28 January 2005

1. "Free Remzi Kartal", activists in the UK who have for many years been campaigning for the rights of the Kurdish people recently learned with shock and dismay of the arrest of Remzi Kartal, a former DEP (Democracy Party) MP in the Turkish Parliament and vice-president of KONGRA-GEL.

2. "Turkish soldier killed in Kurdish rebel attack", a Turkish soldier was killed Thursday when a group of Kurdish rebels opened fire on a gendarme station in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast, Anatolia news agency reported.

3. "Trials Against Writers In Turkey Raise Concerns", International PEN, expresses concerns for the prosecutions of writer Fikret Baskaya and publisher Ragip Zarakolu. The two are faced with prison sentences if found guilty. PEN notes that they will send observers to the trials on 2 March.

4. "'Genocide? What genocide?'", Turkey is a fragile country today, full of internal conflict -- between secularists and fundamentalists, between Kurds and Turks. Its economy is weak. If the U.S. did not prop it up, it would probably collapse.

5. "Ataturk's party faces fight to regain its relevance in Turkey", Turkey's main opposition Republican People's party (CHP) meets this weekend to try to resolve a leadership challenge amid claims of corruption and death threats. The party founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has the haunting feeling that it is on the brink of irrelevance.

6. "Kurdish pledge of 'no compromise' on Kirkuk raises fears of conflict", Nichervan Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdish administration in Arbil, has ruled out compromise over the disputed northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk, raising the prospect of conflict in the weeks following Sunday's election.

7. "US Will Pay The Bill if Kirkuk Plunges Into Turmoil, Turkish PM Warns", the United States will bear the consequences of ethnic turmoil in Kirkuk if it fails to prevent the oil-rich city in northern Iraq from falling under Kurdish control, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Thursday.

8. "Regional polls leave Kurds cold", Kurds are keen to vote for Iraq’s National Assembly, but many are too disillusioned to take part in the regional poll.

1. - Kurdish Media - "Free Remzi Kartal":

28 January 2005 / by Dr David Morgan

Activists in the UK who have for many years been campaigning for the rights of the Kurdish people recently learned with shock and dismay of the arrest of Remzi Kartal, a former DEP (Democracy Party) MP in the Turkish Parliament and vice-president of KONGRA-GEL. Remzi was detained by the German authorities at the request of Turkey on January 22 while on a visit to Nuremberg.

Remzi Kartal is a senior Kurdish politician who has been based in Europe for more than ten years now, where he has been tirelessly working for a democratic and peaceful solution to the Kurdish question, since escaping from the clutches of Turkey in 1994. His fellow DEP MPs, Hatip Dicle, Leyla Zana, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak, whose offence was to simply to have the timerity to utter a few words in Kurdish in the Turkish Parliament, were each sentenced to 15 years in prison and were only recently released after a major international campaign.

Remzi will be widely known to politicians and public figures here as a result of the many visits he has made to London over the past few years and for his lobbying activities for a political solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. He has met many British members of both Houses of Parliament. He is a well respected and amiable personality in the Kurdish movement, as anyone who has been fortunate enough to know him will be able to testify. That this very dignified, articulate, cautious and highly diplomatic individual could be detained on accusations of terrorism would just be laughed off as a grim joke were the implications not so serious; serious for Remzi himself who is now threatened with an uncertain future with possible incarceration in a Turkish jail; serious for the Kurdish people whose hopes rest on such high-calibre leaders like Remzi; serious for future relations between Europe and Turkey if the legitimate aspirations of Turkey’s large Kurdish population cannot be adequately accommodated. His arrest is certainly no way to go about accommodating them.

Remzi and the organisations with which he has been associated have all been and remain absolutely dedicated to building a new Turkey that is at peace and where all its peoples can live together in equality and mutual respect. The values which Remzi has espoused are the same democratic principles that should form the bedrock of the Europe to which Turkey so eagerly seeks to become a member. How this can be viewed as terrorism beggars belief.

Unfortunately, it looks like the dark forces of geopolitics are at work. Remzi’s arrest seems to be a consequence of the mid-January meeting in Ankara between representatives of the US, Turkey, and the Iraqi interim government. Key agenda items were Turkey’s insistence both that the US take firmer steps to eliminate the 5,000 KONGRA-GEL guerrillas who are camped in the mountains of South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) and that the EU act against the Kurdish organisations representatives in Europe. The US is anxious to keep Turkey sweet. While it is ever more deeply mired in the mess of Iraq, the US can ill-afford upsetting the Turks, but neither is it yet ready to launch all-out war against KONGRA-GEL units.

