27 April 2005

1. "EU presses Turkey over reforms, but says talks on track", the European Union urged Turkey Tuesday to press ahead with implementing key reforms needed to meet EU standards, but reassured it that plans to start membership talks in October remained on track.

2. "Ankara warned of European Union concerns", Senior European Union officials hit at Turkey's human rights record on Tuesday as concern grows that the country's rising nationalist sentiment is damaging its membership prospects and fuelling the anti-Turkish mood in France ahead of the constitutional referendum there.

3. "Öcalan precaution", Turkey's National Security Council (MGK) says Turkey does not have the luxury to ignore European Court decisions.

4. "Women's groups tackle EP report", Women's organizations yesterday met in Ankara to discuss a draft report on the social, economic, and political role of women in Turkey which was prepared by European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality.

5. "Turkey-US: Air Base Use Extended, Warplane Deal Chlinched, Amid Armenian Complaints", Turkey on Tuesday extended permission for the United States to use a military airbase in Turkish terrirtory - a decision that follows President George W. Bush's recent praise for Ankara's proposal for a joint probe with Armenia into the 1915-23 massacre of Armenians, but his reluctance to label the massacre a genocide carried out by Turks.

6. "Armenia agrees to commission to investigate massacres by Turks", Armenia has agreed in principle to a Turkish offer to create a commission to study the mass killings of Armenians by the Turks in 1915, which Ankara has refused to acknowledge as a genocide and which remains an obstacle to normal relations between the estranged neighbours.

1. - AFP - "EU presses Turkey over reforms, but says talks on track":

LUXEMBOURG / 26 April 2005

The European Union urged Turkey Tuesday to press ahead with implementing key reforms needed to meet EU standards, but reassured it that plans to start membership talks in October remained on track.

The EU's presidency said notably it wass confident the vast Muslim country would sign an accord extending a customs union with the EU to include 10 states which joined the bloc last year, including the divided island of Cyprus.

"We reiterated our commitment to the political criteria which must be fulfilled," said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn after the talks with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul.

EU leaders gave Turkey a green light last December to begin talks on joining the now 25-member bloc, while setting a number of conditions and warning that the whole process could take at least a decade.

A key condition was the extension of an EU-Turkey customs accord to cover the 10 EU newcomers states.

This signature could be seen as a de facto recognition by Turkey of the government in the south of the divided island, as opposed to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), only recognized by Ankara.

EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn voiced hope that Turkey would extend the customs accord well before October, noting that the EU is working on the documents required for Ankara to sign.

"Everything is well underway and I'm sure that we will achieve this signature of the protocol in good time before the opening of the negotiations," he said.

Gul said Turkey was committed to the reform process. "We are aware of how important implementation (of already-adopted legislative reforms) is," he told reporters.

He also said Turkey would sign the customs protocol as required. "Turkey is ready to sign the adapted protocol. I hope the procedure will be complete in a very short time on the EU side," he said.

Asselborn underlined that implementing reforms was crucial for Turkey's EU holes.

"The speed with which accession negotiations progress depends on the speed of reforms in Turkey," he said. "Resolute, effective and global implementation of reforms will be crucial for the success of the whole accession process."

Asselborn also denied that concerns over the fate of the bloc's disputed constitution are clouding preparations to start membership talks with Turkey.

"In politics nothing ever happens in a vacuum," said Asselborn, when asked if a French "no" vote in a May 29 referendum on the constitution could cloud Turkey's EU hopes. "But I don't think you should mix up different issues."

Most analysts agree that a French "no" vote would effectively kill the new EU constitution, designed to prevent decision-making gridlock in the expanding European bloc.

Politically it may also be seen as a public rejection of the EU's overall strategy, including its landmark decision to start talks with Turkey.

But Asselborn stressed that the EU could not go back on its decision at a Brussels summit last December to start talks with Turkey on October 3 this year, providing a number of conditions are met.

"Let's distinguish between the different issues," he said, while praising the reforms pushed through by Turkey in recent years in order to secure the EU green light to start talks.

"There is French policy, there is European policy. A decision (was) taken by the European council (of EU leaders) on starting negotiations with the great country which is Turkey," he said.

2. - Financial Times - "Ankara warned of European Union concerns":

LUXEMBOURG / ANKARA / 26 April 2005 / by Daniel Dombey and Vincent Boland

Senior European Union officials hit at Turkey's human rights record on Tuesday as concern grows that the country's rising nationalist sentiment is damaging its membership prospects and fuelling the anti-Turkish mood in France ahead of the constitutional referendum there.

