16 April 2003

1. "Duran Kalkan: “Democratization of the Middle East is in the hands of Kurds”, KADEK Presidential Council member Duran Kalkan stated that international balance was being re-formed after the overthrow of the regime in Iraq. “A political transformation in the region has begun irrevocably,” said Kalkan.

2. "(Everybody’s) Tricky Kurdish Issue", now that the Baathist regime in Baghdad is gone, the perennial issue of the status of the region’s Kurds reemerges. For some countries in the Middle East and Europe—Turkey has some 12 million Kurds, Iraq and Iran over 4 million each, Syria perhaps 2 million, Armenia some small number, and Western Europe perhaps 1 million or so—the Kurds pose a serious problem: To permit the growth of any sentiment for a Kurdish state, in northern Iraq or elsewhere, would ruin any chance of stability in the Middle East, and further weaken NATO as well.

3. "Iran feeling the heat", to say that Iran has mixed feelings about the U.S.-led victory in Iraq is a considerable understatement. (..) then there is the question of the Kurds. Like Turkey, Iran has a big Kurdish minority, and, like Turkey, it worries that Iraq's Kurds will break away to form their own country, inspiring Kurdish separatists elsewhere.

4. "Turkish press bitter over Greek Cyprus' EU entry, blames Ankara's policies", the Turkish press expressed bitterness on Wednesday over the signing, later in the day in Athens, of a treaty allowing Greek Cypriots to join the European Union (EU) and blamed Ankara for wasting decades without resolving the island's division.

5. "Turk Cypriot head seen as hurdle for Ankara's EU bid", the U.N. Security Council on Monday singled out Turk Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash for sinking a plan to reunify the Turkish and Greek communities in Cyprus before the island's entry into the European Union.

6. "Denktash balks at Security Council ruling", resolution blamed his side for scuttling Cyprus peace talks.

1. - The Kurdish Observer - "Duran Kalkan: “Democratization of the Middle East is in the hands of Kurds”:

KADEK Presidential Council member Duran Kalkan stated that international balance was being re-formed after the overthrow of the regime in Iraq. “A political transformation in the region has begun irrevocably,” said Kalkan.

MHA/FRANKFURT / 15 April 2003

KADEK Presidential Council member Duran Kalkan participated in the “Democratic Cozum (Democratic Solution)” program in Medya TV the other day and commented on the latest developments.

Kalkan called attention that there had been a public resistance against the Saddam regime for a quarter of a century, saying “Struggles of Kurds, Arabs, Asyrians and Shi’a are examples of it.” The council member stated that as in city centers regimes were dominant in the mountains the struggle of those who wanted peace and freedom was determining. “As in Kirkuk and Mousul examples public forces overthrew the regime before USA. The people threw down the reactionism and the oppressive regime and they are now making celebrations,” said Kalkan. He added to say that at the new process Kurds would play a key role.

Solution: democratic transformation

Kalkan attracted attention that forcibly migrated people would return and rights of the Kurdish, Asyrian and Turcoman people would be granted, adding that Kurds would lead the way to undermine the Arab hegemony. It would be dangerous for Kurds to be obsessed by nationalism, said Kalkan. The council member also stressed that nationalism would not be a solution for Kurds and the only solution was democratic transformation.

“There are dangers”

Kalkan said the following about the possible dangers: “There is a danger provoked by some groups for Kurds. Foreign forces try to use some organizations in South Kurdistan for their own interest. Furthermore the Turkish state might provoke the Kurdish nationalism and keep them from being a big force for solution.” Now Kurds had an opportunity to play its role it assumed in the region a thousand years ago, said the council member.

“The Kurdish people are increasingly becoming conscious”

Kalkan drew attention that Kurds might open the way to a democratic federation of the Middle East and to creating a democratic free unity in the region. Kalkan had also this to say: “The people are increasingly becoming conscious and dynamics are getting more strength. There is a change for organisation, consciousness and democratic transformation.” The council member warned the Kurdish forces that were in danger of blind nationalism and said that the line of Southern Kurds was a democratic federal Iraq.

He criticised the Turkish government

Kalkan criticised that the Turkish government considered the existence of Kurds in Kirkuk and Mousul a big danger and continued with words to the effect: “Kurds live in Kirkuk anyway. They have been forcibly migrated and now they return. Does the Turkish government defend the exiles imposed by the Saddam regime? They must answer it clearly. Do Turkish intellectuals, writers, artists, leftist confirm such a mentality? If they are leftist, they must not be nationalistic. Nationalistic leftism is dangerous. Nationalistic leftism must be overcome. Democratization and brotherhood must be advanced. We say “Kurds are our brothers’ on one hand, we consider our ‘brother’ strength a big danger on the other. Is it brotherhood?”

