19 February 2003

1. "Mothers of KADEK members: We will be human shields", stating that they were extremely worried that the peace process would be put an end, families of KADEK members said that they were ready to be human shields in order to prevent re-occurrence of violence.

2. "Newsweek: Kurds will start guerrilla war against Turkish troops", 'Turkey is demanding that it send 60-80,000 of its own troops into northern Iraq to establish 'strategic positions' across a 'security arc' as much as 140-170 miles deep in Iraq. That would take Turkish troops almost halfway to Baghdad. These troops would not be under U.S. command, according to Turkish sources, who say Turkey has agreed only to 'coordination' between U.S. and Turkish forces,' Newsweek reported.

3. "For Kurds, Kirkuk would be a prize", the traffic comes all day long, taxis and trucks and private sedans darting across the plain of government-controlled Iraq toward the mountains where ethnic Kurds maintain their autonomous zone.

4. "Turks and Saudis take firm stance over Iraq", two of the countries whose support is considered crucial in any future military campaign against Iraq yesterday warned Britain and the United States they would not support any attack that did not have the backing of the United Nations.

5. "Turkish general: We are willing to fight against Armenians shoulder to shoulder with Azerbaijan", Azerbaijani Minister of Defense Col-Gen Safar Abiyev received on Wednesday a delegation headed by the president of the Turkish National Security Academy, Gen Kenan Deniz.

6. "Time is short for the divided peoples of Cyprus", until yesterday, the prospects for a lasting settlement in Cyprus appeared relatively bright, and certainly better than at any time since the island's division along ethnic lines in 1974. However, the victory of Tassos Papadopoulos in the Greek Cypriot presidential elections, on a platform promising a tougher line in negotiations on the future of the island, threatens the chances of a permanent peace.

1. - Kurdish Observer - "Mothers of KADEK members: We will be human shields":

Stating that they were extremely worried that the peace process would be put an end, families of KADEK members said that they were ready to be human shields in order to prevent re-occurrence of violence.

MEHMET NASIR KAYA /VAN / 18 February 2003

Stating that they were extremely worried from the solitary confinement of KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan and the peace period put an end, announced that they were ready to be human shields in order to prevent re-occurrence of violence.

47-year-old Leyla Bor whose son had been a guerrilla for 13 years called attention to the tension arising from Ocalan’s solitary confinement. “We mothers have suffered for 15 years. Now they try to make us suffer again. If they suffered like us, they would not isolate KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan. As mother of a guerrilla I am ready to be a human shield. I believe that all mothers will show such sensitivity,” said Bor.

“My heart will be unable to stand it any more”

Hanim Gur, saying that his two children were at mountains, called on all mothers of soldiers and KADEK members to take action in order to stop the war. “My heart will be unable to stand it any more,” said she. Gur stated that they had migrated from the district of Beytussebap of Sirnak to Van, adding, “As we dream to return to our village war is put into the agenda once again. If there is a war, we will be at the forefront along with our children. We will make ourselves human shields for them. If mothers of soldiers do not want their children die, then they must stop the war.”

“All prime ministers are ruthless”

And Esmer Cevrel, reacting to Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, said the following: “On the one hand Gul speaks of Islam and compassion, on the other hand he pretends not to see sufferings of the mothers. We have thought that the other prime ministers are ruthless because they do not have own children but now they all are alike on the Kurdish question and they all are ruthless. We are suffering bitterly. We will shield our children with our own bodies.”

2. - Turkish Daily News - "Newsweek: Kurds will start guerrilla war against Turkish troops":

'Turkey is demanding that it send 60-80,000 of its own troops into northern Iraq to establish 'strategic positions' across a 'security arc' as much as 140-170 miles deep in Iraq. That would take Turkish troops almost halfway to Baghdad. These troops would not be under U.S. command, according to Turkish sources, who say Turkey has agreed only to 'coordination' between U.S. and Turkish forces,' Newsweek reported

ANKARA / 19 February 2003

Stating that Turkey is demanding that it send 60,000 to 80,000 of its own troops into northern Iraq, influential American weekly periodical Newsweek claimed that "there is a real risk that the Kurds will start a guerrilla war against the Turkish troops in northern Iraq."

