18 May 2005

1. "Kurdish Rebel Leader Threatens to Expand Uprising in Turkey", Kurdish rebels are threatening to extend their uprising in southeastern Turkey to other areas of the country, if the military continues its ongoing offensive against rebels in the region.

2. "Landmine, gunfight leave eight dead in Turkey", four Turkish soldiers were killed in a landmine explosion Tuesday in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country while two soldiers and two Kurdish rebels were killed in fighting, local officials said Tuesday.

3. "Is The ECHR Right?", the European Court of Human Rights ruling on the Ocalan case spurred more fierce debate in Turkey. While the ruling party is trying to buy some time to determine its next move, opposition parties want the governing party to come out against the ruling at once.

4. "Owner of Turkish satirical magazine stands trial for mocking PM", the owner of a satirical magazine sued for publishing drawings of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's head on the bodies of animals accused the premier of intolerance on the opening day of his trial on Tuesday.

5. "Turkey's Prime Minister Says EU Membership on Track", Turkey's mirages: Tayyip Erdogan says his government remains fully committed to efforts to join the European Union.

6. "Syria's stateless Kurds hope for new rights", rights activists and Western diplomats say Syria is mulling a solution to the status of Kurds in the mainly Arab state. Word is spreading and cautious hopes are rising among the stateless that they could finally get citizenship.

1. - Voice of America - "Kurdish Rebel Leader Threatens to Expand Uprising in Turkey":

17 May 2005

Kurdish rebels are threatening to extend their uprising in southeastern Turkey to other areas of the country, if the military continues its ongoing offensive against rebels in the region.

In a published statement Tuesday in the pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika, rebel commander Yusef Turhalli said his forces will begin targeting Turkey's larger cities if the offensive continues.

Meanwhile, Turkey said four soldiers were killed today, when a rebel-planted bomb destroyed their vehicle near the Iraqi border.

Hours earlier, police said two Kurdish suicide bombers linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (the PKK) were killed in a failed attack on the local governor's residence.

Fighting subsided in 1999 after the PKK declared a cease-fire with Ankara in its 15-year battle for Kurdish autonomy in the region. But rebels called off the truce last June, saying they were not satisfied with the pace of promised Turkish reforms.

2. - AFP - "Landmine, gunfight leave eight dead in Turkey":

DIYARBAKIR / 17 May 2005

Four Turkish soldiers were killed in a landmine explosion Tuesday in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country while two soldiers and two Kurdish rebels were killed in fighting, local officials said Tuesday.

The governor's office in Siirt province said four soldiers died when they stepped on a landmine believed to have been planted by militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on Mount Gabar, near the border with the neighbouring province of Sirnak.

Two other soldiers were shot dead in a clash with PKK rebels also on Mount Gabar, they added.

Two PKK rebels were killed in a clash that erupted in Hakkari province, near the border with Iran, when they opened fire on troops who had ordered them to stop, officials said.

From 1984 to 1999, the PKK waged a bloody campaign for self-rule that claimed some 37,000 lives in the southeast of the country.

The group declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1999 after its leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured and tried in Turkey, and most of the rebels withdrew into neighbouring northern Iraq.

But they called off the truce last year, saying that reforms undertaken by the government to expand Kurdish freedoms were insufficient.

The Turkish army said last week that an increasing number of PKK militants were sneaking back into Turkey from Iraq to engage in anti-government violence, bringing along large amounts of explosives.

3. - Yeni Safak - "Is The ECHR Right?":

17 May 2005 / by Ali Bayramoglu

The European Court of Human Rights ruling on the Ocalan case spurred more fierce debate in Turkey. While the ruling party is trying to buy some time to determine its next move, opposition parties want the governing party to come out against the ruling at once.

However, the ECHR ruling won’t change; it’s definite. We need to accept the following three facts about the ECHR:

1. The ECHR is Turkey’s own court, not a foreign one, because we accepted its jurisdiction years ago. In addition, as a European Union candidate country, we have to respect its rulings.

2. The ECHR and the Copenhagen criteria are directly related to each other.

3. If Turkey fails to implement the ECHR rulings, it would be excluded from the Council of Europe and then its EU membership negotiations would end. This is a regular procedure which is valid for each Council of Europe member.

In other words, it’s high time for Turkey to decide whether it is capable of shouldering the EU burden. We cannot negotiate the ECHR’s jurisdiction. The only way to not implement its rulings is to completely forsake our EU aspirations. As a matter of fact, certain anti-EU circles in Turkey are working to use the Ocalan ruling as a pretext to estrange Ankara from Brussels. However, in such a case, our political and social lives would be like hell… Even our democratic regime would suffer serious harmed…

Therefore, Turkey must respect and implement the ECHR ruling for its own welfare and stability. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we must accept all of the high court’s rulings without questioning or discussing them.

