25
April 2003
2. "Turkey fumes at France over Armenian genocide momument", a monument commemorating the killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians under the Ottoman empire was unveiled in Paris Thursday.
3. "European court condemns Turkey over Kurd death in custody", the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday condemned Turkey for torture following the death of a young Turkish Kurd while in police custody.
4. "Turkey ’disturbed’ after Iraq administrator says Kirkuk is Kurdish", Turkey is said to have been "disturbed" by retired U.S. General Jay Garner’s comments that Kirkuk was a Kurdish city.
5. "Kurds promise no reprisals against Arabs", a Commission will be set up in Iraq to resolve disputes between Arabs and Kurds displaced from their homes under Saddam Hussein’s regime.
6. "Turkey's Historic Blunder", after weeks of the geopolitical equivalent of friendly fire casualties, Ankara has finally allowed U.S. aid to move to Northern Iraq.
1. - The Daily Star (Lebanon) - "Kurdish exiles dream of home but fear for the future":
Germany hosts many fleeing oppression, but their happiness is tempered by memories of those left behind
ROTTENBURG, Germany / 25 April 2003
by Christina Foerch
Every morning, Mustafa Pati wakes up at 3am to go to work. He drives
his pick-up truck to the biggest vegetable market in the region, selects
the products of the day and packs them into his vehicle.
Of course, there is always time for a chat with his friends.
“I love the big vegetable market,” he said. “It’s
a different atmosphere here. People come from all over the world
I meet Afghans, Turks, Italians. If I didn’t go to this market
every day, I wouldn’t like my job.”
Pati, 31, a Kurd from southeastern Turkey, came to Germany as a refugee
in 1990. He is the proud owner of a vegetable and fruit stand in the
small town of Rottenburg in southern Germany.
The conservative inhabitants of the town became accustomed to the
stranger and have become frequent clients.
“They have almost become part of my family,” he said. “We
talk and joke every time they come to buy.”
The vegetable dealer is married to a German and has two children
and he has become a “Rottenburgian” a native of of
Rottenburg.
Compared to his former life in Turkey, living in Germany is easy-going,
despite his 16-hour workday. He has seen the world, spent holidays
in Monte Carlo, Venice and London. He could be happy, one might think.
But deep in his heart, there is the desire to go back home although
the home of his wife and children is here in Germany to see
his mother before she dies and to visit his eldest brother, a political
prisoner in Turkey.
His brother fled to Switzerland in 1987 as a political refugee. He
was active in the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). Despite starting
a family in Switzerland, he wanted to return to Turkey and to continue
the struggle. He was caught by the Turkish authorities and sentenced
to 36 years of jail.
Mustafa Pati chose not to follow his brother’s path. Life is
easy in Germany. But for Kurds there is restricted freedom.
The PKK is illegal in Germany, as is being a member and engaging in
any political activities related to the party. Pati had been jailed
for 6 months because of his activities. “We didn’t use violence,”
he said. “But I was still sentenced.”
There are around 50 million Kurds spread around four different countries
Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Approximately 700,000 Kurds live
in Germany, around 500,000 from Turkey. Since the foundation of the
PKK in 1978, Kurds have come to Germany as refugees, and have remained
here as exiles. Some have been granted citizenship here.
Although Pati is from southern Turkey, he identifies with the struggle
of the Iraqi Kurds. Together with other Kurds living in Germany, he
demonstrated against the war on Iraq but also against Saddam
Hussein’s regime.
When the regime was toppled two weeks ago, he celebrated together
with many of his compatriots, and he thinks that the German government
had a strong position by not participating in the war.
However, not all Kurds agree. Other exiles blame the German government
for having supported Saddam’s regime simply by opposing the war.
“The Germans shouldn’t forget the victims of this regime,”
said Hussein Saleh, a Iraqi Kurd and member of the opposition.
Pati also blames Germany for having supplied the Turkish government
with weapons that were used against the Kurds in Turkey. In 1991,
Germany sent old weapons of the Democratic German Republic to Turkey,
and supplied more weapons from 1994-1997.
“For all Kurds, Turkey is seen as the worst oppressor after Saddam
Hussein,” Tilman Zuelich of the Society for Threatened Peoples
said.
Kurds living in Germany are disappointed by the government, stating
that there has been a lack of humanitarian aid and political support
for the Kurdish people.
An unknown number of Kurds left Germany to fight alongside the Iraqi
Kurds, or
to give medical and logistic assistance by working for nongovernmental
organizations.
Pati understands that the Iraqi Kurds are fighting with the Americans
against the regime and that they want to dominate the oil-rich
cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. According to him, these cities belong
to Kurdistan. On the other hand, he assumes that neither the Americans
nor the Turks will allow the Kurds to be the sole governors of these
two cities of northern Iraq.