At a meeting in Luxembourg, officials told Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, of their concerns about several recent incidents that raised doubts about the depth of Turkey's reform drive and its willingness to continue sweeping political and social changes necessary for EU membership.

Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's foreign minister, said: “The Turkish government has undertaken enormous reforms, but they have to be continued and implemented, and it is on that basis that public opinion will judge the willingness of Turkey to join the EU.” EU officials said incidents including police beatings of women demonstrators, threats against Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's best-known novelist, and a mob attack on prison reform campaigners mistaken for Kurdish separatists raised concerns about the country's commitment to freedom of expression and the media, women's rights and the protection of minorities.

Mr Gul assured the EU that human rights violators had been punished. He said Turkey was determined to continue reforms and discounted fears that a French No vote in the referendum on the European constitutional treaty could doom Ankara's EU bid.

“If there is a No then the French should think of it as their problem. The crisis will be in France,” he told the FT.

The prospect of a No vote in France's referendum next month has cast doubt on whether the EU will begin membership negotiations with Ankara as scheduled on October 3. Officials admit the EU's decision in December to invite Turkey to begin accession talks was motivated more by a desire to see continued reforms in the country than by a commitment to its eventual membership of the Union.

They have also acknowledged that the strained atmosphere between Brussels and Ankara has been provoked in part by a growing feeling in Turkey that the EU has not delivered on its commitments on membership or on a better deal for the ethnic Turks of northern Cyprus.

Analysts said it was difficult for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister, to concede further reforms without tangible returns from the EU.

3. - Turkish Daily News - "Öcalan precaution":

MGK says Turkey does not have the luxury to ignore European Court decisions

ANKARA / 26 April 2005

The National Security Council (MGK) General Secretariat has prepared a series of precautions in case the European Court of Human Rights decide to recommend the retrial of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK/Kongra-Gel) leader Abdullah Öcalan.

MGK Secretary-General Yigit Alpogan said last week that they were preparing for such a decision. According to a CNN-Türk report, the MGK believes the court asking for a retrial is quite possible and that proper preparatory measures need to be taken ahead of such a request.

In a report, the MGK advised against ignoring the court decision if it asked for Öcalan's retrial, noting as a candidate European Union country, Turkey could not afford to dismiss such decisions.

In light of the recent public rallies for the Turkish flag and the associated flag desecration incidents, the MGK also warned relevant institutions to take precautions to ensure that rallies in support of and against the decision of the court from getting out of hand.

Justice Minister Cemil Çiçek said last Monday, after a Cabinet meeting, that neither the government nor the ministry were preparing for Öcalan's retrial, because the European Court of Human Rights had not released its decision on the matter yet.

4. - The New Anatolian - "Women's groups tackle EP report":

ANKARA / 26 April 2005

Women's organizations yesterday met in Ankara to discuss a draft report on the social, economic, and political role of women in Turkey which was prepared by European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality.

Representatives and female scholars from the Turkish Women's Union, Ucan Supurge (Flying Broom), Women's Solidarity Foundation, Women Centers (KAMER) and Women Candidates Support Association (KADER) attended yesterday's meeting.

KADER Ankara Branch Chairperson Ilknur Ustun told the meeting that the report prepared by EP Rapporteur Netherlands Deputy Emine Bozkurt would be voted on by the committee on May 26, and said that it would be presented to the Parliament in July.

Ustun said that the draft report has some deficiencies and incorrect information, emphasizing that women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) should therefore investigate the draft in detail to correct mistakes.

She added that they believe that work on the draft would contribute to the report, and would bring lasting solutions to the problems indicated in it.

The EP draft emphasizes that respecting human rights, including women's rights, is a sine qua non for membership in the European Union, and calls on the European Commission to make the issue of women's rights of the utmost importance before negotiations with Turkey.

The report condemns the excessive use of force by members of the police force during March's International Women's Day demonstrations in Istanbul.

Finding that the protection of women's rights is still insufficient in practice, especially concerning violence against women, the report urges the government to pay more attention to the implementation of legislation, among other things by setting up shelters, supporting initiatives from the public, and providing mandatory training for public administrators, police, and the judiciary.

The report urges Turkey to ratify additional Protocol No. 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights which deals with preventing discrimination.