I believe that the Ocalan ruling is simply a matter of implementation of a regular, technical procedure. Under these circumstances, if Turkey doesn’t want to be isolated, Ankara must implement this ruling and Turkish society must respect the ECHR’s authority. Let’s not forget that the Ocalan case and other cases that we are likely to face in the future spring from Turkey’s own old unresolved problems. No matter what we think or feel about the ECHR rulings, these are not political decisions. They are nothing but the results of an international legal system, which has its own pros and cons.

4. - AP - "Owner of Turkish satirical magazine stands trial for mocking PM":

ANKARA / 17 May 2005

The owner of a satirical magazine sued for publishing drawings of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's head on the bodies of animals accused the premier of intolerance on the opening day of his trial on Tuesday.

Erdogan is seeking compensation from Erdil Yasaroglu, owner of the satirical weekly Penguen, for publicly humiliating him by publishing drawings of his face attached to a frog, a camel, a monkey, a snake, a duck and an elephant.

Erdogan, once imprisoned for reciting a poem deemed to be an attack on the state, has come under intense criticism for taking legal action against cartoonists and journalists.

The lawsuits have come despite efforts by Turkey to expand press and other freedoms in the country in line with its aims to achieve European Union membership.

On Tuesday, Yasaroglu's lawyers submitted an initial written defense to the court, in which he criticized the premier for not showing tolerance toward cartoonists.

``For years ... many politicians in the world and in Turkey have been portrayed in the forms of animals and they have laughed at them. However, Erdogan has not shown the same kind of tolerance,'' the Anatolia news agency quoted from the written statement.

The court adjourned until July 5 to allow Erdogan's team time to examine the statement and prepare a response.

Penguen published the drawings on its Feb. 24 front cover to show solidarity with political cartoonist Musa Kart. Erdogan successfully sued Kart, saying he was humiliated by a cartoon which portrayed him as a cat entangled in a ball of wool.

``I hope that we win the case for our future's sake, so that we are able to speak freely,'' Yasaroglu told reporters. ``We were saddened (by the lawsuit), but we had a good laugh too.''

Erdogan is seeking 40,000 new Turkish lira (about US$29,500/euro22,500) in compensation from Yasaroglu and the Pak publishing house.

Erdogan has in the past presented himself as a champion of free speech, frequently alluding to the four-month jail term he served in 1999 for reciting what the courts deemed an inflammatory poem.

Last year a court also ordered the left-wing newspaper Evrensel to pay 10,000 new Turkish lira (US$8,000/euro6,000) for a cartoon which portrayed Erdogan as a horse being ridden by one of his advisers.

Earlier this year, he sued an 80-year old veteran journalist Fikret Otyam who criticized Government attempts to criminalize adultery by saying the premier had reduced politics to the ``level of the crotch,'' seeking 5,000 new Turkish lira (US$3,200/euro2,850) in compensation.

5. - PolitInfo.com - "Turkey's Prime Minister Says EU Membership on Track":

Turkey's mirages: Tayyip Erdogan says his government remains fully committed to efforts to join the European Union.

ANKARA / 17 May 2005

In an interview with VOA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan brushed off criticism that his government has slowed down the pace of reforms as untrue and unfair. Four months after European Union leaders agreed to open membership negotiations with Turkey that are scheduled to start October 3, concerns are mounting among EU governments that Turkey is failing to implement a broad range of reforms it adopted over the past two years.

E.U. officials complain that, police brutality persists, non-Muslim minorities continue to face discrimination and the country's powerful military leaders still influence internal politics. Critics say Mr. Erdogan's failure to appoint an E.U. negotiator to lead talks with the European bloc so far is further proof of what they term his Islam-rooted government's reform fatigue.

In a recent interview with VOA, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called such criticism unfair, and said his government remains as committed as ever to leading Turkey into the European Union. He says it will do everything it needs to do to move the process forward.

Mr. Erdogan notes that, since coming to power two years ago his conservative Justice and Development Party has passed a set of laws that once seemed unimaginable. These include easing restrictions on the dialects spoken by Turkey's estimated 14-million Kurds and trimming the powers of the National Security Council, where until recently the military would dictate internal and foreign policy.

The Turkish premier acknowledges, however, that the mindset and attitudes of officials charged with implementing the laws also need to change. Mr. Erdogan points out that some of the new laws clash with Turkey's cultural traditions and that the process of adaptation will take time and patience.

He adds that the European Union is not always sincere in its dealings with Turkey. Take Cyprus for example, he says. Mr. Erdogan says the European Union continues to block trade with the Turkish Cypriots even though they backed a UN-sponsored plan last year to reunite the Mediterranean island as an E.U. member. The majority Greeks, who rejected the deal, were permitted to join the bloc last May on their own dimming hopes for a settlement. Bowing to E.U. pressure, Turkey this year finalized a free trade agreement with 10 new E.U. members, including the Greek Cypriots.