Pati hopes that the Americans are forced to implement a new democratic
order, where the Kurds will have a say.
“If the Americans don’t solve the Kurdish problem in Iraq,
they will face terrorist acts, and the war will never end,” he
predicted. “We don’t want an independent state of Kurdistan.
The Kurds living in Turkey are brothers of the Turkish people, and
the Iraqi Kurds are sisters of the Iraqi people.
“All we want is a federation of a Kurdish province that belongs
to Turkey, and a Kurdish province that belongs to Iraq. We want our
freedom, live in a democratic federation and have human rights respected.”
If things go well in Iraq, the situation for his compatriots living
in northern Iraq will be better than the situation for the Kurds in
Turkey, he says.
“In Turkey the military dominates the Parliament,” he says.
The military will not allow the Turkish government to become a member
of the European Union, he maintains, because it would place the solution
of the Kurdish problem on the agenda before allowing Turkey to become
an EU member.
Although Pati has the possibility of obtaining a German passport,
he refuses to accept German citizenship.
It wouldn’t change much anyhow he would still not be allowed
to continue his political work in the PKK, and he would not be able
to go to Turkey to visit his family.
“Sometimes, I regret that I came to Germany. Anatolia is my home,
I miss the mountains, the stones, the rivers,” he said. If he
went there, a German passport wouldn’t protect him from possible
arrest.
“The Turkish Army would probably catch me and put me into jail,
as they did with my brother.” So he prefers to stay in Germany,
selling vegetables.
The democracy of Germany tastes bitter for Kurdish exiles. There is
restricted freedom of expression, they have little power to change
anything in their respective home countries, which they cannot forget.
Pati hopes the situation for the Iraqi Kurds will change soon, and
some refugees from Iraq will return. But he fears that Turkish Kurds
have little hope in a better future. 
2.
- AFP - "Turkey fumes at France over Armenian genocide momument":
PARIS / April 24, 2003
A monument commemorating the killings of hundreds of thousands of
Armenians under the Ottoman empire -- an episode recognised in France
as genocide -- was unveiled in Paris Thursday, prompting the fury
of the Turkish government.
Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe inaugurated the bronze statue in the
city centre near the banks of the river Seine. It depicts the Armenian
composer and monk Komitas who was driven mad by his experiences during
the massacres and died in Paris in 1935.
The inscription read: "In hommage to Komitas, composer and musicologist,
and to the 1,500,000 victims of the Armenian genocide of 1915 carried
out in the Ottoman Empire."
Among those attending the ceremony -- which took place on the day
on which Armenians around the world remember the massacres -- were
Local Liberties Minister Patrick Devedjian and singer Charles Azanvour,
both of Armenian origin.
In Ankara a foreign ministry statement said the inauguration of "this
momument of hatred" had caused "regret and discontent."
"It is extremely regretful that the deep-rooted Turkish-French
ties, which are yet to be freed from the negative impacts of the so-called
Armenian genocide law in 2001, have been allowed to be kept under
strain in line with policies of third parties which distort history,"
the statement said.
In 2001, France triggered a storm in its relations with Turkey when
its parliament passed a law acknowledging as genocide the killings
of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
Ankara retaliated by sidelining French companies from public tenders
and cancelled several projects awarded to French firms. Bilateral
relations have only recently begun to warm up.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen were massacred in
orchestrated killings.
Turkey categorically rejects claims of genocide, saying that 300,000
Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in what was civil strife
during World War I when the Armenians raised up against their Ottoman
rulers to press for independence.
3. - AFP - "European court condemns Turkey over Kurd death in custody":
STRASBOURG / April 24, 2003
The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday condemned Turkey for
torture following the death of a young Turkish Kurd while
in police custody.
Yakup Aktas, a tradesman of Kurdish origin, died in November 1990,
a week after he was detained on suspicion of providing money and arms
for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Two police officers were subsequently charged with beating him to
death during his interrogation, but were acquitted in May 1994 for
lack of evidence.
The European court sided with the victim's brother, ruling that Turkey
had violated several rights laws, including the ban on torture, the
right to life and the right to proper appeal.
The claimant, who filed his appeal in June 1994, was awarded 317,340
euros (350,440 dollars) in damages.
"The Court found it proven beyond reasonable doubt that (Aktas)
had been subjected while in police custody to extreme violence which
had directly caused his death," the ruling stated.
Two doctors reports "showed that the injuries described had been
consistent with mechanical asphyxiation," such as that caused
by tightly binding the victim's arms to his chest, the text said.
Given the lack of any hospital record of his death, the court inferred
that Aktas had died in police custody and had been "the victim
of inhuman and degrading treatment".
The ruling also reproached Turkey for failing to fully cooperate with
the court's investigators.
Turkey has been criticised for its human rights record, one of the
main obstacles to its long-standing and troubled bid to join the European
Union.