On 1 May 2004 Turkish Daily News quoted Cofer Black, US Counterterrorism Coordinator, as saying bluntly: "There’s no place in Iraq for KADEK. It cannot be allowed to represent a threat to the good people of Iraq or to the people in neighboring countries. There’s no place for it, and as a threat it is our position that it needs to be taken care of. The most efficient and effective way to address this is using elements of diplomacy, to get the community of nations to assist us in this, to use law enforcement, to use financial means. So we are moving in our plan of action. ...We consider them a terrorist group, a threat. We’re going to deal with them. And if we are unable to reach our objective using the spectrum of elements of statecraft, we will use military force when that is appropriate."

This US war against the Kurdish guerrillas, egged on by Turkey, may come at a later date, but for the moment signs are that the attack on KONGRA-GEL is being opened up from the European front. EU governments continue to be urged by both the US and Turkey to take firm and conclusive action against KONGRA-GEL and its supporters among the million-strong Kurdish diaspora in Europe. The basis for this attack comes from criminalising via the unjust anti-terror laws which blacklist KONGRA-GEL as a banned terrorist group. Remzis arrest comes in this context and can also be linked to the recent case of Nuriye Kesbir whose deportation from the Netherlands was blocked when Dutch Appeals Court refused in January to allow the Dutch government to deport her to Turkey. There are reports that Turkey has passed onto Europe a list of hundreds of Kurds it claims are terror suspects who must be apprehended.

It is not yet known what charges Remzi Kartal may be facing, but he remains in detention in Germany while the authorities await a formal written request from Ankara for his extradition. On Wednesday this week, Turkeys Justice Minister Cemil Cicek stated that the authorities were making the necessary legal preparations to demand his extradition, Anatolia news agency reported. Meanwhile, Turkey is asking the German authorities to keep Remzi Kartal in custody.

Everyone in the UK who knows Remzi has to make a protest at his unjust detention. Please write to the German authorities requesting his immediate release. Remzi must be allowed to continue his urgent and necessary work for peace and democracy between Turk and Kurd. What hope for the Kurds in Europe and Turkey if leaders like Remzi can be mistreated in this way? The whole shocking incident is an ominous sign of worse times ahead for the Kurds as Turkey snuggles up to ever closer relations with Europe. We must repudiate a Europe that behaves like this. Time to reject repression and opt for reconciliation. Freedom for Remzi Kartal, freedom for the Kurds.

2. - AFP - "Turkish soldier killed in Kurdish rebel attack":

ANKARA / 27 January 2005

A Turkish soldier was killed Thursday when a group of Kurdish rebels opened fire on a gendarme station in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast, Anatolia news agency reported.

Another soldier was injured in the attack in Gollu village in the province of Mardin, which officials blamed on militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), now also known as KONGRA-GEL, the agency said.

The PKK, which waged a bloody campaign for self-rule in southeastern Turkey between 1984 and 1999, called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire with Ankara last June.

3. - Bianet - "Trials Against Writers In Turkey Raise Concerns":

International PEN, expresses concerns for the prosecutions of writer Fikret Baskaya and publisher Ragip Zarakolu. The two are faced with prison sentences if found guilty. PEN notes that they will send observers to the trials on 2 March.

ISTANBUL / 27 January 2005

International PEN in a public statement expresses concerns for ongoing trials of writers “in direct denial of their right to freedom of expression despite recent changes to Turkish laws.”

What alarms PEN is trials against “two of Turkey's most noted dissident writers, Fikret Baskaya and Ragip Zarakolu.” PEN notes that they will be sending observers to these trials , in separate courts on 2 March 2005.

Writer and academic Baskaya is charged with "insult to the state, state institutions and the military" under Article 159/1 of the Turkish Penal Code. If convicted he faces a maximum jail sentence of three years. Publisher Zarakolu is charged with "incitement to racial hatred" under Article 312 of the Penal Code for publishing a book critical of Turkish policy on Kurdish issues. If convicted he faces a jail sentence of up to two years.