Turkish opposition leaders charge that this amounts to official recognition of the Greeks as the legitimate representatives of the whole island and to a betrayal of the Turkish Cypriots.

Greek Cypriots have begun talks with United Nations officials in New York to work out a new framework for re-launching peace negotiations. Greek Cypriot leaders have called on Turkey to withdraw its 35,000 troops from Turkish controlled northern Cyprus as a precondition for resuming the talks. Mr. Erdogan has ruled out any such move.

6. - Reuters - "Syria's stateless Kurds hope for new rights":

DAMASCUS / 16 May 2005 / By Lin Noueihed

Ismael Hami is a foreigner in the country of his birth. He cannot vote, run for office or register property in his name. A pink card stamped "not for travel" is one of a few documents proving he even exists.

But all that could soon change for Hami, who says he is one of an estimated 200,000 stateless Kurds living in Syria.

Rights activists and Western diplomats say Syria is mulling a solution to the status of Kurds in the mainly Arab state. Word is spreading and cautious hopes are rising among the stateless that they could finally get citizenship.

"There are rumors that changes are coming," said Hami, an official in the small but active Syrian Kurdish Yikiti party.

"They have promised a solution to the stateless Kurds issue. We have despaired of Syrian policy but hope they reform even if it is a response to international pressure, not people's wishes."

Decades of Kurdish discontent in Syria's northeastern governorate of Hasake, where Kurds say a 1962 census omitted 120,000 of their number, fueled riots that swept several towns in March 2004, after a brawl between Arab and Kurdish supporters of rival soccer teams in the town of Kameshli escalated.

The clashes, in which some 30 people were killed, reflected unprecedented tension between Kurds and the state in Syria, which, like neighboring Turkey and Iran worries Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq could inspire separatism on its soil.

Syria's estimated 2 million Kurds, many with family ties in Turkey and Iraq, say they seek rights within the country where they make up around 10 percent of the population, not a separate state.

They want citizenship -- denied to those classified as stateless but required for higher state education and employment -- and the right to teach and publish in their own language.

UNDER PRESSURE

President Bashar al-Assad, whose country is under U.S. pressure to reform, had pledged to look into statelessness, raising hopes of an end to the problem.

In a move Syrian Kurdish activists hope heralds wider reform, Assad pardoned 312 Syrian Kurds accused of taking part in last year's riots, to enhance "national unity."

"They released some of the detainees. This was a positive move that all the Syrian movements welcomed," said Lukman Oso, an activist in the Kurdish Leftist Party in Syria.

"We are hearing through leaks to the press that they may give stateless Kurds identity. We would welcome any such move as positive but we have seen nothing on the ground so far."

Kurdish activists say they wish to see the stateless Kurds issue addressed, not least because some have no rights at all.

The offspring of stateless Kurds who married Syrians over generations when those unions were not officially recognized, are now caught in legal limbo.

Kurds estimate there are some 75,000 of these so-called undeclared living in Syria today.

Hami was recently allowed to register his marriage to a Syrian citizen, finally giving their three children official recognition, if only as foreign residents living in Syria.

The Kurdish issue is sensitive in Syria, eliciting little official comment or sympathy among the general public.

But Western diplomats and Syrian activists say they expect the government to naturalize tens of thousands of Kurds.

"It will happen slowly, slowly. They will probably announce 30,000 then after a few months another 10,000 and so on, but of course they will not give citizenship to all," said Ayman Abdel Nour, an engineer and reform activist.

"They will only give citizenship to those who deserve it, only after they study their files because many of these people actually come from Turkey or Iraq, not Syria."

LONG HISTORY

Kurds have lived in the mountains that straddle Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran, an area some Kurdish nationalists refer to as Kurdistan, for centuries. Some Syrian Kurds have held senior official posts.

Some Kurds in Syria trace their roots back to one of the greatest military leaders in the region's history, Saladin.

A Kurd from modern-day Iraq, Saladin led a Muslim army that vanquished the Crusaders and reconquered Jerusalem in the 12th century. Saladin died in Damascus where he is buried.

While Iraqi Kurds were repressed by Saddam Hussein, who gassed the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, and Turkey battled Kurdish separatists in its southeast during the 1980s and 1990s, Syria has rarely clashed with its own minority.

Ruled by the secular Baath party, it has traditionally stressed national unity, avoiding references to its many minorities, including Assyrians, Armenians and other Christians, Druze, Kurds, Shi'ites and Assad's own small Alawite sect.

But some Kurdish political activists accuse the state of trying to stamp out their distinct cultural identity and dilute the Kurdish character of the northeastern Jazeera -- a fertile plain rich in oil and gas that Syria's command economy needs.