Kalkan also said that the passive role of Turkey in the war arouse from its strategic stance against Kurds.

2. - FrontPage Magazine - "(Everybody’s) Tricky Kurdish Issue":

16 April 2003 / by Michael Radu

Now that the Baathist regime in Baghdad is gone, the perennial issue of the status of the region’s Kurds reemerges. For some countries in the Middle East and Europe—Turkey has some 12 million Kurds, Iraq and Iran over 4 million each, Syria perhaps 2 million, Armenia some small number, and Western Europe perhaps 1 million or so—the Kurds pose a serious problem: To permit the growth of any sentiment for a Kurdish state, in northern Iraq or elsewhere, would ruin any chance of stability in the Middle East, and further weaken NATO as well.

There is little love lost among Turks, Arabs, and Iranians, but there is one issue that unites them: opposition to any form of Kurdish independence whatsoever and anywhere (well, perhaps they could live with a Kurdish state in Berlin). Their shared antipathy to a Kurdish state has recently led to high-level military and political meetings among Damascus, Ankara, and Teheran—not normally the best of buddies.

On the other hand, many in Western Europe and elsewhere have a strong affinity for the Kurdish cause, being emotionally susceptible to the Kurds’ claims that they are the largest stateless ethnic group in the world, who were shortchanged when then-Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill failed to establish a Kurdish state in the aftermath of World War I notwithstanding purported promises of same from U.S. president Woodrow Wilson. It is a romantic view of the Kurds shared by many Europeans (most Americans have no idea who the Kurds are or what to do about them), including Churchill’s own Tory grandson today. Such indulgence of Kurdish grievances, encouraged by a well-educated and non-representative Kurdish intellectual class in the diaspora, made the Western European Left easily manipulable and willing to support one of the most violent terrorist organizations in recent times, the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), a Stalinist group seeking to establish a "true" communist state in southeastern Turkey as a first step toward a regional bastion of "socialism." The PKK campaign against Turkey (1984–99) left some 30,000 Turkish citizens dead, mostly Kurdish civilians (unfriendly clan and tribal leaders, teachers, policemen, bureaucrats were PKK’s favorite targets).

Is it "undemocratic" and "unfair" (whatever that may mean in international politics) to deny 20 million Kurds statehood? After all, one might reason, both Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are now allies of the coalition forces in northern Iraq, with their pesh mergha ("those who fight to death") irregulars accepting U.S. command in operations there. Might they not reasonably expect a Kurdish state for their trouble?

Not necessarily. Kurdish "national sentiments" are largely a creation of the tiny intellectual elites now active in Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States. The Kurds are divided along so many lines as to make any serious talk about a past, present, or future "Kurdistan" meaningless. While Kurdish languages are indeed separate and fundamentally distinct from Turkish or Arabic (they are basically related to Iranian Farsi), these are different languages—and not mutually understandable at that. Furthermore, the fundamental loyalty of a Kurd, whether in Iran, Turkey, Iraq or elsewhere, is not to a "Kurdish nation" proclaimed by French- or English-speaking, pseudo-Jeffersonian Kurdish émigrés in Paris or London. A Kurd’s loyalty is to his family, clan, and tribe, in that order.

That explains why our present "staunch" allies against Saddam (one should remember that over the past decade Barzani has been in bed with Saddam and Talabani with the Teheran ayatollahs) fought each other with a determination worthy of a better cause. That also explains why, despite more than a decade of de facto autonomy and economic progress in northern Iraq, protected by U.S. and UK airplanes enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan, there are still two Kurdish governments in the region, under PDK and PUK control, respectively.

More disturbing to neighboring Turkey, both the PUK and the PDK tolerate, at least occasionally, the presence of some 7,000 PKK, which reestablished in northern Iraq after their founder, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured and they were finally defeated in 1999. The PKK remnants are rich (mostly from their Western European criminal and racketeering operations) and increasingly well armed—a fact that can only be explained by Iraqi Kurds’ tolerance of arms smuggling into PKK strongholds. If Ankara is often paranoid about the Kurds in general and the PKK in particular, it is not without reason.

