13 March 2003

1. "Top Turkish Court Bans Pro-Kurdish Party", Turkey's constitutional court closed down the country's main pro-Kurdish party on Thursday, ruling that it had links with rebels who waged a 15-year war for autonomy. The court also banned the leaders of the People's Democracy Party, or HADEP, from politics for five years. (...) Turkish prosecutor asks for ban of second Kurdish party.

2. "Turkey's drive for EU membership hit by human rights court ruling on Kurdish rebel chief's trial", Turkey's campaign for entry into the European Union was dealt a severe blow yesterday when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the country’s trial of the Kurdish rebel chief, Abdullah Ocalan, was unfair.

3. "Ocalan ruling sparks fresh dispute with Europe", the ruling of the court comes at a time when relations with the EU have become tense over Cyprus after a spokesman warns Turkey is on the way to becoming an occupier in EU territory. Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis says Ocalan would get the same punishment even if he is retried and the Foreign Ministry announces Turkey will appeal the ruling at the court's Grand Chamber.

4. "Kurds in northern Iraq pursue an elusive goal: unity", on the eve of a possible Iraq war, Kurds confront the historic challenges of infighting and betrayal.

5. "Kurdish soldiers massing at border to halt Turks", hundreds of Kurdish soldiers armed with artillery, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns are continuing to take up positions along Iraq's border with Turkey, according to Kurdish officials and residents. Turkey moved a large military convoy of its own to the border area late last week.

6. "Turkey stalls on new US troops motion", Yasar Yakis, the Turkish foreign minister, said on Wednesday that Ankara had not yet decided whether or when to re-submit a second motion to parliament allowing the deployment of 62,000 US troops in Turkey for an attack on Iraq.

7. "Turks Add A Hurdle To U.S. War Plans", Airspace Use to Require Parliamentary Approval.

8. "Cyprus conflict threatens Turkey's future in Europe", the Cyprus conflict threatens to doom Turkey's bid to join the European Union and may force the country to shift closer to the United States at a time when Washington is keen to lure Ankara into its ranks against Iraq, observers say.

1. - AP / AFP - "Top Turkish Court Bans Pro-Kurdish Party":

13 March 2003

Turkey's constitutional court closed down the country's main pro-Kurdish party on Thursday, ruling that it had links with rebels who waged a 15-year war for autonomy.

The court also banned the leaders of the People's Democracy Party, or HADEP, from politics for five years.

Justice Mustafa Bumin told reporters that the party had aided rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

"All evidence proves that they committed this crime with their activities," Justice Mustafa Bumin told reporters.

Among those banned in the ruling was party chairman Murat Bozlak.

The party has denied any links to the rebels and says it only wants more rights for the country's estimated 12 million Kurds.

HADEP did not run in November national elections. Instead, it merged with two other parties in a political alliance to avoid legal problems. That party did not get enough votes to enter parliament.

The Constitutional Court has closed down three predecessor parties to HADEP.

Some 37,000 people, mostly Kurdish rebels and civilians, have died as a result of fighting between the Turkish military and Kurdish rebels.

The rebels declared a cease-fire in 1999, but Turkey rejected the cease-fire, saying all the rebels must surrender or be killed.

Turkish prosecutor asks for ban of second Kurdish party

Turkey's top prosecutor on Thursday asked the constitutional court to ban a second Kurdish party, the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP), minutes after the court banned the country's main Kurdish party, Anatolia news agency reported.

It was not immediately clear on what grounds the prosecutor had requested the sanction against DEHAP.

Earlier Thursday, the constitutional court banned DEHAP's sister party -- the People's Democracy Party (HADEP) -- for supporting separatist Kurdish rebels and becoming a focal point of activities against state unity. DEHAP was founded in 1999 as a safeguard against the possible banning of HADEP, shortly after legal proceedings were initiated against the latter party.

2. - The Scotsman - "Turkey's drive for EU membership hit by human rights court ruling on Kurdish rebel chief's trial":

STRASBOURG / 13 March 2003 / by Gilbert Reilhac

TURKEY’S campaign for entry into the European Union was dealt a severe blow yesterday when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the country’s trial of the Kurdish rebel chief, Abdullah Ocalan, was unfair.

