27 March 2007

1. "Turkish PM investigated for 'praising' rebel leader", a Turkish prosecutor launched a formal investigation Monday into Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over allegations he praised Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan seven years ago, a report said. The probe follows complaints filed by the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and several individuals that Erdogan referred to Ocalan as "sayin" -- a word meaning esteemed or honorable, but which also doubles for "mister" -- during a radio interview in Australia in January 2000.

2. "Landmines still kill in southeast Turkey", snow turns red at the edge of Tunceli's mountain roads as it soaks up the bronze-rich soil. Passing that red line is a matter of life or death in these areas, where violence has endured for 23 years.

3. "Too Late Too Little" in Torture Case", a court decision condemns four police officers to eight years in prison for torturing a university student to death while under custody. The trial lasted 16 years and all suspects got the minimum sentences. Lawyer Aydin and TIHV chair Önen comment.

4. "Turkish politician held over murder", Turkish police have detained a right-wing politician for interrogation in connection with the killing of an ethnic Armenian journalist, a news channel has reported.

5. "301 binding publishers hand and foot, giving way to censorship", 'Fisk’s book is invaluable in terms of investigative journalism. Of course, I want to publish it but I have hesitations because a court case might be filed against the book under Article 301 due to its reference to the Armenian question in one of the chapters,' says publisher Osman Akinhay.

6. "Say No, Mr Erdogan", the most powerful man in one of Europe's most important states is on the verge of achieving the ambition of a lifetime. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the one-time Islamist zealot turned prime minister, has Turkey's presidency for the taking.

1. - AFP - "Turkish PM investigated for 'praising' rebel leader":

ANKARA / 26 March 2007

A Turkish prosecutor launched a formal investigation Monday into Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over allegations he praised Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan seven years ago, a report said.

The probe follows complaints filed by the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and several individuals that Erdogan referred to Ocalan as "sayin" -- a word meaning esteemed or honorable, but which also doubles for "mister" -- during a radio interview in Australia in January 2000.

Erdogan has categorically rejected the allegations which were first brought up by the CHP last week.

The prosecutor in charge of the probe will decide whether there is need for a full judicial investigation against Erdogan that could pave the way for charges against him, the Anatolia news agency reported.

He would have to ask parliament for permission to carry out such an investigation since Erdogan has political immunity.

Under the Turkish penal code, praising a crime or criminal offender is punishable by up to two years in prison.

Several politicians from the country's main Kurdish party have been indicted or jailed on these charges for referring to Ocalan as "sayin".

Ocalan is the head of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has fought for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

Considered by many Turks as the country's main enemy, he has been serving a life sentence for treason and separatism as the sole inmate on a prison island since he was convicted in 1999.

2. - Reuters - "Landmines still kill in southeast Turkey":

TUNCELI / 26 March 2007 / by Thomas Grove

Snow turns red at the edge of Tunceli's mountain roads as it soaks up the bronze-rich soil. Passing that red line is a matter of life or death in these areas, where violence has endured for 23 years.

Intense conflicts in the 90s -- and now sporadic violence between the military and Kurdish guerrillas -- have turned much of Turkey's rural southeast into a minefield. Security sources say some of the explosives now come from nearby Iraq.

The government has failed to make good on promises to clear up the mines laid across the countryside, so for those people who did not join the hundreds of thousands who fled, simple daily things such as letting children play outside or going to school have become a potential disaster.

Hidir Celik is testimony to the danger. His body riddled with shrapnel, pain registers on his face as he bends his legs to sit, even though doctors keep trying to remove pieces of the landmine that exploded near him in 2002, killing five people.

Staring into the distance, the plastic replacement for his right eye is designed to match the brown-yellow hue of his remaining iris.

"Just give me back my sight, give me back my health. I don't want anything else," said the former scrap metal collector.

In fact he was relatively lucky. When some teenagers dumped outside his store a sack of scrap metal they had collected in the nearby hills, detonating the mine they had unknowingly picked up, he only lost his eye.

His accident is just one of hundreds to plague Turkey's rural, mainly Kurdish southeast region since 1984, when the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) launched an armed campaign to carve out an ethnic homeland.

Turkey's failure to clear up an estimated 400,000 mines laid during the conflict has helped drive the human toll higher -- even in a time of relative peace -- while hampering investment in a region already suffering severe poverty.