Baskaya is an eminent academic and writer. The charges against him relate to two articles written by Baskaya and published as part of a collection entitled, "Articles against the Tide". The articles were previously published in the early 1990s; one suggested that the Turkish government had approved an arson attack in the town of Sivas in which 38 people died, the other was a critique of the economic policy of Turkey's 1980 military regime.

Baskaya was from March 1994 to July 1995, imprisoned for his book, "The Bankruptcy of the Paradigm", under Article 8 of the Turkish Anti-Terror Law. In 2001, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison for an article deemed "separatist propaganda" .

Zarakolu, owner and director of Belge Publishing House, is facing trial for an article he published in daily "Ozgur Politika" in March 2003. The article, entitled "Sana Ne" ("Of No Interest"), criticised Turkey's policy towards the Kurds.

Zarakolu, too has faced a string of indictments dating back to the early 1970s under Turkey's censorship laws. The indictments have resulted in numerous fines and jail terms for both Zarakolu and his late wife Ayse Nur. In 1995, the Belge Publishing House offices were firebombedby an extremist right wing group.

IFEX calls for sending appeals to authorities: - calling for the cases against Baskaya and Zarakolu to be dropped, and an end to further such judicial proceedings - expressing concern that the trials are in breach of international standards that guarantee freedom of expression, including Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Turkey is a signatory - emphasising that the government cannot be seen to undermine judicial independence.

4. - World Net Daily - "'Genocide? What genocide?'":

28 January 2005 / by By David Kupelian

When my father was three years old, he was sentenced to a brutal death, along with his mother and infant sister, by the Turkish government. Along with hundreds of thousands of other Armenians, they were earmarked to be herded into the Syrian desert where they would die of starvation, disease, or worse -- torture and death at the hands of brutal soldiers or hordes of roving bandits.

It was 1915, and the grisly and premeditated genocide of the Armenian people was at its peak. The Armenians in that area that were not butchered outright -- the men were often killed immediately -- were herded together and deported by force into the Derzor, the Syrian desert east of Aleppo, to perish. My father's father, a doctor, had been pressed into the Turkish army against his will, to head a medical regiment.

"One of my earliest recollections, I was not quite three years old at the time," my father, Vahey Kupelian, told me a year before he died in 1988, "the wagon we were in had tipped over, my hand was broken and bloody, and mother was looking for my infant sister who had rolled away. The next thing I remember after that, mother was on a horse, holding my baby sister, and had me sitting behind her, saying, 'Hold on tight, or the Turks will get you!"

The three of them took off, and ended up in Aleppo, which was one of the gateways to the desert deportation and certain death.

Once they arrived, my grandmother asked around to find out who was in charge. She managed to bluff her way into getting an audience with the governor general of Aleppo. Since her husband was in the service of the Turkish army -- albeit by force -- she boldly said to the governor general, "I demand my rights as the wife of a Turkish army officer!"

"What are those rights?" he countered.

"I want commissary privileges and two orderlies," she answered.

"Granted."

In this way, through sheer chutzpah, my grandmother Mary Kupelian managed to fast-talk her way out of certain death, not only saving her own life and those of her son and daughter, but also the lives of her husband's two brothers, whom she immediately deputized as "orderlies." The group managed to sneak several other family members out of harm's way, and my grandmother kept them all from starving by obtaining food from the commissary. Thus was my family spared, although little Adolphina, my father's infant sister, was unable to survive the harshness of those times, and died shortly thereafter.

As for my grandfather -- after an unusually bloody battle between the Turks and the British, he and the other doctors, all Armenians, had just finished tending to the Turkish wounded as best they could. Immediately after this, a squadron of Turkish gunmen came and killed them all, including my grandfather.

In all, one and a half million Armenians perished in those years, at the hands of the Turkish regime.

Yet to this day the government of Turkey denies that any genocide ever took place -- despite thousands of eyewitness accounts, despite the over 24,000 documents compiled from the U.S. National Archives of State Department records from 1910 to 1929 detailing the extermination of the Armenians. Despite the New York Times' over 194 articles from 1913 through 1922 outlining the hideous manner in which Armenians died in Turkey.