The court criticised the trial because a military judge was involved in some of the hearings and Ocalan was given only restricted access to his lawyers.

The ruling by the court, made up of seven judges, means that Turkey should in theory be obliged to try Ocalan again, but it is not binding. The ruling is open to appeal.

"The court held by six votes to one ... that the applicant was not tried by an independent and impartial tribunal," the court said of Ocalan, who was blamed by Turkey for 30,000 deaths in a 16-year campaign by his Kurdistan Workers’ Party for a Kurdish homeland in south-east Turkey.

"The applicant did not have a fair trial," the court added. It said that Turkey had violated articles in the European Convention on Human Rights on the provision of adequate time and facilities for defence preparation and the right to legal assistance.

The European Court of Human Rights is independent of the European Union, but Turkey is under pressure from the 15-nation bloc to improve its human rights record as it bids to join.

Ocalan, who was caught in Kenya in February 1999, is held in solitary confinement on the island of Imrali near Istanbul.

Last October, an arm of the Council of Europe - which could lend support to Turkey’s aim of joining the EU - urged Turkey to end Ocalan’s solitary confinement, saying that he should have access to a television and telephone as do other prisoners.

The court ruling on Ocalan has highlighted Turkish fears over Kurdish separatism, revived by the crisis over neighbouring Iraq.

The ruling is the second setback in a week for Turkey’s EU ambitions.

After the Cyprus peace talks collapsed on Tuesday, when the minority Turkish Cypriots in the semi state in the north of the island rejected a deal, the EU reaffirmed plans to admit a divided Cyprus into the union in May 2004 after the signing of an accession treaty next month.

An EU candidate country since 1999, Turkey has yet to open accession talks because of continued concerns over its human rights record.

3. - The Turkish Daily News - "Ocalan ruling sparks fresh dispute with Europe":

The ruling of the court comes at a time when relations with the EU have become tense over Cyprus after a spokesman warns Turkey is on the way to becoming an occupier in EU territory

Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis says Ocalan would get the same punishment even if he is retried and the Foreign Ministry announces Turkey will appeal the ruling at the court's Grand Chamber

ANKARA / 13 March 2003

The European Court criticized Turkey for its handling of the trial of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and Ankara announced it would appeal the ruling.

The decision of the Strasbourg court came at a time when relations with the European Union have become tense after an EU Commission spokesman indicated Tuesday that Turkey would be an occupier in Cyprus, on the way to become an EU territory soon, as U.N. efforts to find a solution to the sticky Cyprus issue terminated with failure in a meeting in The Hague.

The European Court is independent of the European Union, but Turkey's demand to get a prompt date to start accession talks has been turned down by the EU, which said Ankara should do more to improve its human rights record.

"The Ankara State Security Court, which convicted the applicant, had not been an independent and impartial tribunal," said the court in Strasbourg, France.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said the court's decision was not "well-grounded" as it did not take into consideration the reforms carried out in Turkey and the Turkish side's arguments and announced it will appeal the ruling at the court's Grand Chamber.

Both sides have three months to lodge an appeal. Turkey will not have to make any immediate changes to Ocalan's situation, but if the verdict is upheld on appeal by the European Court's 17-member Grand Chamber, Ankara would face pressure to grant a retrial.

On some of the 11 other complaints lodged by lawyers of Ocalan, the court ruled in Turkey's favor. It rejected charges that Ocalan's conditions of detention were inhumane or that he had been illegally detained.

Yakis told reporters that "even if he is retried, the same sentence will be given."

Ocalan was snatched by Turkish commandos in Kenya in 1999 and flown to Turkey, which blames him for leading a 15-year separatist campaign against Turkey that left 37,000 people dead.

Since his trial, Ocalan has been the only inmate on the prison island of Imrali.

The court said conditions there "had not reached the minimum level of severity necessary to constitute inhuman or degrading treatment" under the European Convention of Human Rights.

The court's verdicts are binding on all 44 members of the Council of Europe, a human rights body that Turkey joined in 1949. However, it is up to governments of member nations to ensure compliance with the court's rulings, a process that can take years.

The panel of seven European judges awarded Ocalan 100,000 euro in costs.

"This decision supports our arguments that the rights of the defense were violated, that we as lawyers were pressured, and that the trial was not fair," said Ercan Kanar , a lawyer who defended Ocalan during his trial, to the Associated Press.

