2
December 2003
2. "5 soldiers killed by landmine in Turkish southeast", Five soldiers were killed and four injured on Monday when their patrol vehicle hit a mine in a rural area of mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey
3. "Spite the terrorists, let Turkey join the European Union", Severely shaken by recent terrorist car bombings in Istanbul, Turkey needs both emergency and long-term support from its oldest ally, the United States, and from the big and powerful club it seeks to join: the European Union.
4. "German conservatives remain against Turkey's EU membership", The leader of German's main opposition party on Monday reiterated the party's opposition to allowing Turkey into the European Union
5. "Success in Cyprus by Talking Less", Former leader of the Greek Cypriot administration Glafkos Klerides said yesterday that the Greek Cypriot side had reached its goal in the European Union (EU) membership process by not making any concessions in the Cyprus discussions.
6. "Amid Risk, Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline Edges Forward", On December 1, an association of environmentalist groups stepped up its campaign against the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, a 1,760-kilometer project designed to carry oil from the Caspian Sea through Georgia to a Turkish port on the Mediterranean.
1. - Kurdistan Observer - "12 Turkish Soldiers Killed in the Dersim Province":
DERSIM (Turkey / Northwest Kurdistan) / 1 December 2003
The HPG-CC (People´s Defence Forces Central Command) issued a statement yesterday claiming two attacks on Turkish security forces in the Dersim province of northern Kurdistan killing twelve Turkish soldiers.
According to the statement, the two attacks were retaliations for the killing of HPG guerrillas by the Turkish security forces in the areas of Bingol (twelve guerrillas killed in action and two executed after interrogation) and the Black Sea province of Ordu (nine guerrillas killed in action.)
On the 20th of November Kurdish guerrillas destroyed a military vehicle hitting it with RPG´s in an ambush on the road between Amutka Gendarmerie station and the Kurdish city of Hozat resulting in the death of four Turkish special forces and the wounding of several others. After the clash, several US-made Cobra attack helicopters flew slowly over the city of Hozat in what the Kurdish locals call "a panicked power-demonstration."
The biggest loss for the Turkish army was carried out on the 25th of November with a direct attack by the HPG on the Ovacik Commando Brigade resulting in the death of eight Turkish commandos and the wounding of an unknown amount of soldiers.
There are no further clashes reported by the HPG or the Turkish army.
2.
- AFP - "5 soldiers killed by landmine in Turkish southeast":
DIYARBAKIR (Turkey) / 1 December 2003
Five soldiers were killed and four injured on Monday when their patrol vehicle hit a mine in a rural area of mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey, local security officials said. There were no immediate claims for the attack, which took place outside Nusaybin in the province of Mardin, near the border with Syria.
The rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been active in
the region in the past. On Sunday, a policeman was killed when gunmen
attacked a police station in Dargecit, also in Mardin province, local
officials had earlier reported.
3. - Daily Star (Lebanon) - "Spite the terrorists, let Turkey join the European Union":
2 December 2003
Severely shaken by recent terrorist car bombings in Istanbul, Turkey
needs both emergency and long-term support from its oldest ally, the
United States, and from the big and powerful club it seeks to join:
the European Union.
Among the EU members Turkey will have to convince is Greece. The Greeks
endured centuries of Ottoman Turkish occupation, then lost a disastrous
war to the new Turkish Republic in 1922-23. However, they have recently
turned the old adversarial relationship into something resembling
a tie between two close friends. Greece’s socialist government
was as quick as Israel’s in expressing its deeply felt condolences
to Turks for what it termed the “barbaric” attacks on Istanbul’s
ancient Jewish community, which killed six Jews and 19 Muslims. The
assaults on the city’s British Consulate and the British-owned
HSBC bank that followed numbed Greek commentators, who swiftly switched
attention from President George W. Bush’s London visit to the
wreckage-strewn streets of Istanbul.
Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou has been especially active
in encouraging friendship with Ankara since Greece’s successful
EU presidency in the January-June period this year. Athens has also
become one of Europe’s most enthusiastic backers for Turkey’s
eventual entry into the EU, a step that Ankara’s terrorist adversaries,
both inside Turkey and out, oppose.
Greece’s support may seem paradoxical to Europeans like former
French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing. He has strongly implied
that Muslim Turkey doesn’t belong in a Christian Europe. This
galls some Orthodox Christian Greek citizens, who are all too conscious
that a majority of the illegal immigrants landing daily on Greece’s
islands and mainland coast, or slipping in from its Balkan neighbors,
are Muslims.