Worst still for the U.S., the autonomous Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq, despite their media-glorified pesh mergas, said to be as many as 60,000 strong, were for almost two years patently unable to deal with less than 1,000 Ansar al Islam ("followers of Islam")—Al Qaeda’s Arab and Kurdish followers, who are ensconced in a small enclave along the Iranian border. It took U.S. special forces, bombings, and Kurdish ground forces to finish this operation off in three days.

The official U.S. position is that Iraq’s "territorial integrity" should be maintained – a way of saying to Ankara, Teheran & Co. that there will be no independent or autonomous state of Kurdistan in Iraq. And, listening to (English-speaking) Kurdish politicians in Suleymanyia and Irbil, one hears the same liturgy that "We just want a federal Iraq." So far, so good, but "federal" means something different in Washington than it does in Ankara (or for that matter in Damascus or Teheran, or likely in whatever regime is established in Baghdad). "Federal" in the Middle East does not connote as it does to us Hawaiians, Tennesseans, and Mexican-Americans in California being different but equally loyal Americans, swearing allegiance to the same flag; it would be a way-station toward a Kurdish state threatening all the nations’ territorial integrity.

It should be clear that any U.S. support for an independent Kurdistan, implicit or otherwise, whether an autonomous one or some "federal" Iraq giving Kurds control over northern Iraq (including the oil fields of Kirkuk) would sooner or later unite traditional enemies—Turks, Persians and Arabs—militarily.

As to the issue of PKK strongholds in northern Iraq, that organization, leaderless as it is since Ocalan’s capture, has been listed as terrorist by the U.S. State Department since the 1980s, and belatedly so by the EU after 9/11, and simply has to be permanently eliminated. The U.S. forces in northern Iraq simply cannot do it alone, as Turkey’s misguided policies on the war on Iraq have left them. But either Turkey or the Iraqi Kurds must do so soon.

Indeed, Kurdish elements are already reversing Saddam’s ethnic cleansing of their people from Mosul and Kirkuk, by removing the Arab settlers, while the significant Turcoman minority feels unprotected – a situation Turkey is unlikely to accept for long. But if Ankara, in a fit of nationalism and anti – Kurdish paranoia, does invade northern Iraq, the chances of a new conflict would increase exponentially, pitting all Kurds against all of Iraq’s northern neighbors. Furthermore, such unilateral Turkish action would seriously endanger that country’s position within NATO, and thus the alliance itself. Indeed, Germany has already threatened to pull its AWACS crews from Turkey in such an event, and the US has also made it clear that it will not tolerate a massive invasion either.

All this considered, and taking into account European opposition to the war (a contradiction, since Iraqi Kurds have made abundantly clear their virulent anti-Saddam feelings) and romantic tolerance for diaspora Kurds’ claims and PKK terrorism, the coalition now victorious in Iraq must make clear that emotions and vague sentiments will have no part to play in Iraq’s reconstruction. Simply put, the coalition should consider expressions of outsiders’ sentiments about Kurds just as it considered the antiwar demonstrations: politically wrong, irrational, irresponsible, and counterproductive (even if protected as free speech). Westerners should let the Iraqi Kurds live free(r) in a country called Iraq, rather than "feel their pain" and risk havoc throughout the region.

3. - The Globe And Mail (Canada) - "Iran feeling the heat":

16 April 2003 / by Marcus Gee

To say that Iran has mixed feelings about the U.S.-led victory in Iraq is a considerable understatement.

Iran rejoices at the defeat of Saddam Hussein, its enemy in an eight-year war during the 1980s that cost 300,000 Iranian lives. On the other hand, it deplores the invasion of a fellow Islamic country by the forces of "the Great Satan," the endearment that Iran's theocratic regime reserves for its other old enemy, the United States.

Like its ally Syria, Iran worries that it may be the next target for U.S.-led regime change.

"America is present at our borders with its full military might," Mohsen Mirdamadi, head of parliament's National Security Commission, said this week. "It is drunk with victory over Iraq and is looking for an excuse from other countries, including us," to attack.

With that fear in mind, Iran was careful to stay on the sidelines during the three-week war across the border in Iraq. Under the ambiguous banner of "active neutrality," it reacted mildly when wayward coalition missiles landed on its territory and looked the other way when U.S. and British forces strayed into its waters or its airspace. It kept a leash on the Badr Corps, an Iraqi opposition group made up of Shia Muslims that joined an abortive Shia uprising in southern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Washington has done Iran some favours, too. Yesterday, the Pentagon confirmed that U.S. forces had bombed camps of the People's Mujahedeen, a large Iranian rebel group with bases in Iraq.