The U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, Henry Morgenthau, tried desperately to stop the slaughter, and said that the treatment of the Armenians by the Turks "surpasses the most beastly and diabolical cruelties ever before perpetrated or imagined in the history of the world."

"One day I was discussing these proceedings with a responsible Turkish official," Morgenthau later wrote, "who was describing the tortures inflicted. He made no secret of the fact that the government had instigated them, and, like all Turks of the official classes, he enthusiastically approved this treatment of the detested race. This official told me that all these details were matters of nightly discussion at the headquarters of the Union and Progress Committee."

The former ambassador continued, "Each new method of inflicting pain was hailed as a splendid discovery, and the regular attendants were constantly ransacking their brains in the effort to devise some new torment. He told me that they even delved into the records of the Spanish Inquisition and other historic institutions of torture and adopted all the suggestions found there."

I will not recount the unspeakable things the Turks did to the Armenians, but rest assured they exceed the darkest and foulest imaginings of your mind.

This barbaric and massive extermination of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman and Turkish military and paramilitary forces effectively eliminated the presence of the Armenian population from Turkey. After inhabiting the Armenian highlands for three thousand years, this ancient people, historically the first Christian nation, was driven from its historic homeland and forced into exile. Like the modern state of Israel, modern Armenia had a new birth after the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Today, the entire Turkish government and establishment is, on a national scale, reminiscent of the Nazi war criminals who turn up now and again, living in middle America, 70-something, working as a shop foreman somewhere, tending their flower gardens, smiling to their neighbors and living a "normal" life -- their beastly past neatly buried in the dark corners of their mind -- and perhaps the minds of a few Nazi-hunters.

A troubled nation, Turkey can pretend to be a civilized nation among other civilized nations, but its every move, every policy, its strategic cooperation with NATO and the West, is designed -- like the former Nazi tending his garden, smiling at his neighbors -- to bury forever the truth of the ferocious crimes it committed.

There is no room in official Turkey today for recognition of the Armenian holocaust. The hatred is still there. Indeed, after the devastating earthquake that decimated Armenia in 1988, Turkey blockaded aid to Armenia, delaying trains so long that food and medicines went bad.

And just last month a group of computer hackers calling themselves the "Green Revenge Group" hijacked the Armenian National Institute's website and redirected visitors to a propaganda site denying the Armenian holocaust ever happened.

The ANI website features comprehensive documentation of the Turkish genocide against the Armenian people, including historic documents, records of international affirmation, bibliographies and a unique collection of documentary photographs.

ANI's Board of Governors Chairman Robert A. Kaloosdian called it "a stark reminder that deniers will resort to any means to cloud, obscure and erase the memory of the Armenian Genocide."

But all of us deniers need our enablers, don't we? Helping the Turkish government live in this state of perpetual denial of its past crimes is the United States government. After freely acknowledging the reality of the Armenian holocaust for decades -- just as the U.S. has always recognized the Jewish holocaust -- the U.S. government has changed its tune in recent years.

The U.S. and NATO have decided that since Turkey is strategically important, located as it is on the edge of the Middle East, our ability to locate military bases there and rely on Turkish cooperation is more important than truth. So we now soften our condemnation of Turkey, often referring to the "alleged" and "disputed" Armenian holocaust.

Living in denial, Turkey is a fragile country today, full of internal conflict -- between secularists and fundamentalists, between Kurds and Turks. Its economy is weak. If the U.S. did not prop it up, it would probably collapse.

Is there any hope?

Yes, I believe there is. Sometimes good things happen. It may be my imagination, but there are signs.

"With the people of Israel watching, I bow in humility before those murdered, before those who don't have graves where I could ask them for forgiveness." So spoke German President Johannes Rau in an historic address to the Israeli Parliament earlier this week.

"I am asking for forgiveness for what Germans have done, for myself and my generation, for the sake of our children and grandchildren, whose future I would like to see alongside the children of Israel."

Although the Germans have, of course, openly acknowledged the Jewish holocaust for decades, Rau's poignant address before the Knesset was profoundly important. Indeed, one of the finest, most inspiring things a human being can do in this deeply imperfect world is to apologize -- sincerely, completely and without guile, for past wrongdoing. It is, all by itself, healing.

Confession is good for the soul, says the Good Book. If Turkey would openly confess its great sins, as Germany did after World War II and as its new president did on Wednesday, Turkey also would have a chance to heal not only itself and its national soul, but also the thousands of descendents of those massacred Armenians. It's the least they can do.