"Raising its price for allowing U.S. forces to invade Iraq from its territory," wrote Newsweek and continued to said that "In early negotiations with the United States, Ankara spoke of sending in Turkish troops to set up a 'buffer zone' perhaps 15 miles deep along the Iraqi border. This would prevent a flood of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq, the Turks said."

Newsweek continued to write that "Turkey is demanding that it send 60,000 to 80,000 of its own troops into northern Iraq to establish "strategic positions" across a "security arc" as much as 140 to 170 miles deep in Iraq. That would take Turkish troops almost halfway to Baghdad. These troops would not be under U.S. command, according to Turkish sources, who say Turkey has agreed only to "coordination" between U.S. and Turkish forces. Ankara fears the Iraqi Kurds might use Saddam's fall to declare independence."

However the periodical reported that the Kurdish leaders have not yet been told of this new plan, according to Kurdish spokesmen in Washington, who say the Kurds rejected even the earlier notion of a narrow buffer zone. Farhad Barzani, the U.S. representative of the main Kurdish party in Iraq, the KDP, says, "We have told them: American troops will come as liberators. But Turkish troops will be seen as invaders."

The White House did not respond to requests for comment; officials elsewhere in the administration played down the Turkish demands as bargaining tactics: "We told them flat out, no."

Newsweek continued to write "But independent diplomatic sources in Ankara and Washington with knowledge of the U.S.-Turkey talks say that while the precise depth of the "security zone" has still to be agreed, the concept is "pretty much a done deal," as one observer put it. These sources add that the main U.S. concern has been that U.S., not Turkish, troops occupying the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, and that Turkish troops merely surround but not enter the heavily Kurdish cities of Erbil and Sulemaniye. To get Turkey's assent to this, these sources say, the United States had to "cave" on its demand that Turkish troops be under U.S. control."

Stating also that Pentagon officials acknowledge frustration at the problems Turkey's bargaining poses for the U.S. military buildup, Newsweek wrote that "Turkish sources say that when Turkey's Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis met with President Bush on Friday, the president warned that the United States might open a northern front against Iraq without Turkish participation. But military sources say that would be close to impossible."

"Turkey is playing hardball," said Michael Amitay of the Washington Kurdish Institute. "But if the U.S. agrees to these Turkish deployments, there is a real risk that the Kurds will start a guerrilla war against the Turkish troops."

War on Two Fronts

In another article under the title of "War on two fronts" Newsweek continued to analyze the current situation of Iraq row and stated that "The Turks' concerns are equally clear. It's not just a flood of refugees that scares them -- half a million in 1991. More, they want to prevent Iraq's Kurds from taking advantage of a U.S. invasion to declare independence from Baghdad and possibly seize the nearby Iraqi oil-fields of Kirkuk and Mosul. Ankara also seeks to ensure that the rights of ethnic Turkomans living in Kurdistan are respected in a post-Saddam Iraq. "If you want to prevent massacres and the division of Iraq," says Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, "you have to take some precautions.""

"Iraq's Kurds don't see it that way, however. Sabah Mustafa Mohammed, a Kurdish peshmerga , or irregular soldier, fought Saddam and is now ready to fight the Turks, if ordered. A small Turkish military contingent has already been sent to Iraq, chiefly to keep an eye on suspected terrorists. One of the Turkish bases lies inside Iraqi territory not far from Mohammed's home village of Zewa, a sleepy, snowy one-road town with no electricity and a single dry-goods shop 25 kilometers south of the border," wrote Newsweek.

