25 February 2005

1. "Critics fear Turkey's Eurodrive may be idling", EU-member diplomats and the opposition in Ankara say they fear the Turkish government may have lost some of its drive after the relief of obtaining a date -- October 3 -- for the start of membership talks with the European Union.

2. "German CDU to Demand Turkey Acknowledge Killings of Armenians", Germany's main opposition parties, which oppose Turkey's bid to join the European Union, plan to submit a motion to parliament calling on Turkey to acknowledge responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915.

3. "Cyprus accuses Turkey of deploying weaponry in northern island", the Cypriot government on Thursday accused Turkey of deploying new weaponry in the Turkish controlled northern Cyprus.

4. "Turkey pays families to get girls into the classroom", the Turkish government is paying families to "encourage" them to send their daughters to school, as part of its efforts to bring the number of girls in education into line with European standards.

5. "Kurds Hold Key to New Iraqi Government", Iraqi Kurds are insisting on control of oil-rich Kirkuk and other disputed northern areas as their price for agreeing to a deal on the formation of a new national government, a Kurdish leader said Thursday.

6. "Kurdish declared official language of Kirkuk", the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk has issued a circular declaring Kurdish the official language in the disputed oil-rich city in northern Iraq, said a news report yesterday.

1. - AFP - "Critics fear Turkey's Eurodrive may be idling":

ANKARA / 24 February 2005

EU-member diplomats and the opposition in Ankara say they fear the Turkish government may have lost some of its drive after the relief of obtaining a date -- October 3 -- for the start of membership talks with the European Union.

Despite his roots in Islamic fundamentalist politics, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said since coming to power in 2002 that EU membership was a top priority of his government, and he made good on his promise by wrangling a starting date for accession talks at the EU summit on December 17.

Erdogan and his ministers were obviously relieved by their success at clearing a major hurdle on the way to bringing Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim but secular country of 71 million, into the European bloc.

But, many analysts here agree, Turkey seems to have slipped into lower gear as October 3 approaches in what is causing concern.

"There is some anxiety" in the EU, acknowledged a European diplomat stationed in Ankara.
But, he added, it is "normal and understandable" that the government should seek "to catch its breath" after the slew of reforms adopted by the Turkish parliament at breakneck speed to bring the country up to European standards.

"We would appreciate a stronger message about the reforms to come," the diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Turkey should not succumb to complacency."

On the other hand, he said, EU nations should "strive for greater confidence in Turkey and for a European public opinion more favorable to Turkey's membership" in the bloc.

Deniz Baykal, leader of the social-democratic opposition in parliament, has also criticized Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) for not doing enough to prepare for the accession talks.

"There is a widespread conviction that preparations for the EU have slowed down," he said, stressing that the government has yet to pick a chief negotiator for the arduous talks expected to last at least 10, and perhaps as long as 15 years.

But Erdogan shrugged off the criticism as he adressed his party caucus on Wednesday.
"The (membership) process is always high on our government agenda," he said. "October 3 will be a milestone -- the start of a new era."

The same evening, during an an interview on a private television channel, he said his government's chief negotiator would be named soon and hinted that it could be his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul.

Turkey's preparations for the negotiations will be high on the agenda of the visit here scheduled for March 7 and 8 by Olli Rehn, the new EU commissioner for enlargement.

"What Turkey needs is a new structure in which civil society is more involved in the process" of joining the EU, suggested academic Cengiz Aktar, an EU specialist at Istanbul's Galatasaray University.

Aktar believes the government is not really neglecting the EU issue, but has simply "lost a bit of interest."

Ankara has been particularly slow during the past year -- and must make special efforts before October 3 -- in such vital areas as the Cyrpus problem, cultural rights for Turkey's Kurds and religious minorities, as well as enforcing reforms already adopted, analysts say.

High on the list of priorities before the start of the talks, which will cover about 30 different subjects, will be to figure out a way of extending some sort of recognition to the Greek Cypriot Republic of Cyprus, an EU member with which Turkey has no relations.

2. - Bloomberg - "German CDU to Demand Turkey Acknowledge Killings of Armenians":

24 February 2005

Germany's main opposition parties, which oppose Turkey's bid to join the European Union, plan to submit a motion to parliament calling on Turkey to acknowledge responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915.

The Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, said the Turkish government arrested the Armenian political elite in Istanbul in 1915, marking the start of mass deportations and murders in which as many as 1.5 million Armenians are estimated to have died.

The Turkish government's refusal to accept responsibility for the crimes committed 90 years ago ``stands in contrast to the idea of reconciliation that spearheads the shared values of the European Union, which Turkey aims to join,'' said the draft motion, a copy of which was e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

CDU leader Angela Merkel and CSU head Edmund Stoiber have called for Turkey to be allowed a ``privileged partnership'' with the 25-nation bloc. EU leaders including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed two months ago that Turkey should start membership talks in October this year.

Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper today called the motion an attempt by Merkel to block the country from joining the EU. The CDU leader has said Turkey isn't European enough in terms of its culture and history to join the union.

``It isn't true that we want to bar Turkey from EU entry with this proposal, but still we think it's important to honor the memory of the Armenian victims,'' the CDU's Christoph Bergner, one of the legislators who signed the motion, said in a telephone interview.

Germany has a part in the crimes because the government at the time didn't act to prevent the killings in spite of detailed evidence documented by German ambassadors in Turkey, Bergner said.

Not all CDU lawmakers back the motion.

``I reject this proposal and didn't vote for it,'' said Volker Ruehe, the chairman of the all-party parliamentary foreign- affairs committee, in an interview. ``I think it will be modified eventually. We've no right to thrust this demand'' on Turkey.

The Turkish government denies accusations of genocide over the deaths. It says the Armenians were killed during civil conflicts in which many Turks also died.

3. - Xinhuanet - "Cyprus accuses Turkey of deploying weaponry in northern island":

NICOSIA / 24 February 2005

The Cypriot government on Thursday accused Turkey of deploying new weaponry in the Turkish controlled northern Cyprus.

Defence Minister Kyriacos Mavronicolas described the move as "new provocations" by Turkey, which he said ran contrary to efforts toward finding a fair solution to the Cyprus issue.He said these actions were aimed at strengthening Turkey's military presence in "the occupied areas but they also increase tension along the ceasefire line."

According to the minister, high-tech US-made armaments, including a substantial number of personnel carriers, were transported to northern Cyprus while attention was focused on the elections held there on Sunday.

The minister said available information indicated this latest arrival of arms was not aimed at replacing existing military equipment.

"Such moves to boost the Turkish occupation army in the recent past have not been matched by an equivalent reduction or the return of weaponry to Turkey," the minister said.

Mavronicolas said the government would send letters to its Eu counterparts "to expose this move abroad" and ask Ankara to explain its stance with regard to the Cyprus issue and its EU aspirations. Turkey's military presence in northern Cyprus could be dated back to 1974 when it sent troops to take control of the northern third of the island in the wake of a failed Greek Cypriot coup seeking union with Greece.

The latest international efforts to reunite the island failed last April when the Greek Cypriots voted down a UN peace plan, while the Turkish Cypriots overwhelmingly endorsed it. After that, only the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot south joined the European Union on May 1, leaving the Turkish Cypriot community outside the bloc.

4. - The Guardian - "Turkey pays families to get girls into the classroom":

ANKARA / 22 February 2005

The Turkish government is paying families to "encourage" them to send their daughters to school, as part of its efforts to bring the number of girls in education into line with European standards.

More than half of Turkey's young female population has no schooling, according to the United Nations children's fund, Unicef.

In the Kurdish-dominated south-east, most are forced to stay at home, unacknowledged by society from the day of their unregistered births. Girls and women account for the vast majority of the 7 million people believed to be illiterate in the predominantly Muslim state.

Under Turkey's education minister, Huseyin Celik, this inequity has begun to be addressed.

With the help of Unicef, some 140,000 girls aged between seven and 13 have been enrolled at school over the past 18 months. The campaign, which started in 10 towns, expanded into 53 of Turkey's 81 provinces last year.

"What we have to do is persuade parents about the virtues of education," said Mr Celik, who sees his country's prospective membership of the European Union as a "civilisation project".

"In those parts of Turkey which are very poor, very medieval, there are officials out there doing this."

Mr Celik recalled trying to persuade a villager from the impoverished south-east to send his daughter to school.

"The man declared straight out that 'even if you threaten to kill me, I'd say no'. There were 60 girls in that particular village who were not in school. We sent the mufti [village chief] to tell each of their families why they should go. Now, all 60 are attending classes."