When it comes right down to it, there are only two kinds of people in this world. Not black and white, rich and poor, free and unfree, faithful and infidel, or Christian and pagan. I'm talking about getting down to the level that God really cares about:

"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." -- Hebrews 4:12

The intents of the heart. There are people who, when confronted with their error, can sincerely acknowledge it and apologize. And then there are people who, when confronted with their wrongdoing, deny it, deny it even to the death. On the spiritual level, these are the two types of people who populate this planet.

Sincere, honest apology is the very epitome of moral courage, and evidence of a secret faith in divine providence.

About once every generation a leader emerges who can rise above the muck. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was one. He rose above the ancient cultural and religious hatred of his people for the Jews, and in the end embraced Menachem Begin and Israel as a man of peace.

May Turkey raise up such a leader. One man could lead that nation -- or at least all the decent souls in that nation, and every land has its share -- to national repentance and healing.

Turkey has suffered for centuries under a dark, cruel and inhuman culture. Today's Turks are not responsible for the atrocities committed by their ancestors -- they weren't even alive then. But today's Turks are responsible, as individuals and as a nation, for confronting the harsh reality of their nation's past, admitting it to the world, and apologizing to the Armenians -- not only for the horrors of the genocide, but for having denied it ever since.

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven." -- Matthew 5:43-45

OK, I'll tell you what. I will not only pray for Turkey, but I will ask every Armenian reading these words, and all believers as well, to pray for Turkey, that a leader might truly lead that dark nation into the light -- a painful journey indeed, but one that leads ultimately to true humanity and redemption.

Prof. Ronald G. Suny has announced a major conference on the Armenian Genocide in which a number of Turkish scholars will participate, at the University of Chicago on March 17-19. Most Armenians are skeptical, saying it's foolishness to talk seriously about the genocide with Turkish scholars, whose sole aim for decades has been obfuscation, historical revisionism and outright denial. Yet Prof. Suny apparently is determined to facilitate a truthful dialogue with Turkish and Armenian scholars. Although he may be naïve, as some Armenians suggest, or falsely optimistic as others believe, he is making an effort, a beginning, in what could be a long road toward national redemption for Turkey. Godspeed.

5. - Financial Times - "Ataturk's party faces fight to regain its relevance in Turkey":

ANKARA / 28 January 2005

Turkey's main opposition Republican People's party (CHP) meets this weekend to try to resolve a leadership challenge amid claims of corruption and death threats. The party founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has the haunting feeling that it is on the brink of irrelevance.

Deniz Baykal, the CHP's remote and gaunt 66-year-old leader, is being challenged by two men largely unknown outside the party's ranks: Mustafa Sarigul, mayor of a district of Istanbul, and Zulfu Livaneli, a member of parliament for the city. Mr Baykal's supporters, and even his detractors, say he is likely to survive at the party's special convention.

However, that will not resolve divisions within the party or change the fact that Turkey's entire political opposition is in disarray.

"Baykal is tired, and the public neither likes nor trusts him," said Emre Kongar, who writes a political column for Cumhuriyet, a daily paper.

The nominally leftwing CHP considers itself the guardian of Kemalism, the republican, secular and nationalist ideology bequeathed by Ataturk, who founded the republic in 1923. But the country's 2002 election transformed Turkey's political landscape. It brought the conservative, religiously inspired Justice and Development party (AKP) into office with a big majority and left opposition parties of all stripes in the wilderness.

The CHP is the only opposition party in parliament, the result of a law that allows only parties with 10 per cent or more of the vote to win seats. But it is struggling to convince Turks, now living through the most stable political and economic environment for two decades, that it is sufficiently modern and flexible to address the challenges in securing entry to the EU, modernising the economy and building a civil society.

CHP veterans insist the party is as relevant now as ever. "We are as modern as the British Labour party or the French Socialists," said Onur Oymen, a senior CHP MP, who blames the media for misrepresenting it as an opponent of modernisation. "There is no contradiction between the principles of Kemal Ataturk and modern social democracy," he added.

