Mohammedi from Sina in Iran, suddenly blurted out that they were trying to find and bring home his 25-year-old son who had run off to join the PKK.
They were going from camp to camp looking for him but were always told he was not there. "Please, can you help us," asked Mr Mohammedi but there was nothing we could do.
The scale of the fighting is small. Pejak launches sporadic raids into Iranian Kurdistan. The PKK stages ambushes and bombings in Turkey and has escalated its attacks this year, killing at least 167 soldiers and losing 110 of its own fighters according to the Turkish authorities. But this limited skirmishing could have an explosive impact. The attacks provide an excuse for Turkish action against an increasingly independent Iraqi Kurdish state. "They [the Turks] want an excuse to overturn what has been achieved in Iraqi Kurdistan," says Mr Dezayee. A referendum is to be held in northern Iraq by the end of 2007 under which the oil city of Kirkuk may vote to join the KRG. The incentive for a Turkish invasion is growing by the day.
"Everything depends on the result of the Turkish election," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Iraqi Kurdish politician.
If the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wins a two-thirds majority then the pressure for an invasion may be off. But if he believes he lost votes because his anti-PKK and Turkish nationalist credentials were not strong enough then he might want to burnish them by ordering a cross border incursion.
The lightly armed PKK, knowing every inch of the mountainous
terrain at Qandil, will be able to evade Turkish troops. But the Iraqi
Kurds worry that they and not the PKK are the real target of the Turkish
army. After making so many threats before the election, Turkey may find
it difficult to back off without looking weak.
6. - The Jerusalem Post - "Analysis: Turkish Army on Southern Kurdistan Border Is Just":'Saber-Rattling'":
18 July 2007
Recent statements by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari concerning a buildup of Turkish troops along the country's border have heightened international fears that a Turkish military incursion into Iraq's northern Kurdish region is imminent.
Zebari, in a press conference in Baghdad on July 9, said Turkey had 140,000 soldiers along the border and that his government stood "against any interference or breach of Iraqi sovereignty from neighboring states."
Over the weekend, Zebari reiterated these concerns in a phone conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, while indicating that Iraq was willing to hold multiparty talks on the presence of roughly 3,000 Kurdistan Worker Party, or PKK, guerrillas in northern Iraq.
Turkey has threatened to move into Iraqi territory to conduct military operations against the PKK, a paramilitary organization responsible for numerous attacks against civilian and military targets in Turkey since 1984 that now operates with relative impunity out of the remote Kandil mountain region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Responding to an upsurge in PKK activity - this year has already seen the deaths of 167 Turkish soldiers and 110 rebels in sporadic fighting - Gul recently said on television, in reference to a possible Turkish military strike, "We have decided how to act, everything is clear. We know what to do and when to do it."
To date, the Turkish military has restricted its activity in the region to periodic shelling of PKK positions and limited cross-border raids. But concern that such activity is a prelude to a larger invasion that could contribute to further instability across Iraq has led both US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to issue stern warnings to Gul not to act precipitously.
But according to officials in Iraqi Kurdistan, the likelihood of a full-scale Turkish invasion is too remote to warrant such fears. Many see the troop buildup instead as a move by the military to influence domestic Turkish politics and to force a favorable outcome in Sunday's national election.
"Turkish concerns are there and are genuine. The PKK is a menace," said Safeen Dizayee, a senior official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two major parties comprising the Kurdistan Regional Government. "But much has been used for internal politics. It's saber-rattling rhetoric."
Dizayee's skepticism of Turkish motives is widely shared among Iraqi Kurds. According to many, threatening to attack the PKK in northern Iraq has proven a powerful propaganda tool for the Turkish military, which is struggling to maintain influence in a government dominated by the Islamic-leaning Justice and Development Party.
With parliamentary elections set for Sunday, they argue, the military has pushed security concerns to the forefront in order to reinforce an image of the Justice and Development Party as indecisive and soft on terrorism and to benefit the nationalist and secular parties with which they have close ties.
"Turkey is at a crossroads," said Bilal Wahab, an activist and writer in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. "The military is losing and the military wants something to regain influence. All they have is the PKK."
Gareth Jenkins, a journalist in Istanbul and an expert on Turkish military affairs, agreed that the army was actively encouraging an image of itself as tough on terrorism as a means to retain influence in domestic politics. "The military has to position itself to maintain public prestige, which is its main source of political leverage, in case it needs it against the [Justice and Development Party] government. It cannot afford to lose this prestige," he said.
Jenkins also said that by threatening to invade Iraq, the military hoped to pressure the Kurdistan Regional Government and the American military into taking an active role in dismantling PKK camps and offices there. "Turkey is rightly very frustrated that the US hasn't done anything against the PKK at all," he said. "There is a feeling in the military that if they take [the threat of invasion] seriously, then maybe they'll crack down a little on the PKK and put pressure on the Kurds."
It remains unlikely, however, that the US - bogged down with a major insurgency to the south - would commit significant forces to battling the PKK.