As seen from Athens, as well as from Washington and Europe’s
main capitals, what Turkey needs is low-profile but energetic help
to fight terrorism of both domestic and foreign origin. This translates
into backing not only from the United States and Israel, which is
already forthcoming, but also from at least some of the other states
already providing security assistance for Greece’s August 2004
summer Olympic Games: Britain, France, Australia, Canada and Spain.
Turkey turned down American requests to use its territory as a military
springboard for the invasion of Iraq last spring. This fall, after
Iraqi requests and American backtracking, the Turkish government and
powerful generals said “no” to sending peacekeeping troops
to Iraq, as Washington had requested. This made the Turks seem more
independent vis-a-vis the US before their not-too-friendly neighbors:
Syria, Iraq and Iran. But it did not prevent threats directed against
Turkey, sent by the global terrorists of Al-Qaeda when claiming the
recent Istanbul attacks: “If you don’t want more of the
same, abandon your alliances with the US, Israel and the NATO ‘imperialists’
in Europe. And don’t even think about reconsidering and sending
your troops to Iraq or anywhere else the Americans want you to.”
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan’s moderate
Islamist ruling Justice and Development Party, and Turkey’s seasoned
career diplomats, need to take stock of their country’s regional
position, as well as of the need to speed up democratic reforms in
the many outdated and reactionary structures in Turkish society. Senior
spokesmen for the EU, which is under Italian presidency until Jan.
1, 2004, have made it clear that Turkey, in order to join the EU,
must accelerate the pace of the reforms it has begun, whether in its
banking system, in the way it interrogates, tries and jails prisoners,
or in lightening the often heavy hand of the Turkish military in politics.
Above all, the EU requires that Ankara help bring about a resolution
to the Cyprus problem. The island’s north has been occupied by
Turkish troops since 1974. A settlement to reunite the divided republic
must precede the scheduled entry of the Greek half of the island into
the EU next May. As Athens, Washington and London (which holds bases
in Cyprus that are sovereign British territory) see it, any settlement
should be more or less along the lines that UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan’s negotiators have painstakingly hammered out, namely reunification
of the island as a loose federation. It would also mean generous EU
subsidies to raise the living standards of the impoverished Turkish
Cypriot community to a level somewhere near that of the prosperous
Greek south.
Achieving all this will require concerted and clever diplomacy. Failure
could mean new depredations by global terrorism in Turkey. Success,
in contrast, could help bring about a more stable and peaceful Europe
and Middle East.
John K. Cooley has been covering the Middle East and Mediterranean
countries for over 40 years. He wrote this commentary for THE
DAILY STAR
4. - AFP - "German conservatives remain against Turkey's EU membership":
01 December 2003
The leader of German's main opposition party on Monday reiterated the party's opposition to allowing Turkey into the European Union and accused German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder of playing "politics" by giving his support.
"Europe has limits," said Angela Merkel, head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), at their annual congress in Leipzig.
"We want a special partnership with Turkey but not as a full member of the EU -- that would stretch the capacity of EU integration too far."
The CDU, which has long opposed the Turkish bid for EU membership, accused Schroeder of playing a "tactical" game by promising support to Turkey's application.
Germany, the largest country in Europe with 82 million inhabitants, also has the biggest Turkish community in Europe, numbering about 2.5 million people.
CDU officials also said they would take this position during the European elections in 2004. The conservative bloc has a majority in the European parliament.
The EU will decide at the end of 2004 whether to begin negotiations
with Turkey over eventual membership. The decision will hinge on whether
Ankara has made real progress in the promotion of human rights and
individual liberties.
5. - Zaman - "Success in Cyprus by Talking Less":
Nicosia (CYPRUS) / December 01, 2003
Former leader of the Greek Cypriot administration Glafkos Klerides said yesterday that the Greek Cypriot side had reached its goal in the European Union (EU) membership process by not making any concessions in the Cyprus discussions.
In a statement to the Mahi newspaper, Klerides explained the two basic reasons behind Cyprus's E.U. membership and said the following:
"The first reason is the Greek Government has a share in the efforts. A particularly effective decision was the Greek Parliament's statement that it would not approve enlargement if Cyprus was not a member.
"E.U. Commissioner for Enlargement Günther Verheugen said that there were two countries that would not be left out. One of them was Poland because Germany would not approve of enlargement without Poland's membership, and the other was Cyprus because Greece would not approve of enlargement without Cyprus's membership.
"However, this is not enough by itself. We needed to complete this by not making any concessions, not accepting anything during the discussions and acting as if it was the Turkish side's failure."