At his trial in 1999, Ocalan was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life in prison last year when Turkey abolished capital punishment, but an appeal by opponents of Ocalan is pending in a Turkish court against that ruling.

In answer to Ocalan's lawyers' complaints against the death sentence, the court found there had been no violation of articles in the European rights convention guaranteeing the right to life and prohibiting ill-treatment.

However, the judges voted 6-1 that the imposition of the death penalty following an unfair trial was a violation.

The court based its judgment on the fairness of Ocalan's trial on the presence of a military judge in the Turkish court and restrictions on Ocalan's access to defense lawyers.

The Turkish judge who presided over Ocalan's 1999 trial hotly disputed the European verdict.

"Our conscience is clear," Judge Turgut Okyay told the Anatolia news agency. "The European Court has once again shown how it uses double standards against Turkey."

For the first time in 14 weeks, Turkish authorities authorized Ocalan's lawyers to visit him in prison Wednesday, Anatolia reported.

Turkish authorities had prevented lawyers from traveling to the prison island, citing weather conditions.

Court decision to give new headache to Turkey

The ruling of the European court dealt Ankara a new blow as it battles a crisis over Iraq.

The court ruling on Ocalan has highlighted Turkish fears over Kurdish separatism, revived by the crisis over neighbouring Iraq.

Ankara, which has been locked in tortuous negotiations with Washington over the deployment of U.S. troops on its territory to invade Iraq, fears Kurds in northern Iraq could use the chaos of war to declare independence.

That would rekindle separatism in southeast Turkey, where fighting dropped off sharply after the capture of Ocalan, who ordered his followers to withdraw into north Iraq.

While Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq, who have controlled the region since the 1991 Gulf War, back any U.S.-led war to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Kurds in Turkey have staged protests against war.

4. - The Christian Sience Monitor - "Kurds in northern Iraq pursue an elusive goal: unity":

On the eve of a possible Iraq war, Kurds confront the historic challenges of infighting and betrayal.

SULAYMANIYAH / 12 March 2003 / by Cameron W. Barr

Sgt. Taifur Majid, 15 years a soldier, stands under a cold grey sky and watches Kurdish commandos jog past, their young faces streaked with black.

The parade is a symbol of the unrecognized independence the Kurds of northern Iraq have enjoyed since 1991.

Protected by US and British warplanes, aided by the United Nations, and largely left alone by President Saddam Hussein's government, the two Kurdish political parties that administer Iraq's three northern provinces collect revenues, maintain armies, and hold elections on their own.

Iraqi Kurdistan is the closest thing that some 25 million Kurds- spread mainly across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey - have to a state. But the 3.8 million residents of northern Iraq inhabit a political never-never land that they say is "not in the sky and not on the ground." With war and the overthrow of Mr. Hussein in the offing, Kurds are wondering whether they will soar or crash in a new Iraq.

"God willing," says Sergeant Majid, a gaunt-faced, mustachioed man in faded fatigues and a tattered ammunition belt, "we will not lose this independence if America supports us."

But trusting America is not a simple prospect for Iraq's Kurds, whose history includes a succession of betrayals by outside powers, including the US. Neither is something else their future will ask of them: unity.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two groups that run northern Iraq, fought a civil war in the 1990s that killed thousands. This sundering left the KDP in control of the western portion of northern Iraq, which borders Syria and Turkey; the PUK controls the eastern part, which abuts Iran.

In a new Iraq, says Fouad Baban, an activist and physician, "there should be a united Kurdistan administration and Kurdish voice, or there will be total chaos." The two parties are discussing integration, but they have a long way to go.

The military compound where Majid watches his juniors is outside Sulaymaniyah, a city of 650,000 people fringed by rumpled, taupe-colored mountains that is the capital of the PUK region. In the compound, a traffic roundabout displays portraits of four PUK martyrs. None was killed by Hussein's regime. All were killed by the KDP.

A legacy of betrayal

The Kurds can count many betrayals. The victors of World War I promised the Kurds autonomy as a prelude to independence, and then reneged. The founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Attaturk, promised to treat the Kurds "as brothers and equals," and then repressed Turkey's vast Kurdish minority.