But Washington's gratitude has limits. In recent weeks, the United States has accused Iran of working actively to obtain nuclear weapons. It also complains about Iranian support for terrorist groups such as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Iran is one of the three countries on Washington's "axis of evil," and Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others, has said its behaviour must change.

Iran is feeling the heat. In a sign of the regime's growing skittishness, a senior official warned yesterday that Iran would not remain neutral if the United States attacked Syria, which was a close ally of Iran during the 1980-88 Gulf War between Iran and Iraq.

In another significant development, its leading Shia opposition group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said it would boycott U.S.-sponsored meetings being held among Iraqi political groups on forming a new government. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader, has warned that any government installed by the United States would be a "bigger dictatorship" than Mr. Hussein's regime.

But defiant as Iran's leaders may be, they know they will have to get along with the new Iraq — and the superpower that created it.

Even as Ayatollah Khamenei was railing against Washington, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani was suggesting ways to repair the relationship with the United States. Mr. Rafsanjani, who still plays a leading political role as head of the advisory Expediency Council, said the country could hold a plebiscite on restoring relations with Washington. The two countries have had had no diplomatic relations since the Iranian revolution in 1979 and subsequent hostage crisis.

Iran has many interests to cultivate in the new Iraq. As a mainly Shia Muslim country, it wants Iranians to have access to the holy sites at the Iraqi cities of Karbala and Najaf. It also wants to see its Shia cousins in Iraq take a big role in the future government, which was dominated by the rival Sunni branch under the old regime.

Still technically at war with Iraq, Iran may want to negotiate a peace treaty with a new government, seek war reparations and pursue the fate of missing prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action.

Then there is the question of the Kurds. Like Turkey, Iran has a big Kurdish minority, and, like Turkey, it worries that Iraq's Kurds will break away to form their own country, inspiring Kurdish separatists elsewhere.

Iran has both much to win and much to lose from what has happened next door in Iraq. No wonder its leaders are so ambivalent.

4. - AFP - "Turkish press bitter over Greek Cyprus' EU entry, blames Ankara's policies":

ANKARA / 16 April 2003

The Turkish press expressed bitterness on Wednesday over the signing, later in the day in Athens, of a treaty allowing Greek Cypriots to join the European Union (EU) and blamed Ankara for wasting decades without resolving the island's division.

"Sad but true: the Greek Cypriots are becoming EU members today and what is left to us is to watch the ceremony," the popular daily Vatan wrote.

"The 29-year-old Cyprus policy dies today," the paper said, referring to 1974 when Turkey seized northern Cyprus in response to an Athens-engineered military coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.

Diplomatic efforts to reunify the island have failed ever since, and the international community has put the blame mostly on the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot sides.

The European Union signs today an accession treaty with Cyprus, represented only by the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot government, dealing a major blow to a long-standing Turkish policy maintaining that the island should not be admitted before its Greek and Turkish communities are reunified.

"Here is the end of the ostrich policy," the conservative Zaman newspaper said.

The liberal Radikal plastered its front page with the photographs of all the Turkish leaders since 1974, along with Rauf Denktash, the head of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot statelet in northern Cyprus, saying: "Take pride with what you have done!"

The daily said the unilateral admission of the Greek Cypriot side, which Ankara does not recognize, would further complicate Turkey's own bid to join the EU.

The mass-circulation Milliyet was also bitter, but over the fact that Turkey, which first signed cooperation accords with the European Community in the 1960s, has been bested by former communist countries which asked for EU membership only a decade ago.

5. - Taiwan News - "Turk Cypriot head seen as hurdle for Ankara's EU bid":

16 April 2003

The U.N. Security Council on Monday singled out Turk Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash for sinking a plan to reunify the Turkish and Greek communities in Cyprus before the island's entry into the European Union.

The 15-nation council unanimously adopted a resolution expressing "regrets" about Denktash's "negative approach" to the submission of a reunification plan developed by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to a popular referendum by Turk Cypriots.

Denktash's refusal to hold the referendum compelled the Greek Cypriot leadership also to cancel the referendum in its own community. Annan had asked the two parties to conduct it, hoping that the two communities would accept the plan and agree to terms for reunification before an E.U. summit in Athens that begins tomorrow.

At the meeting, E.U. leaders are to accept the admission of 10 new nations into the European Union, including the Greek Cypriots.