"During the 1990s when the violence between the state and the militant groups was intense, soldiers laid mines in what were considered points of passage for the PKK," said Ozgur Kaplan, president of the Tunceli Bar Association, who is overseeing several landmine cases brought against the state.

"The violence has slowed down now but the mines have remained," he said.

Landmine deaths and injuries have risen to 533 since a five-year cease-fire between the PKK and Turkish military ended in 2004, according to government and NGO tallies.

MINES STILL BEING LAID?

It was in 2004 that Turkey promised to stop using landmines in its interior military operations, and agreed to clear the explosives. The PKK also says it has stopped using landmines, but a security source said both sides still lay the explosives.

Some security experts say the number of mines laid by the PKK exceeds those by the Turkish military. One security official said the guerrillas have used more as the fighters dwindle in number. The mines are easily smuggled in by fighters hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq, where they have access to weapons bazaars.

But with the conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdish rebels now reduced to isolated skirmishes, some villagers have began trying to resume their former livelihoods.

"In the spring and summer, people take their sheep out to pastures to graze or they want to come back to their villages, but there are mines everywhere. How can people know where the mines are?" asked local mayor Cevdet Konak.

"The only way to know is for you or your cow to set one off," he said.

No comprehensive studies have been done on the economic effects of mines, but Konak said they had caused great economic damage in the region.

"The main industry here is animal husbandry. But how can you graze your animals if you cannot move, and what will you do if one gets blown up? Free movement is essential for attracting investment to a region, for moving forward," he said.

The average income in husbandry is 300 Turkish lira ($220) per month, said Konak: one sheep can cost as much as 300 lira, a cow as much as 2,500 lira.

ORGANIC FARMS?

To clear explosives in heavily mined areas of the South and Southeast, Turkey's Finance Ministry has opened two tenders since 2005. Both were part of an effort to conform to the Ottowa Convention which gave signatories like Turkey 10 years to de-mine its interiors.

But both tenders were called off.

While most de-mining contracts are based on cash payments for land cleared, the Turkish ones were set up so the winning bidder would win the right to establish an organic farm on the cleaned land for 49 years after clearing it, in a kind of 'rehabilitate and operate' system.

"The government is trying to get the land cleared without spending any money," said de-mining consultant Ali Koknar, who heads Washington-based AMK Risk Management.

"The winning bid has to agree to farm the land for 49 years. That's not the way the de-mining industry works," he said.

Tunceli's provincial governor Mustafa Erkal said security forces were de-mining areas of the country, but declined to give further details.

People living in the area are anxious.

"We want to hear from the authorities that the mines have been cleared and that we now have the right to move about as we wish," said Konak. "Everyone's afraid, you can't go back to your village, you can't veer off the road."

3. - Bianet - "Too Late Too Little" in Torture Case":

A court decision condemns four police officers to eight years in prison for torturing a university student to death while under custody. The trial lasted 16 years and all suspects got the minimum sentences. Lawyer Aydin and TIHV chair Önen comment.

ISTANBUL / 26 March 2007 / by Ayca Orer

Hacettepe University student Birtan Altinbas had been taken under custody on January 9, 1991 in Ankara. Six days later, his body was lying at the Gülhane Military Hospital's morgue. Coroner's reports said he was tortured to death while under custody.

16 years after this murder, four suspected police officers Hasan Cavit Orhan, Süleyman Sinkil, Ibrahim Dedeoglu and Sadi Çayli have been condemned to 8 years and 10 months imprisonment each on grounds of "manslaughter beyond intention".

Despite the court ruling last week, they still stay free. If their sentences are approved, they will serve only 21 months in prison.

The court turned down the Altinbas family lawyer Oya Aydin's appeal for a arrest warrant for the convicts. Four police officers immediately took the case to the Supreme Court of Appeals.

Commenting on the judicial process, both lawyer Aydin and Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV) chair Yavuz Önen say "it's too late and too little".

Following the case since 1998, Aydin evaluates the court decision as "insufficient" considering the alleged crime. "All police officers should have been tried with voluntary manslaughter", which would require a heavier sentence, she says.

She also objects to the reduction of penalties for the convicts and criticizes the length of the trial.

From a different perspective, she mentions the importance of public pressure in such cases.

"The trial was unclaimed by the public in the beginning, so they could easily kept the trial at suspense. When the first ruling was revealed, tens of police officers ganged up in the front of the court. We were under such pressure. In time, increasing public pressure brought the case into view.