In the early 1970s, the US and Iran backed a Kurdish rebellion as a means of pressuring Iraq. But in 1975 the US helped broker a deal between Iran and Iraq. The Iranians abandoned Kurdish fighters overnight.

In 1991, Iraqi Kurds heeded US encouragement to rebel against Hussein. When Iraqi forces stamped out the uprising, the US stood idle.

While the US today seems to support what Iraq's Kurds want - a democratic, pluralistic, and federal Iraq that would preserve Kurdish autonomy - occasionally officials here vent their anxieties. They worry in particular about the role the US will afford Turkey in an invasion of Iraq.

The Turks say they want to enter northern Iraq to defend their border and keep refugees from fleeing into Turkey. But Turkish officials may also want to roll back Kurdish self-rule because of the inspiration it offers Turkey's Kurds.

Sami Abdurrahman, deputy prime minister of the KDP zone, last month told the BBC: "There is real fear that if Turkish forces come in they will suppress our people and demolish all the achievements of the last 10 years.

"In my lifetime, twice the US government has betrayed us," the British-trained engineer added, speaking of the events of 1975 and 1991. "Now if this goes ahead," he continued, referring to a Turkish incursion, "it will be a third betrayal in one generation."

The argument used to tamp down such fears is that US and Kurdish interests are now aligned - both are against Hussein and terrorism and in favor of democracy in Iraq. "Now we trust America," says Majid, the veteran fighter at the parade ground. "Because we have a joint enemy."

During a 20-minute discussion of his confidence in America's support, Majid wavers only once. He mentions 1988, when the Iraqi regime used chemical weapons to attack at least 60 Kurdish villages and towns. Majid wants to know: "Why was America silent?"

The US declined to stop Hussein's forces from crushing the Kurds' 1991 uprising, but it responded to the ensuing torrent of Kurdish refugees into Turkey and Iran, providing humanitarian assistance and declaring a "no-fly zone" over northern Iraq. Hussein soon pulled his administrators out of the country's three northern provinces. The UN and private agencies stepped in to help.

The greatest boon of the past 12 years, says Sirwan Sdiq, a goatee-sporting entrepreneur in Sulaymaniyah, is "the freedom for us to do what we want."

The residents of Iraqi Kurdistan - mainly Kurds, but also Turkmens, Arabs, and members of Iraq's other ethnic and religious groups - no longer have to serve in Iraq's army or pretend to admire Hussein. Dozens of political parties now vie for people's support, as do scores of publications and radio and television stations.

But both politically and economically, Iraqi Kurdistan is a work in progress. "There is a margin of freedom; it is not a democracy," says Safwat Sidqi, a lawyer in Sulaymaniyah who heads the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization.

Although Kurdish officials praise democracy, in many ways they preside in an authoritarian style over their fiefdoms. "If I am for the PUK I can't say so," says a college graduate in Arbil, the center of the region run by the KDP. "Jobs are restricted to [KDP] party members and students who were in the party student union," he grumbles, insisting that his name not be used. "It's just like under Saddam."

Some Kurds say that progress depends on change. Integration in a democratic Iraq would likely improve the region's economy.

"We have run our course," says the KDP's Hoshyar Zebari, referring to the administrations maintained by his party and the PUK. "I think it's the endgame for us - that's why you see us really involved in [Iraqi] opposition politics."

A harsh civil war

"The division of the Kurdish community into two is the greatest failing" of the period of autonomy, says Baban, the doctor and activist. It is also, he adds, "the greatest risk to this community and to its future."

The civil war of 1994-1997, fought in part over the distribution of smuggling revenues, is an embarrassment to Kurdish officials. "It's a sad, black period of our life and we will never go back to it," vows Nasreen Sideek, minister of reconstruction and development for the KDP.

Despite talk of reconciliation, there is little immediate prospect of achieving administrative unity or selecting a single leader. Shalaw Askari, a minister in the PUK administration, says the two parties are 40 percent of the way toward coalescence. One half-step toward unity: In recent months the two party leaders, Masoud Barzani of the KDP and Jalal Talabani of the PUK, have begun traveling together to foreign capitals.