Perhaps not, commentators say, but the CHP has to prove it. Tayfun Atay, an academic at Ankara University, said: "If you insist on retaining Ataturk's 1930s positions in the early 21st century, you are out of date and out of fashion. The party crisis is linked to its obsession with official ideology, but Turkey has changed greatly in the past 15 years and has failed to keep up."

Some of the exchanges in the leadership contest support this view of a party lost in old thinking. The contenders have traded accusations of corruption. There have been dark hints of foreign manipulation of the challenge. Mr Baykal is reported to have told supporters his life was in danger, a claim he later denied making.

These exchanges have clouded any real debate on politics and the CHP's future. Reasserting the appeal of this old and proud party will be a tough challenge, regardless of who is leader. Commentators say it requires someone who can modernise the party, and its ideology, in the way Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the socially conservative and religious prime minister, has modern-ised Turkish Islamism.

Mr Erdogan would claim to be as much of a Kemalist as the Kemalists themselves. But his version of Turkishness embraces Islam, which challenges secularism, and the EU, which will inevitably lead to a dilution of the strong Turkish sense of sovereignty and nationalism.

Mr Sarigul, who is 48, is considered the more serious challenger to Mr Baykal, although some doubt his ability to modernise the party.

6. - Financial Times - "Kurdish pledge of 'no compromise' on Kirkuk raises fears of conflict":

ARBIL / DAVOS / 28 January 2005 /
By Gareth Smyth and Krishna Guha

Nichervan Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdish administration in Arbil, has ruled out compromise over the disputed northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk, raising the prospect of conflict in the weeks following Sunday's election.

His comments coincided with a warning by Turkey, which neighbours Iraq, that a move by Kurds to take control of the province - shared by Kurds, Arabs and Turcomen - could spark civil war in Iraq.

Yesterday Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, said he was particularly concerned by moves in Kirkuk. "Recent developments in Kirkuk are not positive," he said, criticising proposals to redraw provincial boundaries. He also said Sunday's elections would not stem violence in Iraq or be fully democratic.

Local elections in the province, held alongside the parliamentary elections, will play a big role in deciding who ultimately controls the area. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Barzani said the US and the interim government of Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, had been mistaken in thinking "time might solve the problem".

"We have realised that neither Baghdad nor Washington realised the depth of the sensitivity and feelings of the Kurds regarding Kirkuk," he said. "This is something that Kurds are not going to make any concessions over."

Kurds who had been displaced by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein have moved back to Kirkuk in large numbers since the end of the war, restoring their demographic strength in the town.

The Iraqi Electoral Commission recently agreed - under pressure from Kurdish parties - that these displaced Kurds would be allowed to vote in the provincial elections, a decision that many officials expect to tilt the balance of the provincial council decisively towards the Kurds.

Mr Barzani said: "Kirkuk is part of Kurdistan geographically and historically." Kirkuk province should be "normalised", with Arabs who had been brought in under the Ba'athist regime's "Arabisation" programme returned to their original provinces. Many observers view control of Kirkuk's considerable oil reserves as a central strategic issue that has fuelled low-level ethnic confrontation in the town since the end of the war.

Mr Barzani stressed the need for Iraq to resume "de-Ba'athification" - the expulsion of former Ba'ath party officials from government - and said the Kurds expected one of the leading positions in a new government.

Kurdish leaders expect to win at least 75 seats in the new 275-strong assembly.

Mr Barzani reiterated Kurdish support for a "democratic, federal" Iraq and for "a secular system that would separate politics and religion", but he refused to rule out a prime minister from a religious party.

"Iraq has three main pillars: Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs," he said. "Probably, they [the Shia list supported by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and topped by Abd-al-Aziz Hakim, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq] will get a majority of the votes, but it's not the case that they can impose religious rule and I don't think that's in their minds."

7. - AFP - "US Will Pay The Bill if Kirkuk Plunges Into Turmoil, Turkish PM Warns":

ANKARA / 27 January 2005

The United States will bear the consequences of ethnic turmoil in Kirkuk if it fails to prevent the oil-rich city in northern Iraq from falling under Kurdish control, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Thursday.

"Any wrong move in Kirkuk will have a negative impact on peace in Iraq in the future," Erdogan told reporters at Ankara airport before he flew out to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.

"The United Nations, America and the other coalition forces should never allow an unfavorable structure there," he said. "If they turn a blind eye to such a mistake, they will pay the bill in the future."