It has often come under fire from international rights organisations
for a string of violations, including torture and restrictions on
personal liberties.
4. - KurdishMedia - "Turkey ’disturbed’ after Iraq administrator says Kirkuk is Kurdish":
ANKARA / 24 April 2003
Turkey is said to have been "disturbed" by retired U.S.
General Jay Garner’s comments that Kirkuk was a Kurdish city.
Jay Garner, charged with administering post-war Iraq, said during
his visit to south Kurdistan that Kerkuk was a Kurdish city.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Huseyin Dirioz said that the statement of Garner was against the Ankara agreement. Dirioz said, "If Garner had made such a statement that would be against the agreement reached on March 19 in Ankara between the opposition in Iraq, Turkey and U.S. We are asking information from U.S. on this issue."
There have been reports in Turkish media that an official from the
American Embassy in Ankara will be summoned to Turkey’s Foreign
Ministry today, and will be reminded of Garner’s statement. Turkish
officials will say that Kirkuk is not a Kurdish city and remind the
final communique issued after the meeting held in Ankara.
5. - The Times - "Kurds promise no reprisals against Arabs":
ARBIL / April 24, 2003
by Stephen Farrell
A Commission will be set up in Iraq to resolve disputes between Arabs and Kurds displaced from their homes under Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Kurdish leaders who met Jay Garner, the retired US general overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq, reassured him that there would be no reprisals against Arabs who had taken over the properties of Kurds expelled by the old regime. Many Kurds want their properties back and others want revenge for the violence against their people.
Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said: “There will be a committee later representing all sides, under the guidance of the United States, to arrange how people must go back home in a regular way, not in chaos. We had made a commitment. Yesterday we assured, we repeated it.”
General Garner had met Mr Talabani in Sulaimaniya, 200 miles northeast of Baghdad. The general flew yesterday morning to Arbil, another Kurdish-contolled city, where Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, told him through an interpreter: “I suppose we can make all Iraq like Kurdistan.”
The general replied: “We’ll do this together.”
The general sought to spell out the role of his Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq (Orha). “The first is physical reconstruction. Turn on the lights, turn on the water. Turn on the electricity. Get the roads repaired. Make sure the children are back in school. Make sure the health system is good. The second type is the political reconstruction. Our goal is to create an environment in Iraq where we can have a democratic process where Iraqis can choose their own leader where Iraqis can choose their own type of government.”
He said that Orha would spend next week setting up ministries to
work with mainly US advisers to speed up the provision of electricity,
water and health services.
6. - TCS Defense - "Turkey's Historic Blunder":
By Ariel Cohen / 24 April 2003
After weeks of the geopolitical equivalent of friendly fire casualties, Ankara has finally allowed U.S. aid to move to Northern Iraq. Two weeks earlier, and after lengthy delays, it permitted the U.S. Air Force to use Turkish airspace for strikes against Iraq. This saved about $1.6 billion in aid to Ankara, but it was too little, too late.
At the critical juncture in a run-up to the war, the Turkish government failed to pass the authorization for the use of the Turkish air bases and for transit of the crucially necessary U.S. 4th Infantry Division through the Turkish territory. Despite the Bush administration offering Turkey $6 billion in military and economic aid as an incentive to facilitate U.S. troops deployment for the action in northern Iraq, Turkey's refusal to grant the U.S. request has made those payments moot - with devastating economic consequences to the ailing Turkish economy.
Turkish AK (Justice and Development) Party's Islamist government, led by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdagan, a political newbie, and foreign minister Abdullah Gul, quoted broad opposition of the Turkish public as the main reason to limit U.S. involvement in Turkey. Some polls said that over 90 percent of the public rejected the war. The government, however, did not impose the customary party discipline in the crucial parliamentary vote to allow U.S. troops to deploy, thus sending a subtle message to the members to vote as they like. An Ankara-based analyst with close ties to the foreign policy and military establishment who requested anonómity told TCS that two factors contributed to Erdagan's failure to prevent an unprecedented crisis in U.S.-Turkish relations: lack of policy experience and a hidden Islamist agenda.
The adamant opposition to the U.S. use of air bases and troop transit is likely to signal a watershed in the U.S.-Turkish relations and raises fears on both sides that the strategic ties between Washington and Ankara will never be the same again. Turkey reminded Americans of the old English proverb, "a friend in need is a friend indeed" - by indeed failing to come to America's aid.
Many U.S. policy makers are fuming, because they view Ankara as throwing decades of close military cooperation to the wind. The Turkish military, for years favorites of the U.S., seem to be unable or unwilling to challenge their Islamist political masters. The anger is palpable, because the Pentagon had counted on Turkey to facilitate the opening of a crucial northern front against Saddam. Instead, a nightmarish scenario of Turkish-Kurdish hostilities has emerged, albeit briefly. Turkey's loud and threatening insistence on deploying its own troops in Northern Iraq to "control" the Kurds - but refusing to fight or even help to fight Saddam, was duly noted.