Internal dissension has been a constant of Kurdish history. During the civil war, Mr. Talabani relied on Iranian help until Mr. Barzani invited in Hussein's forces and sought assistance from Turkey. The war percolated until the US worked out a peace agreement in 1998.

Of the two challenges they face - the need to rely on outsiders and the imperative of unity - Kurds say the former is easier. "When you are thrown into the river and somebody is there and he puts his hand out to help you," says Mr. Askari, the PUK minister, "you must trust."

"The chance is here and I think we should take it," he adds. The American hand doesn't offer independence, which Askari says all Kurds want in their hearts, but it is perhaps the only way forward.

Regarding unity, Askari is less sanguine. His father, Ali, was ambushed and executed by the KDP in 1978. His picture is one of the four portraits at on the roundabout at the PUK military compound outside Sulaymaniyah.

Shalaw Askari pauses when he is asked how can Kurds can overcome this legacy of internecine strife. It's a sensitive subject, he says. "If you say you forget, it's not true."

5. - The International Herald Tribune - "Kurdish soldiers massing at border to halt Turks":

IBRAHIM KHALIL / 13 March 2003 / by David Rohde

Hundreds of Kurdish soldiers armed with artillery, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns are continuing to take up positions along Iraq's border with Turkey, according to Kurdish officials and residents. Turkey moved a large military convoy of its own to the border area late last week.

The United States has been trying to broker an agreement to prevent open clashes between the two bitter rivals that could complicate a U.S.-led attack on Iraq. Turkey has said it reserves the right to move its forces into northern Iraq to prevent Kurds from declaring an independent state. Kurds, whose forces would probably be quickly overwhelmed, say Turkey is trying to occupy their territory.

"They are not in yet and we won't let them come in," said Haji Sallah, 31, a Kurdish fighter who said Kurdish soldiers continued to move into the border area Tuesday. "We have everything to fight them, and we will use everything."

A column of Turkish forces moved Sunday toward the border with Iraq, according to Turkish journalists. Kurdish officials said Tuesday that the column had neared a complex of customs and administrative buildings on the Turkish side of the border, and that it stopped and camped there.

Hundreds of Kurdish soldiers backed by artillery and other heavy weapons continued to take up positions on the border Tuesday, according to residents and officials. Kurdish officials said the buildup began Friday and involved only soldiers from around the city of D'hok. They said they did not know how many troops were involved.

"This is absolutely a precautionary measure and defensive," said Hoshyar Zebari, a leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Turkish officials could not be reached to comment. They have said their forces might enter northern Iraq to distribute relief supplies and prevent refugees from flooding into Turkey, as they did after the Gulf War. Turkey, which crushed a separatist insurgency by its Kurdish minority in the 1990s, fears that an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq would fuel a new secessionist drive.

Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq say they want to become part of a democratic, federal Iraq. They say they refuse to give up the freedom and autonomy they have enjoyed in northern Iraq under an American- and British-enforced no-flight zone. U.S. officials have been trying to broker a deal between the two sides, Kurdish officials said, but the date of a planned meeting in Turkey has not been set.

6. - The Financial Times - "Turkey stalls on new US troops motion":

ANKARA / 31 March 2003 / by Leyla Boulton in Ankara


Yasar Yakis, the Turkish foreign minister, said on Wednesday that Ankara had not yet decided whether or when to re-submit a second motion to parliament allowing the deployment of 62,000 US troops in Turkey for an attack on Iraq.

But Mr Yakis may not be in the job for much longer, for he was speaking as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the previously banned leader of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), prepared to form a new government following his election to parliament at the weekend.

It was not clear when a new cabinet would be announced, since Mr Erdogan first needs to submit to parliament a law reducing the number of cabinet ministers to 22 from 26.

Officials have suggested that the draft resolution on US troop deployments - which was rejected by parliament nearly two weeks ago - would not be revived until after Mr Erdogan's new government had been fully installed with a vote of confidence, due by the middle of next week.

They have also said that Turkey's decision could be affected by international developments, such as whether the United Nations Security Council approved a second resolution or not.

Ankara has come under pressure for a rapid decision from both the US, keen to open a second front against Iraq through Turkey, and financial markets hoping for the release of a US war compensation package.

A $6bn congressional grant - $2bn of which is reserved for military sales but $4bn of which could be converted into $24bn in cheap long-term loans - is conditional on Turkey allowing the troop deployment.