Many girls, said the London University-educated politician, are deliberately kept out of the classroom by male relatives who see education as "some form of shame".

Mr Celik does not deny that for him the issue is personal. This son of a railroad worker grew up in Van, a town near the Iranian border, and none of his sisters completed school, although all of his four brothers went on to become "educated men".

"Of course, my sisters regret not having a better education, they wished they had finished high school. It is our duty to drag people out of ignorance and into the civilised world. As a government we are determined to stop all forms of discrimination, especially against women. Education for girls is a basic human right."

For the first time, Turkey spent more on education than defence last year, allocating £5.5bn to the sector. Some of the extra funds went towards "encouraging" parents to send their daughters to school.

"It's a form of official bribery," Mr Celik admitted. "To encourage poor people to send girls to school we give 20m Turkish lira [£6] a month for those in primary school, and 35m for each child attending secondary school."

"European values" are at the core of the biggest overhaul of Turkish schooling since the modern republic's creation in 1923. With 20 million pupils and students registered at primary, secondary and university level, Mr Celik said the aim was not only to bring the system in line with European standards, but to "democratise and modernise it".

Turkish textbooks, like the country's national curriculum, are viewed as among the most authoritarian and ideological in the world. Recently, schoolchildren began being "taught" democracy in an effort to promote critical thinking in a system that has long favoured learning by rote.

"There are 43,000 primary and secondary schools in Turkey and by the end of 2005 we want to have installed internet connections in all of them," the minister said.

But progress won't be easy. Although the governing, Islamic-rooted AK party holds sway among traditionalists, cultural and religious barriers remain great.

Most of the country's 12 million ethnic Kurds do not speak Turkish. While there is a grudging acceptance that education can benefit families economically, many fathers resist sending daughters to school because of the country's ban on females covering their heads in state buildings.

5. - Reuters - "Kurds Hold Key to New Iraqi Government":

BAGHDAD / 25 February 2005

Iraqi Kurds are insisting on control of oil-rich Kirkuk and other disputed northern areas as their price for agreeing to a deal on the formation of a new national government, a Kurdish leader said Thursday.

Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdish regional government, outlined a tough negotiating position that, if backed by the Kurdish leadership, could greatly complicate the process of forging a unified government.

Barzani said that the Kurds would support whoever backed their demands to take back disputed territories, including Kirkuk.

But he does not head either main Kurdish party and the extent of Kurdish support for his stand was not clear.

The Kurds came second in the Jan. 30 election, clinching 75 seats in the Iraqi National Assembly, a margin that makes them kingmakers.

The profound security challenges the new government will face were highlighted by the suicide car bombing of a police station in Tikrit in northern Iraq on Thursday that killed at least 12 people and wounded 35.

In Kirkuk, two Iraqi policemen were killed and two critically wounded in a roadside bomb blast. Four Iraqi soldiers were also killed when gunmen attacked their patrol in Qaim, near the Syrian border in western Iraq.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed and two wounded in separate roadside bomb blasts north of the capital.

6. - Turkish Daily News - "Kurdish declared official language of Kirkuk":

ANKARA / 25 February 2005

The Kurdish governor of Kirkuk has issued a circular declaring Kurdish the official language in the disputed oil-rich city in northern Iraq, said a news report yesterday.

Kirkuk Governor Abdurrahman Mustafa's order came as Osman Korutürk, Turkey's special envoy to Iraq, was visiting northern Iraq for talks with Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The decision may lead to tension among the city's ethnically diverse population. The circular makes Kurdish the official language not only in Kirkuk city but also in all districts, some of which are populated exclusively by non-Kurdish communities such as the Turkmen, reported the private Mak Ajans.

Kurds claim ownership of Kirkuk, the control of which is disputed among Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs, and a win in the Jan. 30 local elections in the city added strength to their claim. Kurds won more than half of the vote in the local polls and say this has proven the “Kurdish identity” of the city. They also insist on the control of the strategic city in order to agree to any deal on the formation of a new Iraqi government.

Turkey, on the other hand, is worried about the rights of Turkmens in the city and says Kirkuk should not be ruled by any ethnic group. Ankara complained of massive Kurdish migration to the city before the polls.

Abdurrahman became the city's governor after the U.S.-led war on Iraq, and fresh elections for a new governor in the post-election era have not yet been held.