"These Turks should go home," he says, decked out in a black and white checked kaffiyeh and camouflage jacket. "For us, the Turks and Saddam are the same. They are both enemies of the Kurds."

According to Newsweek, for now, Iraqi Kurd leaders are being a little more diplomatic -- but only a little. "We will refuse [Turkish intervention]," says Sami Abdul Rahman, 70, the deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls northern Kurdistan. The party's representative in Washington, Farhad Barzani, is no less categorical. "We have told them: the Americans come as liberators," he says. "But Turkish troops will be seen as invaders."

Attempting to head off any clashes, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad told Kurdish leaders in Ankara last week that they should stand down their 50,000 peshmerga troops and not resist Turkish forces. There's also an understanding between the Pentagon and Turkey's military that U.S. forces will occupy Kirkuk and Mosul and handle all the front line fighting, while the Turks secure the rear. Turkish troops will surround but not enter the major Kurdish cities of Erbil and Suleymaniye and keep a generally low profile to prevent clashes. Abdullah Gul has also promised that "our troops will withdraw when peace is restored."

According to Newsweek that's just the theory. In practice, Kurdish leaders fear that Ankara wants to lay its own claim to oil reserves in Kirkuk and Mosul, and that it intends to strangle the Kurdish ambition of creating an autonomous region within a federal Iraq. They are particularly suspicious of Turkey's efforts to promote such radical Turkoman leaders as Sanan Ahmet Aga, leader of the Iraqi Turkoman Front. Aga wants the Turkomans to be given an autonomous area of their own, covering much of the area of the current Kurdish region, and claims that there are 2 million Turkomans in Iraq-rivaling the nation's 3.5 million Kurds. Western observers put the number of ethnic Turkomans at fewer than 500,000.

The weekly periodical concluded that "The fault lines are already widening. Aga's Turkoman party has its own armed militia of roughly 3,000 men; at the party's cultural center in Erbil, purportedly used mainly for weddings and birthday parties, armed guards walk the surrounding walls. The Turkomans have reason to be nervous. Last week Amir Azad, the party's defense minister, was arrested at the Chwar Chra hotel in central Erbil by security officials from the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Turkomans quickly took that as evidence of persecution to come -- as did the Turkish press, which has begun comparing the plight of the Turkomans to that of Turkish Cypriots, in whose defense Ankara invaded the northern third of Cyprus in 1974 and never left. "We don't want the Turkomans becoming a Trojan horse for Turkish control," says a Kurdish official present at last week's meeting in Ankara."

3. - Los Angeles Times - "For Kurds, Kirkuk would be a prize":

CHAMCHAMAL / 19 February 2003 / by Karl Vick

The traffic comes all day long, taxis and trucks and private sedans darting across the plain of government-controlled Iraq toward the mountains where ethnic Kurds maintain their autonomous zone.

It is a routine passage from confinement to relative freedom, and last week the Iraqi government made a glancing effort to make it more difficult, imposing a limit of 2 1/2 gallons on what a taxi can purchase at the last chance for gas in government territory.

But the travellers continue to cross, with their luggage and jerrycans and their intriguing details about a country on the cusp of war.

Secrets have always transitted this place with the same ease as battered white and orange taxis. It's a porous line that separates the zones, and people from both sides easily negotiate checkpoints that, on the Kurdish side, often amount to a brake and a wave.

The information flows thickest from Kirkuk, which after Baghdad would be perhaps the most crucial prize of a military campaign against Iraq. If Turkey permits U.S. troops to use its territory to open a northern front in an Iraqi war, analysts say, Kirkuk would figure prominently in the Americans' plans.

Barely 20 miles from the checkpoints, Kirkuk lies on an open plain defended by a trenchline facing north and tens of thousands of soldiers and citizens who have far more guns than will to use them, according to Kurdish officials and Kirkuk residents visiting the Kurdish region.