But some financial institutions, including Moody's, the US rating agency, have expressed fears that Turkey could take a decision too late to receive the money.

Local uncertainty, compounded by Turkish fondness for conspiracy theories, is such that one newspaper columnist even saw the hand of an angry US in recent World Bank criticism of the Turkish draft budget for 2003.

The columnist, Mahfi Egilmez, who also works for a big Turkish bank, drew this conclusion on the grounds that the World Bank's president, James Wolfensohn, is a US citizen. He suggested that the International Monetary Fund, in contrast, endorsed the budget because its managing director, Horst Köhler, was German, and therefore opposed US war plans.

The difference in points of view arose because the World Bank feared that the new austerity budget - which haS drawn up to reassure financial markets battered by parliament's first vote against the troop deployment - did not provide cast-iron funding for agricultural reforms already under way with World Bank support.

7. - The Washington Post - "Turks Add A Hurdle To U.S. War Plans":

Airspace Use to Require Parliamentary Approval

ANKARA / 13 March 2003 / by Philip P. Pan

Hardening their position, Turkey's leaders insist they need further assurances about postwar Iraq before they allow U.S. troops to deploy along the border for an attack. In a new complication, they also are refusing to let the Pentagon use Turkish airspace without approval from parliament.

Despite the acceleration of U.S. military preparations elsewhere, Turkey's leaders appear to be in no hurry to schedule a new vote in parliament on the U.S deployment or use of airspace. They say they are confident that the United States will wait for them because an invasion of Iraq without Turkey's help would be riskier, take longer and result in more casualties.

But U.S. officials say the Turkish government has misjudged the Bush administration's determination to move quickly against Iraq and are increasingly pessimistic about Turkey's participation. If Turkey does not offer its full cooperation before President Bush orders an attack, they warned, it risks losing the billions of dollars in aid that the United States has offered and damaging relations with a key ally.

"There's a concern that their measurements of Washington's thinking are not accurate," said a diplomat in Ankara, the capital. "The hope is that Turkey joins the coalition, but time is slipping. The world is moving, and if the world moves to the next stage while Turkey is still waiting, that means Turkey is out."

The differences between the United States and Turkey were evident Monday night during a telephone call between Bush and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party who is preparing to become prime minister. People familiar with the conversation said Bush asked Erdogan about the airspace issue but did not receive a commitment. Erdogan did not succeed in winning assurances about Iraq's ethnic Turkmen population and Turkey's role in shaping a postwar Iraqi government, a Turkish official said.

"There wasn't really any progress," he said.

Turkey's reluctance to grant the United States permission to use its airspace is particularly problematic for the Pentagon, which had counted on using scores of warplanes based at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey and on aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean to hit Iraqi targets. Without the use of Turkish airspace, Pentagon officials would have to consider using the more provocative route of flying over Israel and Jordan.

In addition, U.S. military planners had hoped to fly troops directly into northern Iraq as a back-up plan if Turkey refused to let the Army's 4th Infantry Division cross the Iraqi border. Dozens of U.S. ships carrying the division's tanks and heavy equipment have been waiting in Turkish waters for permission to begin unloading.

Despite Erdogan's endorsement, the Turkish parliament rejected the U.S. deployment by three votes March 1. U.S. officials had hoped that Erdogan would quickly seek another vote, especially after his election to parliament Sunday cleared the way for him to take over as prime minister.

But Erdogan is moving cautiously, apparently worried about the political damage he suffered in the last vote on the U.S. request, when more than a quarter of his party's legislators defied the party line. The Turkish president has asked Erdogan to form a new government, but he did not submit a cabinet to the president for approval today as analysts had expected.

Stopped between meetings at party headquarters, Erdogan declined to answer a question about exactly what assurances he was seeking from the United States. Asked when he would ask parliament for a second vote on the U.S. deployment, he replied: "It's not clear just now."

Dengir Firat, one of Erdogan's deputies and No. 2 in the party, said Erdogan probably would not finish forming a new government until next week. But Firat said a vote on the U.S. troop deployment would not have to wait until then if the Bush administration addressed Erdogan's concerns.

"We have some questions, and we are waiting for some answers," Firat said. "If the U.S. answered the questions today, we could call a vote tomorrow."