Önen agrees with this assertation. He quotes another example, another torture case where six teenagers in Manisa had to endure a lengthy trial but public attention helped condemn the offenders.

"Those trials will help the fight against torture in this country". But he's not content with the late ruling:

"The court gave the minimum sentence possible and retained from punishing the crime of torture".

The trial process

Birtan Altinbas (born in 1967 in the village of Saripolat in the Markara district of Tekirdag province) was taken into custody by police officers affiliated with the Anti-Terror branch of the Ankara Security Directorate on January 9, 1991 upon leaving Hacettepte University, where he was a student in the Department of Computer Engineering. While in custody, he died as a result of torture on January 15, 1991.

Pursuant a complaint filed by a number of individuals and organizations, including witnesses to the torture in question, an investigation was initiated by the Ankara Public Prosecutor.

The trial is regarded as one of the longest torture trials in Turkey.

Defendants prolonged the trials using procedural loopholes such as constantly changing lawyers which results in deferrals.

In 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had sent a letter to Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and told him he was worried the Altinbas trial would not end before the statute of limitation runs out and thus the police officers would not be punished. (AO/EÜ)

* For further information on the case, please click here to reach an article by Altinbas' lawyers, as published in a Human Rights Association (IHD) bulletin in 2004.

4. - MWC News - "Turkish politician held over murder":

26 March 2007

Turkish police have detained a right-wing politician for interrogation in connection with the killing of an ethnic Armenian journalist, a news channel has reported.

Police detained Yasar Cihan, head of the local branch of the conservative and nationalist Great Unity party in the port city of Trabzon, private NTV television reported on Sunday.

The detention came several hours after Patriarch Mesrob II, the spiritual head of the Armenian Orthodox community in Turkey, criticised the authorities for failing to find those who ordered the killing of Hrant Dink.

Dink was killed outside his paper, Agos, in Istanbul in January.

Prosecutors have pressed charges against 10 suspects, including some former members of the youth wing of Great Unity.

According to NTV, police were still looking for another leading member of Great Unity, Halis Egemen.

Dink's killing prompted international condemnation as well as debate within Turkey about free speech, and whether state institutions were tolerant of militant nationalists.

5. - Turkish Daily News - "301 binding publishers hand and foot, giving way to censorship":

'Fisk’s book is invaluable in terms of investigative journalism. Of course, I want to publish it but I have hesitations because a court case might be filed against the book under Article 301 due to its reference to the Armenian question in one of the chapters,' says publisher Osman Akinhay.

ANKARA / 26 March 2007 / by Fulya Ozerkan

Turkish publishers are hesitating to publish the latest book penned by Robert Fisk, chief Middle East correspondent for British daily The Independent, because of concerns over the possibility of legal charges under infamous Article 301 of the penal code that makes it a crime to denigrate Turkish identity or Turkishness.

“Fisk's book is invaluable in terms of investigative journalism. Of course, I want to publish it but I have hesitations because a court case might be filed against the book under Article 301 due to its reference to the Armenian question in one of the chapters,” Osman Akinhay, editor of Agora Publishing House, told the Turkish Daily News.

The book “The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East” is made up of 24 chapters but one chapter is about the alleged genocide of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

“It is a book about the history of the Middle East. It is not chronological. It is the history mostly of my own I witnessed during the Gulf war, Iran-Iraq war, the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. There is one chapter in 24, which is about the Armenian genocide. … But this is a book which is about the whole history of what I call the Western conquest of the Middle East,” Fisk told the TDN in a telephone interview. He admitted that Turkish publishers were so concerned about publishing the book especially after Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead in Istanbul in January.

“After Dink's death I kept the name of my Turkish publisher out of my articles. It is very easy for me as a journalist to say my publishers must publish my book but by sitting in the safety of Beirut, I cannot protect them on the streets of Istanbul, so I'm not going to say anything about my publishers. They have their own problems,” he said.

However, Fisk emphasized for a country that wants to join the European Union “to have publishers frightened of publishing my book with only one chapter about the Armenian genocide is very wrong.”

The 1,400-page book is published in 15 different languages and the number will rise to 16 if it is published in Turkish after being translated by Agora publishers.