When Klerides commented on Greek Cypriot Leader Tasos Papadopulous's statements about the Annan plan, he said, "The less we speak the better for us."
Klerides informed that they were careful about any statements that might lead others to think that the Greek Cypriot side was responsible for the refusal.
"If we create such an impression, we will cause two things.
First, by saying that not only Turkey and Denktas do not accept the
Annan plan but also the Greek Cypriot side does not accept the plan,
we will give Turkey a chance to petition for a membership date. And
the second is we should not talk about the changes in the plan,"
said Klerides.
6. - Eurasianet - "Amid Risk, Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline Edges Forward":
1 December 2003 / by Mevlut Katik
On December 1, an association of environmentalist groups stepped up its campaign against the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, a 1,760-kilometer project designed to carry oil from the Caspian Sea through Georgia to a Turkish port on the Mediterranean. The group announced that Barclays Bank had declined to make a loan to the project. This news potentially places additional pressure on host governments to manage the pace and cost of pipeline construction.
When Barclays Bank declined on December 1, according to the Baku-Ceyhan Campaign, it cited its commitment to social principles - a possible reference to criticism from human-rights groups regarding the project’s effect on the region’s environment. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Political questions are also clouding pipeline construction. Georgia is now striving to assemble a stable new government following political upheaval sparked by a rigged parliamentary election November 2. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Meanwhile, questions surround Azerbaijan’s ability to keep the pipeline project on track following the retirement of former president Heidar Aliyev, who was replaced by his son, Ilham, in an October election tainted by charges of widespread fraud. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Georgia plans to hold presidential elections January 4, following former president Eduard Shevardnadze’s resignation. [For background, see EurasiaNet’s "Choice 2003" package]. Whether Barclays was acting out of principle or seeking to avoid messy proceedings, the fragility of government institutions could slow critical phases of pipeline development.
"I think that the new presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in connection with [Shevardnadze’s resignation] might influence or delay our organizational activities," State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Natiq Aliyev told Baku’s ANS television the day after Shevardnadze quit. "We are concerned about this." [For background on the state oil company, see the Eurasia Insight archive].
The pipeline consortium’s largest shareholder, Anglo-American energy giant BP, has publicly reiterated its commitment to Georgia and the project. David Woodward, BP’s top employee in Azerbaijan, held talks with Georgia’s interim government on November 28. After meeting with acting president Nino Burjanadze, he said: "We are pleased to hear the president saying that she and the government fully support this project."
Woodward added: "Activities have not been affected at all by the events of the last two weeks. The pipeline is well under construction. In Georgia, we have built over 35 percent of the pipe." Mikhail Saakashvili, the opposition’s leader and presidential candidate, has fervently embraced the project. "All strategic contracts in Georgia, especially the contract for the Caspian pipeline, are a matter of survival for the Georgian state," he told reporters on November 26.
BTC is scheduled for completion in 2005 and a similar, BP-led project to deliver natural gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey, is slated to finish in 2006. However, both have been hampered by logistical complications. The BTC consortium had predicted that 40 percent of the route would be in place by January 1. But the Georgian section has faced some delays and is lagging behind the schedule due to operational problems, including environmental and legal issues. The onset of winter will stall work in many sections. The consortium announced in a November 27 bulletin that "by the end of 2003, a quarter of the physical work needed to build the pipeline will be completed." This is a downward revision from earlier estimates.
All three host countries – Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey – are eager to meet construction deadlines. Turkey and Georgia owe substantial amounts to international lenders, which pipeline transit revenue could help defray. Azerbaijan has set up a state Oil Fund www.oilfund.az- expressly mandated with using natural-resource revenue to benefit future generations- to win support from key international lenders. Delays could make these obligations more costly.
The political damage that could spin out from such delays may preoccupy international lenders. Two major institutions, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, committed financing for the project in early November. [For background, see the Eurasia Insight archive]. According to Natiq Aliyev, the lenders and the consortium are expected to sign a credit agreement worth more than $500 million in London on December 15.
Like the governments involved, lenders may consider it essential to convey an image of steadiness to potential investors. Amid such reassurances, though, all participants are likely to keep a wary eye on the developments of the next few months. "The break in stability can affect the realization of big projects," Natiq Aliyev reportedly warned. With no shortage of potential sources of instability, pipeline investors will watch the political turns of the next several weeks with unprecedented caution.
Editor’s Note: Mevlut Katik is a London-based journalist
and analyst. He worked on a forthcoming documentary about the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline for the BBC.