The council said because of Denktash, "Turk Cypriots and Greek Cypriots have been denied the opportunity to decide for themselves on a plan that would have permitted the reunification of Cyprus and as a consequence it will not be possible to achieve a comprehensive settlement" before the Athens meeting."

The council endorsed the plan to reunify Cyprus under a Swiss- style federation, saying the plan represented a "unique basis" for further negotiations and it called on the two parties to resume talks despite the failure on the referendum.

Alvaro de Soto, Annan's special envoy and mediator in the Cyprus talks, told the council last week that the Turkish side lacked the political will to accept the plan.

"Be that as it may," de Soto said, "a unique opportunity had been missed, and the Greek Cypriots and Turk Cypriots had been denied the opportunity to vote to reunite Cyprus."

He called the failure a "lose-lose outcome" after mediating face- to-face talks between Denktash and Greek Cypriot leader Glafcos Clerides for months in Nicosia. Newly elected Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos has not accepted new talks with Denktash.

The two ethnic communities have been divided since Cyprus gained independence from Britain in the 1960s. The island is divided by a ceasefire line manned by U.N. peacekeepers.

6. - The Daily Star - "Denktash balks at Security Council ruling":

Resolution blamed his side for scuttling Cyprus peace talks

NICOSIA / 16 April 2003

Breakaway Turkish Cypriots on Tuesday rebuffed international criticism blaming them for the failure of talks to reunify divided Cyprus, as their Greek co-islanders geared up to sign an accession treaty with the European Union.

In a resolution adopted unanimously by its 15 members Monday, the Security Council blamed Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash for the failure of a UN plan to end the 29-year division of Cyprus, and called for new peace talks.

However, Denktash said he was willing to restart reunification talks with Greek Cypriots but would not accept the UN plan as a basis for negotiations.

“The talks can start,” Turkey’s official Anatolia news agency quoted Denktash as saying.
But the UN plan is unacceptable “unless important changes are made on it,” he added.
The foreign ministry of the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) reiterated Denktash’s position, saying: “It is not possible to agree with the resolution.”
It also accused the UN of imposing a settlement plan which “is impossible to implement and has deficiencies in each and every aspect.”

The UN plan ­ part of efforts to reunify Cyprus before it joins the European Union next year ­ fell apart last month when both Greek and Turkish Cypriots raised objections to the proposed settlement formula.

But UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Denktash bears “prime responsibility” for the failure of the initiative, which was regarded as a last chance of a settlement before the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot side joins nine other countries in signing accession treaties with the EU Wednesday.
Denktash says the UN plan would turn the Turkish Cypriots into a minority under Greek Cypriot administration rather than ensure co-habitation between two equal parties.

“There is no doubt that the Turkish Cypriot people desire to reach an implementable solution and be part of the EU, but they do not intend to join the Greek Cypriots as a minority … in the name of this objective,” the statement said.

Backed by Ankara, Denktash has maintained his hard-line stance despite unprecedented pro-EU demonstrations in his breakaway statelet. Turkish Cypriots fear that a unilateral EU entry for the Greek Cypriots will further isolate the TRNC, whose economy has borne the brunt of international sanctions for years.

The Cyprus deadlock is also clouding Turkey’s own EU membership aspirations.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenther Verheugen warned Wednesday that the division of Cyprus could undermine Turkey’s accession bid. “If the situation remains unchanged in Cyprus by the end of next year that would complicate matters,” Verheugen said in Luxembourg.

EU officials have hinted that Brussels might regard Turkey as an occupier of EU territory once the Greek Cypriots join the bloc in 2004. Ankara maintains about 30,000 troops in the TRNC. In a bid to balance its pro-EU stance and Cyprus policy, Ankara will send Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to the gathering, but the minister might shun the signing ceremony for the Greek Cypriots, a Turkish diplomat told AFP in Ankara.

Press reports here said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had decided to avoid the meeting and send Gul in his place.

But Denktash criticized his Turkish patrons for sending even Gul to the ceremonies. “We would have preferred that Mr. Gul did not go at all, but naturally Turkey has its own considerations. If he has decided to go, I wish him good luck,” Anatolia quoted Denktash as saying during a visit to the western Turkish city of Bursa. “I believe he will do the right thing if he does not attend the part concerning the Greek Cypriots.”

He said he was concerned over possible attempts by the Greek Cypriots to portray Gul’s participation as a recognition of the Greek Cypriot government. Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey seized its northern part in response to a coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.