In the end, Turkey has sent up to 3,000 troops and some observers into Kurdistan - allegedly to prevent emergence of independent Kurdish state. Pentagon planners counted on the Kurdish militia known as peshmerga to attack Saddam's military and to assist the U.S. in securing northern Iraqi oil fields around Mosul and Kirkuk earlier than they could do it.
Moreover, reported contacts between Iranian envoys and the Turkish government earlier this spring further complicated prosecution of the war as the U.S. was trying to ensure that Tehran and Ankara do not enter the fray to partition Iraqi Kurdistan and secure the oil fields for themselves. Such a development would have further complicated American involvement in volatile Northern Iraq.
While speculations continue as to what caused the Turkish-American rift - AK Party's inexperience or an Islamist hidden agenda - advisors to the Turkish military interviewed in Washington and Ankara list a series of concerns that may be detrimental to Turkey in the future. They stress that the leading European states will never adopt Turkey into the expanded European Union, while closer integration with the Muslim world, advocated by the previous Islamist government let by Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, will derail Turkey's economic and technological progress. Thus, they say, abandonment of close ties to the U.S. is a strategic catastrophe for Turkey, comparable with the defeat in the naval battle of Lepanto in the hands of the Venetian Republica Serenissima, or bashing at the walls of Vienna in 1682 in the hands of the Polish king. Finally, some compared Turkey's blunder with entering World War One on the side of the German Axis. All three events signaled major geopolitical deterioration in the fate of the Ottoman Empire: the end of domination of the Mediterranean, the end of expansion into Europe, and the end of the empire itself.
These experts believe that Washington's policy toward Ankara may reflect a number of changes in the future. Not only will the U.S. not deliver the promised $20 billion dollar assistance package, it is likely that the Bush administration may instruct its Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund to oppose future bailouts. While it will be for the benefit of the Turkish economy in the long run, in the short run Ankara will feel slighted.
U.S. may cease seeing Turkey as a special strategic partner, or even as a reliable ally. This is at the time that links with small Gulf states, and NATO candidates such as Romania and Bulgaria, which provided crucial air bases, are stronger than ever. As Iran is arming itself with ballistic missiles and, quite possibly, nuclear weapons, the Pentagon may not be as happy with Turkey's participation in ballistic missile defense programs led by the U.S. as it was only some months ago. Further, on the technology transfer side, Washington may lean on Israel to curb or stop the current wide ranging cooperation between the Turkish military and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and military industries on both sides.
For decades, Ankara counted on Washington to support it on a number of sensitive bilateral issues, but today Washington will be less likely to side with Turkey against Greek claims in the Aegåan Sea. The U.S. State Department may become more critical of Turkey on the Cyprus partition issue. Despite past support of the Turkish membership in the European Union, as President Bush repeatedly stated, this no longer may be the case. In addition, it may be more difficult to see Ankara as a balance to Moscow in Central Asia, especially as radical Islam, not Russian neo-imperialism, is currently viewed as the main threat in the region. Long-standing U.S. support to the Baku-Ceyhan Main Export Pipeline (MEP), including financing issues, may not be as enthusiastic as it was.
The Armenian-Turkish relations are particularly sensitive. For years, the American-Armenian community has built its muscle in the Congress. The Armenian lobby counts over 100 members on both sides of the isle, many on key committees and with a powerful political clout. Turkish experts fear that the Bush administration will drop its long-term resistance to classifying Ottoman atrocities against Armenian civilians in 1915 as an "Armenian holocaust". In 2000, President Clinton personally intervened to defeat House Resolution 596 - a draft legislation to express the attitude of the Unites States on the Armenian alleged genocide. While that Resolution was defeated, after the recent U.S.-Turkish friction, this may not be the case in the future. Congressional recognition of the Armenian 'genocide' by the Ottoman authorities may become relevant if and when reparation claims by genocide survivors or their heirs may be launched.
Finally, the imbroglio may end potential U.S. support for future Turkish military involvement in domestic politics. If the Turkish military is incapable of weighing in on a matter of vital importance to the U.S., why would Washington tolerate in the future violations of democratic norms by the military as it did in the past? In the long run, Turkey may be dealt with "on case by case basis", a senior Washington military expert and a retired U.S. military intelligence officer said, "but the memory of what happened will hang like a dark cloud, slow to dissipate."
The U.S.-Turkish ties that were forged during the Korean and Cold
War are set back by decades, not years. Turkey is about to pay a high
price for what many in Washington and Ankara see as the largest strategic
blunder of its leaders. It will take a lot of efforts on both sides
to put this Humpty-Dumpty together again - and a thankless and difficult
task that may be.