U.S. officials say they have tried many times to address Turkey's concerns, which focus on the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Turkey fears that such a state could inspire similar demands for autonomy among its own Kurdish population and cause renewed fighting between Kurdish separatists and the Turkish military, which plagued the nation for much of the past two decades.

U.S. officials have expressed frustration with Turkey's requests for further assurances, saying they have repeatedly stated U.S. opposition to a Kurdish state and that there is almost complete agreement on the language of a memorandum of understanding between the two nations about the future of Iraq.

Sedat Ergin, a political analyst and newspaper columnist, said Turkish officials are worried about the U.S. commitment to the agreement. Opposition by Iraqi Kurds to Turkish troops entering northern Iraq, statements from some Kurdish leaders about taking control of critical oil fields in northern Iraq and images of Kurdish protesters burning Turkish flags have led many Turks to ask whether the United States will hold the Kurds in check, he said.

"The United States and Turkey have reached an agreement, but the missing piece is a counterpart agreement between the United States and the Iraqi Kurds," he said. "Turkey says it wants assurances from Washington, but what would really help are assurances from the Iraqi Kurds."

Ergin said U.S. threats that Turkey would have no say in the future of northern Iraq if it did not allow the U.S. deployment have backfired, serving only to make Turkish officials more suspicious of U.S. intentions.

"It's a vicious circle," he said.

8. - The News International - "Cyprus conflict threatens Turkey's future in Europe":

ANKARA / 13 March 2003

The Cyprus conflict threatens to doom Turkey's bid to join the European Union and may force the country to shift closer to the United States at a time when Washington is keen to lure Ankara into its ranks against Iraq, observers say.

"The Cyprus nightmare is starting," the liberal Radikal daily warned in a front-page headline Wednesday.

Last-ditch peace talks between the two Cypriot leaders in the The Hague collapsed Tuesday morning as Secretary General Kofi Annan failed to get them to agree on a reunification deal before the island's entry to the EU next year.

Turkey seized the northern part of Cyprus 29 years ago to prevent its takeover by nationalists favoring union with Greece. It will now find itself an "occupying force" of EU territory when the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot side of the island joins the bloc in 2004. Greek Cyprus is to sign an EU accession treaty on April 16 on behalf of the whole island, but the Turkish Cypriot north, where Turkey has heavy military presence, will be left in the cold.

"Barring a surprise between now and April 16, Turkey's EU prospects ended as of yesterday," Radikal's editor-in-chief Ismet Berkan wrote. "Now that Turkey faces the danger of isolation in Europe, it may feel forced to stand closer to the United States," he added. Hasan Unal, a scholar of international relations at Ankara's Bilkent University, said: "We are in a period in which the United States' need of Turkey is growing and Turkey's need of the United States is growing."

Washington is pressing Ankara to allow US forces to use its territory as a springboard for attacks on neighboring Iraq. Under pressure from a firmly anti-war public opinion, the parliament rejected on March 1 a government motion calling for the deployment of US troops in the country. A second vote might be held later this month.

"The Turkish government does not seem to have any other option than passing the motion in the second vote," Berkan said. The Milliyet daily warned that "by distancing itself from Europe, Turkey will narrow its maneuvering room against the United States."

In the run-up to The Hague meeting, Turkey lent support to hardline Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, a bitter opponent of the UN peace plan.

Ankara said Tuesday it favored the continuation of talks between the two Cypriot sides, but denounced pressure to resolve the conflict under a tight timetable linked to the EU's enlargement plans.

The EU had hoped for a settlement ahead of the signing of Cyprus' accession treaty next month. Brussels warned that it would be "very difficult" to start EU entry talks with Turkey without a reunification deal on Cyprus.

Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis responded by saying the EU was applying "double standards."

Outgoing Prime Minister Abdullah Gul charged that by failing to voice a strong commitment

to Turkey's EU future at the Copenhagen summit last December, the EU had missed a chance to help settle the Cyprus question.

"They made a mistake at Copenhagen ... If Turkey's road was clearly opened, the Turkish side would have been more couragous on Cyprus," Gul told Radikal. EU leaders said in December they would decide whether to open membership talks with Turkey after evaluating its progress in December 2004.