Tactically, a large-scale incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan would be a complicated and risky operation for the Turkish military. The mountainous region of northern Iraq where the PKK camps are located is notoriously difficult to control and could prove a nightmare for major counterinsurgency operations.
"I don't believe Turkish troops would cross the border," said Nawzad Hadi Mawlood, governor of Erbil. "They will get lost. Kurdistan will turn into a graveyard for Turkish troops. Neither us [the Kurdistan Regional Government] nor they can evict the PKK because of where they are in the mountains."
Wolfango Piccoli, a Turkey expert at the Eurasia Group, a political-risk consulting firm based in New York, agreed. The ease with which PKK forces could flee into the mountains when they see Turkish troops cross the border and regroup when these troops leave, he said, make an effective military incursion into Iraq nearly impossible.
"From a logistical point of view, if Turkey decides to invade, it will only take a few days to cross the border. But militarily, they know an operation like that would make no sense."
Piccoli said that a major PKK attacks in western Turkey that caused significant causalities could force Turkey to invade, despite the difficulties of doing so. Barring such an attack, however, it is unlikely that Turkey will act before Sunday's elections. In order for the military to invade, the Turkish parliament would have to convene and pass a resolution granting their support. But with parliament in recess, it is unlikely any action will be taken. A change in power could see added pressure to pass such a resolution, Piccoli said, but the tactical realities will remain the same and will continue to discourage a Turkish invasion.
"If the MHP [National Action Party, a nationalist,
pro-military party] obtains seats in parliament, more pressure will
be placed on passing the resolution allowing the Turkish military to
carry out a cross-border incursion targeting the PKK's bases in northern
Iraq. But there will probably only be lots of rhetoric from all the
actors concerned and not much change on the ground," he said.
7. - Reuters - "Three Turkish Soldiers Killed In Rebel Mine Blast":
18 July 2007
Three Turkish soldiers were killed and five were injured on Wednesday when a mine exploded in southeast Turkey.
Three Turkish soldiers were killed and five were injured on Wednesday when a mine, planted on a road by Kurdish rebels, exploded in southeast Turkey, security officials said.
Turkey has raised troop levels in the restive southeast to more than 200,000, with many near the Iraq border, senior security sources say, as part of a crackdown on guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The blast occurred when a vehicle carrying the soldiers, who were returning from a patrol, drove over the mine in the Cukurca district of Hakkari province near the border with Iraq.
The injured soldiers were flown by helicopter to a military hospital for treatment.
Separately, the security officials said two PKK rebels had surrendered to Turkish forces in the border province of Sirnak.
Thousands of PKK militants are based in the mountains of northern Iraq, from which they launch attacks into southeast Turkey.
Ankara has refused to rule out the possibility of a cross-border operation against the rebels, despite opposition to such a move from Washington and Baghdad.
The PKK took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic Kurdish homeland. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
Turkey will hold elections on Sunday in which pro-Kurdish
politicians are poised to enter parliament for the first time in more
than a decade.
8. - Bianet - "Continuing Abuse in F-type Prisons":
According to the Contemporary Lawyers' Association, human rights violations and maltreatment continue in F-type prisons. Prisoners who file complaints are punished with isolation and the withdrawal of rights.
ISTANBUL / 18 July 2007
The Istanbul branch of the Contemporary Lawyers' Association has announced that human rights violations continue in the controversial F-type prisons.
They claim that in an F-type prison in Tekirdag (Thrace), a prisoner who asked to be sent to hospital was beaten by both the doctor and the guards. It is said that in the same prison a prisoner's injured leg was hit.
Those complaining are punished
Güray Dag of the Istanbul branch of the Contemporary Lawyers' Association (CHD) says that prisoner Kemal Avci, who had had pains in his fingers for two weeks, had been sent to the doctor's on 13 June. When he asked to be sent to hospital, he was beaten by the prison guards and by the doctor. Avci complained about the guards and the doctor, but was punished with 20 days in the cell for "resisting the doctor and civil servants on duty".
According to lawyers Barkin Timtik and Sükriye Erden of the CHD prisons' commission, prisoner Hakan Özek has a serious injury on his leg and cannot walk without crutches. When he could not stand any longer and asked for a chair, he was beaten by prison guards.
The two lawyers say that six other prisoners have been maltreated in a similar way. When they complained, they were punished with a withdrawal of family visits for one month and a ban on communication for 45 days.
These prisoners are: Muammer Simsek, Turan Özen, Ilhan Iseri, Zeynel Ertürk, Mesut Omur, and Bülent Pelit.
Order 45/1 not applied
The CHD, which has prepared a report on F-type prisons, says that Order No. 45/1, which had been introduced in order to stop the protest hunger strikes of prisoners, was not being applied.
Lawyer Behic Asci, a member of the CHD, had initiated the hunger strikes on 5 April 2006 to protest against the isolation policy in F-type prisons, and the strikes continued for 294 days.
Order 45/1, which was then issued, allows for detainees
and prisoners to use common space for 10 hours a day.