"The regular army doesn't find enough to eat, so I don't believe they'll fight," said a young man visiting the Kurdish-controlled city of Sulaymaniyah for the Muslim holidays last week. His account, like those offered by other travellers and by officials here in the Kurdish zone, could not be independently verified.

The youth said he has seen army conscripts in tattered uniforms and damaged shoes, too poor to afford bus fare to their homes in southern Iraq. "The Republican Guard," he said, "is the only force the government will trust."

Well-paid and well-provisioned, Republican Guard troops are regarded here as formidable fighters. An unspecified number reportedly are deployed in the heart of Kirkuk, reinforced by thousands stationed at Khalid Camp, a vast military complex southwest of the city.

Kurdish officials concur that Kirkuk's outer defences are manned by a ragged regular army supplemented by perhaps 100,000 civilians who have been given automatic rifles and a month of training.

Many are members of the ruling Baath Party; others reported for duty after being told each family must volunteer one member for the makeshift militia. About 20,000 are Kurds - called traitors by their ethnic brethren to the north, who refer to Saddam Hussein's Kurdish militia as the "donkey army" and boast of infiltrating its ranks.

"Most of this military I call sacrifice military," said Shalaow Askari, a Kirkuk native,veteran Kurdish fighter and a minister in the self-government Kurds have established under the cover of U.S. and British warplanes enforcing a no-fly zone since 1991.

"They won't run. They will surrender," Askari said. "The military the Iraqis are counting on are inside the city."

4. - The Scotsman - "Turks and Saudis take firm stance over Iraq":

19 February 2003 / by gethin Chamberlain

TWO of the countries whose support is considered crucial in any future military campaign against Iraq yesterday warned Britain and the United States they would not support any attack that did not have the backing of the United Nations.

Saudi Arabia said it would regard any action without UN backing as a war of aggression which could destabilise the whole of the Middle East, and Turkey made it clear that even an £18 billion aid package might not be enough to persuade it to join in an unsanctioned campaign.

If the US and Britain were in any doubt about the difficulty of the task facing them in winning international support for military action, it was spelt out by the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal.

In the strongest statement so far by the key US ally against a possible attack on Iraq, Prince Saud said: "We think war is going to be a tremendous threat to the region.

"We think that, especially if it doesn’t come through the United Nations’ authority, it would be a dangerous thing to do."

Saudi Arabia was a main launch-pad for the 1991 US-led Gulf war to liberate Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion but Riyadh has yet to say whether it will allow US forces on its soil to strike at Iraq again.

Officials say the country is lobbying Washington to grant amnesty to Saddam’s top generals, partly to encourage them to overthrow him.

But Prince Saud lashed out at the United States, saying that Saudi Arabia - which was subjected to a vitriolic US media campaign for allegedly breeding Islamic militancy - was worried about rising fundamentalism in America.

"Our worry is the new emerging fundamentalism in the United States and in the West. Fundamentalism in our region is on the wane. There, it’s in the ascendancy. That’s a threat," he said.

There was another headache for Washington and London when Turkey demanded the doubling of an aid package it had been offered in return for participation in a war on Iraq, and warned that it would not join any campaign without a second UN resolution.

Turkey’s president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, said: "We have been saying from the very beginning that the presence of foreign soldiers in Turkey could be allowed in circumstances considered legitimate by international law. In order to have a situation deemed legitimate under international law, we believe there should be a Security Council resolution other than Resolution 1441."

Turkey’s top politician, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said authorisation for US combat troops to be deployed in Turkey depended on Washington meeting his demands.

"The other side must meet our demands, and if they do, we shall see. After this is finalised, the authorisation will come to parliament," Mr Erdogan said.

The US believes that a northern front, launched from Turkey, would shorten any war but Turkey’s continued refusal to commit itself to the US plans could seriously hinder military preparations, with tanks and armoured vehicles already reportedly on their way.