Ankara is vehemently opposed to Kurdish control of Kirkuk, which many Kurds want to incorporate into their enclave in northern Iraq and even see as the capital of a future independent Kurdish state, a nightmare scenario for Iraq's neighbors.

Separatist moves in northern Iraq, Ankara fears, may spill over to adjoining southeastern Turkey, which is home to its own large and restive Kurdish community.

Erdogan's remarks were the latest in a series of warnings issued by Ankara since mid-January when the Iraqi Kurds reached a deal with Baghdad that cleared the way for an estimated 100,000 Kurds said to have been expelled from Kirkuk under Saddam Hussein, to vote for the local government in Sunday's elections.

The deal effectively tipped the balance of power to the Kurds, fanning ethnic tensions in the city, which is also home to a large number of Arabs and Turkmens, a community of Turkish descent backed by Ankara.

Turkey has charged that more Kurds than those expelled in the past have now settled in the city and registered for the elections.

Critics here believe that the population shift is taking place with the tacit approval of the United States.

8. - IWPR - "Regional polls leave Kurds cold":

SULAIMANIYAH / 28 January 2005

Kurds are keen to vote for Iraq’s National Assembly, but many are too disillusioned to take part in the regional poll.

Kurdish voters are preparing to turn out en masse to cast their ballot for Iraq’s transitional National Assembly, but the election for the Kurdish regional assembly is leaving many cold.

Muhammed Qadir, an auto electrician and father of two sons who died in Kurdish uprisings against Saddam Hussein’s regime, was typical of the Kurds interviewed by IWPR. Like many, he will take part in the national election, but abstain from voting for the Kurdish parliament and provincial councils.

People in the semi-autonomous region known as Iraqi Kurdistan are eligible to vote for its assembly as well as for the individual governing councils of Dahuk, Arbil and Sulaimaniyah, the three governorates that make up the region. Similar governorate-level elections are scheduled in all 18 Iraqi provinces.

In the national vote, the two dominant Kurdish parties - the Kurdish Democratic Party, KDP, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, - have come together to form the Kurdish Unity List coalition.

But in the local elections, each will campaign separately.

When it comes to the regional polls, Muhammed Qadir said, "It’s impossible for me to vote for these parties. What have they done, and for whom?"

Speaking to IWPR as he was getting his father’s name corrected on the voter registration lists, Farman Farhan said that although he’d be voting in the national poll, he too is unenthusiastic about Kurdish politicians.

“Who’s got any faith left in these parties, to vote for them?” he asked.

Gulala Ali was in the minority of those interviewed, expressing a desire to participate in all three polls – the national, regional and governorate ballots. “They are all important for me,” he said.

Most Kurds are tired of the partisan politics and occasionally bloody conflicts between the KDP and the PUK which have divided their region for decades. They see the National Assembly as a new chance to gain a voice at national level, particularly in the drafting of a new constitution, the Iraqi assembly’s primary task.

Some Kurdish groups see the constitutional process as a way of pushing for a federalised Iraq – with bigger regions rather than the current 18 governorates as the primary administrative unit – in which they could bolster their autonomy.

They also hope the election will help them regain areas such as the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which Saddam detached from the Kurdish region and subjected to a policy of demographic change known as "Arabisation". Kirkuk claimed by both Kurds and Arabs, with the local Turkoman also asserting their rights.

Fouad Hussain, of the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission, says the Kurds believe the national-level election is the best way for them to assert themselves in the new Iraq. "The Kurds think they can resolve two issues,” said Hussain. “First, participation in power, and secondly, guaranteeing the rights of Kurds in the new Iraqi constitution."

Kurds were severely oppressed during the Saddam era but gained de facto autonomous status after the 1991 uprising.

Hawrey Abdullah, a traffic police commissioner, said his people have been exploited long enough, and it is now time to win rights by voting in the National Assembly election.

“The Kurds have been waiting a very long time for the day when they can take part in the Iraqi parliament,” Abdullah said. “A big percentage of us have to vote or else we will be the losers.”

Tahir Rashid, a former peshmerga or Kurdish guerrilla fighter, insists that decades of fighting for rights pale in comparison with the upcoming election, "Eighty years of struggle and bloodshed are not as important as the day when we vote for the Kurdish list in the Baghdad parliament."

This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.