It also calls on political parties in Turkey to extend the role of women in the party hierarchy beyond the women's branches, to give them leading roles in the party's organizational structure, and to scout for and train female candidates for political positions.

5. - AKI - "Turkey-US: Air Base Use Extended, Warplane Deal Chlinched, Amid Armenian Complaints":

ANKARA / 26 April 2005

Turkey on Tuesday extended permission for the United States to use a military airbase in Turkish terrirtory - a decision that follows President George W. Bush's recent praise for Ankara's proposal for a joint probe with Armenia into the 1915-23 massacre of Armenians, but his reluctance to label the massacre a genocide carried out by Turks.

Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul announced that US war planes would be allowed to continue operating from Incirlik Airfield Base, which the Americans have used for the past 50 years.

The decision was taken by Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan's cabinet, he said. On Tuesday Ankara signed a 1.1 billion dollar deal with the US for the Americans to modernise US-made 117 F-16 Turkish warplanes.

On Sunday, US President George W. Bush commemorated the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians under Turkish Ottoman rule, praising a call by Erdogan for a joint Turkish-Armenian commission to investigate the allegations by Armenians, and many independent historians, that the deaths were effectively genocide.

However Bush, in his statement on April 24, the 90th anniversary of the carnage, did not mention the word "genocide" - a fact which has pleased Ankara, but angered Armenian groups who link the US president' reluctance to do so to Washington's interest in maintaining use of the airbase.

Ankara said it viewed Bush's statement on Sunday "positively". According to reports in the Turkish media, Ankara last week delayed a decision on the use of Incirlik - also used for supply missions to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan - until after the commemoration, to pressure Bush into not branding the massacre as a genocide.

Turkey, which denies a genocide occurred, says Armenians died but in much smaller numbers than genocide theorists claim from disease and other hardships, while being relocated from an areas where they had been offering military support to Russia, an enemy of Ottoman Turkey during World War II.

The Armenian Assembly, a US-based group, said it was "extremely dissatisfied with the President's [Bush] characterisation of the attempted annihilation of our people by Ottoman Turkey," Assembly executive director, Bryan Ardouny, said on Tuesday.

Commenting on Bush's use of the expression "great calamity" to describe the Armenian deaths, Ardouny said this did not go far enough, and was "a missed opportunity by the President to speak the truth plainly, to once and for all avoid using evasive terminology which only serves to support Turkey's state-sponsored denial campaign."

Earlier this month 210 members of the US Senate and the House of Representatives from across party divides had urged Bush to properly acknowledge the Armenian genocide in his statement of remembrance.

Soon after EU leaders agreed last December to open accession talks with Turkey, the European Parliament urged Ankara to recognise the 1915-1923 killings of Armenians as genocide.

Many in Turkey say that recognising the genocide claims would encourage Armenians, backed by the EU and the United States, to achieve their "hidden" agenda – state compensation for the "so-called" victims including handing over to Armenia land now part of modern-day Turkey.

6. - AFP - "Armenia agrees to commission to investigate massacres by Turks":

YEREVAN / 26 April 2005

Armenia has agreed in principle to a Turkish offer to create a commission to study the mass killings of Armenians by the Turks in 1915, which Ankara has refused to acknowledge as a genocide and which remains an obstacle to normal relations between the estranged neighbours.

"We propose and propose again to establish normal relations between our countries without pre-conditions," wrote Armenian president Armenian Robert Kocharian in his response to the offer from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"It’s exactly in this context that we can create an intergovernmental commission to study whatever problem exists between our countries...to resolve them and reach a mutual understanding," Kocharian wrote in the letter which was released here Tuesday.

Earlier this month, Erdogan sent a letter to the Armenian president calling for the creation of a joint commission of historians to study the genocide allegations as a first step towards normalising ties between the two estranged neighbors.

Armenia claims that up to 1.5 million of its people were killed in what it says was a genocide between 1915 and 1917. The 90th anniversary of these killings was commemorated on Sunday around the world.

However Ankara argues that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in what was civil strife during World War I when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Some EU politicians are pressing Turkey to address the genocide claims in what Ankara sees as politically-motivated campaign to impede its EU membership bid.

More recently the two countries have suffered strained relations with Turkey closing its borders with the former Soviet republic after the Armenian capture in 1994 of Nagorno-Karabakhin, an ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan.

Turkey’s border closure dealt a crippling economic blow to the former Soviet republic from which is has yet to recover.