If Ankara continues to drag its feet, US military planners could go ahead without a northern front. But an assault on Iraq from Turkey would relieve a main invasion from the south and could shorten any war and reduce US casualties.

Turkey is demanding £6.25 billion in grants and up to £12.5 billion in long-term loans - double what the US had been offering - and Mr Erdogan warned that the country would not be bounced into a war.

"Our American friends should not consider parliament’s decision on modernising bases and ports as meaning that Turkey is on an irreversible path," he said.

Yesterday Turkey’s parliament postponed a planned vote that would have authorised the stationing of US troops on Turkish soil.

But the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Turkey had to decide sooner rather than later what it intended to do. "It ... will be settled one way or another rather soon," he said. "We continue to work with Turkey as a friend. But it is decision time. We will find out what the ultimate outcome is."

While the diplomats continued to talk, however, preparations continued for a military campaign, with soldiers from 16 Air Assault Brigade, including members of 3 Para and 23 Engineer Regiment, due to fly out to the Gulf region today.

5. - Financial Times - "Turkish general: We are willing to fight against Armenians shoulder to shoulder with Azerbaijan":

Azerbaijani Minister of Defense Col-Gen Safar Abiyev received on Wednesday a delegation headed by the president of the Turkish National Security Academy, Gen Kenan Deniz.

18 February 2003

Welcoming the visitors, Safar Abiyev spoke about the historical and spiritual unity of the two nations: "We have lost a lot along the history. And now we have no justification for losing anything, on the contrary we must regain what we have lost." Azeri minister touched upon the political-military situation with the South Caucasus region, saying that some nations were using the unresolved Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict as leverage on Azerbaijan. This fact necessitates the interaction of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Gen Deniz, for his part, indicated that if necessary, Turkey was willing to fight against Armenians shoulder to shoulder with Azerbaijan.

To sum up the meeting, Safar Abiyev answered questions by the visitors: "At the moment, our most urgent priority is to complete the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline as soon as possible and to commence the laying of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline. Our states must persistently broaden bilateral economic cooperation. Azerbaijani-Turkish cooperation should represent an example for the all Turkic world."

6. - The Independent - "Time is short for the divided peoples of Cyprus":

18 February 2003

Until yesterday, the prospects for a lasting settlement in Cyprus appeared relatively bright, and certainly better than at any time since the island's division along ethnic lines in 1974. However, the victory of Tassos Papadopoulos in the Greek Cypriot presidential elections, on a platform promising a tougher line in negotiations on the future of the island, threatens the chances of a permanent peace.

The prospect of joining the European Union in 2004, it was hoped, would encourage the Turkish-occupied north – which would remain outside the EU unless reunification could be agreed – to come to a deal. After all, Turkish Cypriots would benefit as much as any islander from EU aid that would pour in for reconstruction and development. A Turkish Cypriot presence in the counsels of the EU might speed Turkey's progress towards membership, and would at least keep an eye out for Turkish interests. So it was proving.

The strongest cause for optimism, however, was the United Nations plan for a loose federation of the island's two communities, roughly along the lines of the Swiss confederation. This "cantonisation" plan taxed the ingenuity of the UN's most experienced draftsmen, but it seemed to have reasonably widespread support. A competition for a new flag had even been launched. The scheme, however, would not give refugees the right to return to areas they were expelled from, something that Mr Papadopoulos wants.

After almost 30 years, time is growing short. UN negotiators have set 28 February as the last possible date for agreement if Cyprus is to be reunited before the signing of the treaty on 16 April to join the EU. It is possible that, in voting for Mr Papadopoulos, Greek Cypriots were, in effect, making a last-minute negotiating ploy, perhaps hoping to gain a little more of the property they lost after the Turkish army invaded the northern part of the island to prevent enosis (union) with Greece after a coup plotted in Athens. Even with what are obviously more pressing international issues to deal with, EU and UN envoys will work hard to broker a settlement. The question is whether the Cypriots really want it.