“The fact that Fisk's book, which is easily published and sold in Europe, cannot be published in a country that aspires to join the EU is not a problem of mine individually but a problem of Turkey. The [Turkish] government and Parliament are responsible for safeguarding the freedom of expression,” Akinhay said.

Turkey is under intense pressure from the EU to amend or totally scrap Article 301 from its penal code that has already landed a string of intellectuals including Turkey's Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk in court for denigrating Turkish identity - and some for comments on the alleged genocide of Armenians. The controversial article has made its mark on Turkey's agenda following Dink's murder, prompting the government to work for a revision but no progress has been made so far.

‘I'll stand in court and go to prison with you':

The Agora Publishing House bid for Fisk's book and won the contract but the publication of the book has been postponed several times. The first postponement came in the summer due to reasons nothing to do with the book or the alleged genocide.

“The translator could not continue with the translation because I think one of his family members died. We postponed the book and then they [publishers] decided to go ahead in January-February but did not publish the book then. They said they wanted to postpone because they were worried about the political situation, the EU process, elections, Cyprus and the Kurdish problem. There was no end to problems,” Fisk told the TDN.

He said the publishers later wanted a guarantee that he would defend them in court if they were arrested and charged under Article 301 due to publishing the book. “I told them I'll be in Istanbul and stand in court and go to prison with them if they are in trouble.”

But instead of publicity and media hype, the Turkish publishers wanted to publish the book quietly, said Fisk, as if it were some kind of pornography. He said, “This is a serious book and you publish it properly.”

For the time being there is no exact schedule time when the book will be published and the author wants to come to Turkey and lecture about it after its publication. “The book is about the West domination of the Muslim world, which means West domination of Turkey as well as other countries in the Middle East. Turkey does not come out as a villain in the book but the West does certainly. If the book is published I'll certainly lecture and talk about it,” he added.

Fisk defends Armenians were subjected to the alleged genocide in 1915 and said the Turks have to acknowledge that the “genocide” happened.

“The Germans at the moment acknowledge the Jewish Holocaust happened but don't say they did it. Nobody accused the German government of today of committing the Holocaust and the genocide of Armenians was not committed by the present Turkish government. It was the Ottoman regime,” he argued.

6. - Financial Times - "Say No, Mr Erdogan":

26 March 2007

The most powerful man in one of Europe's most important states is on the verge of achieving the ambition of a lifetime. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the one-time Islamist zealot turned prime minister, has Turkey's presidency for the taking. It is an alluring prospect, but Mr Erdogan should say no. If he became president, it would be an unfortunate reverse for both his party and his country. No less than the future direction of Turkey is at stake.

As he ponders the mid-April deadline for declaring his hand, Mr Erdogan might well balk at calls for restraint. He has, after all, led Turkey's most stable government in years. It is an administration that, with the prompting of the EU, has reduced the power of the army, cracked down on torture and granted

That combination of stability, reform and proximity to the EU has unlocked much of Turkey's economic potential, delivering higher growth rates and attracting more foreign direct investment than in the past. Since the presidency is decided by parliament, where Mr Erdogan has a thumping majority, there is little doubt that the job is within his grasp.

Yet Mr Erdogan has a choice. He can continue as prime minister, lead his Justice and Development party (AKP) to another election victory in parliamentary polls this year and establish it as Turkey's most formidable political force by far. That would confirm the AKP as a contemporary European party of the centre right, analogous to Christian Democrats in western Europe, with a strong record of reform.

Alternatively, Mr Erdogan can assume the presidency - and watch the country's cultural tensions explode. The post is highly sensitive, since it gives the occupant a decisive role in judicial, academic and bureaucratic appointments. Some 70 per cent of Turks believe that Mr Erdogan should not take up the role - and with good reason.

Mr Erdogan has simply not done enough to show he would protect the country's delicate constitutional order - the chief responsibility of the presidency. Earlier in his term, he flirted with the idea of criminalising adultery. Last year he sought to award the central bank to the head of an institution that practises Islamic finance and does not charge interest rates. Under an Erdogan presidency, the controversy over the headscarf - banned from universities and state buildings - would flare up as never before.

Religious freedom in Turkey needs to be extended, but the country's stability would be undermined by a showdown between Mr Erdogan and the country's secular elite. That is a confrontation neither he nor Turkey can afford. Turkey's transformation into a modern, European country is not over. Nor has the AKP yet completed its own metamorphosis. To continue the country's progress, Mr Erdogan should stay put as prime minister.