23
May 2005
2. "Majority of women in Turkey abused", Turkish Women’s Union president claims lower education levels among women is state policy.
3. "Turkey, Armenia, and the Burden of Memory", all wars end, eventually. But memories of atrocity never seem to fade, as the government-fanned anti-Japanese riots now taking place in China remind us. The 90th anniversary of the Armenian massacres of 1915, ordered by the ruling Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire and carried out with the help of the Kurds, is another wound that will not heal, but one that must be treated if Turkey’s progress toward European Union membership is to proceed smoothly.
4. "Syrian Kurds demonstrate over missing cleric", some 10,000 Kurds demonstrated in northern Syria Saturday to demand news on the whereabouts of a Kurdish Muslim cleric widely believed to have been detained by Syrian police, a Kurdish leader said.
5. "Three Kurds jailed for 30 months in Syria", Syria’s state security court on Sunday sentenced three Kurdish activists to prison terms of 30 months for "membership of a secret organisation", said lawyer and human rights activist Anwar al-Bunni.
6. "Iranian Kurds inspired by success in Iraq", some 200 Iranian Kurds marched in single file up an icy mountain path, carrying automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. They were training for the day when they hope to cross the nearby Iraqi border into Iran, recruit supporters and reopen a rebellion they reluctantly abandoned long ago.
1. - Reuters - "Anxious Turkey awaits EU votes, seeks reassurance":
MADRID / 23 May 2005 / by Paul Taylor
If France votes "No" to the European Union's constitution next Sunday, Turkey worries that it could be one of the first victims.
Just five months after winning a historic date for the start of membership talks with the wealthy 25-nation bloc, Turkish officials have been dismayed to see their candidacy become a key focus of the "No" campaigns in French and Dutch referendums.
"Turks are very much complaining about the way Turkey is at the center of discussions in France," Mehmet Dulger, chairman of the Turkish parliament's foreign affairs committee, told a conference on Turkey's road to Europe in Madrid last week.
He voiced a concern government leaders officially dismiss -- that a French rejection of the constitutional treaty could put the brakes on further EU enlargement "and maybe they'd postpone negotiations with Turkey."
The candidacy of the sprawling, poor, mainly Muslim nation on the hinge of Europe and the Middle East, with a fast growing population of 70 million, has crystallised public fears about immigration, low-cost competition and loss of identity and power in western Europe.
Even supporters of the constitution such as the charismatic leader of France's governing UMP party and presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy, have coupled their plea for a "Yes" with opposition to Turkish EU entry, Dulger lamented.
ANXIETY
Turkish anxiety about being rejected along with the treaty may help explain a mood of mutual disenchantment between Ankara and Brussels since EU leaders decided last December -- with some conditions -- to open accession negotiations on Oct. 3.
"Dec. 17 turned out to be an anticlimax and it's a serious problem. 2005 is a very difficult year for Turkey," said Soli Ozel of Istanbul Bilgi University.
Angered by EU pressure over Cyprus, minority rights and police brutality, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has gone as far as to suggest the EU wants to harm Turkey and is playing with forces that seek to break up his country.
"For the last four months, the government did not seem to have its heart on the EU agenda," Ozel told the conference, organized by the Barcelona-based European Institute for the Mediterranean (IEMed).
Brussels officials complain privately of a stalling of Turkey's reform momentum and a revival of nationalist rhetoric.
Economy Minister Ali Babacan denied there was any slowdown in Turkey's drive to transform itself along EU lines, but he acknowledged the government was doing better at embedding pro-European economic reform than political liberalisation.
"Political reforms, unlike economic reforms, do need some adjustment time to change the mental framework of the people," he said. "External ... peer pressure will help us go down the right track."
In a Reuters interview, Babacan said Turkey had nothing to fear from the French referendum provided it stayed calm, pursued its own reform agenda and met EU conditions for starting talks.
These are the signing of a protocol to adapt its EU customs union to the bloc's 10 new members and the entry into force of reforms already enacted.
INVESTOR FLIGHT?
Some financial market analysts are forecasting investor flight from Turkish assets if France votes "No" to the constitution, on fears of a delay in Ankara's accession bid.
But Babacan said he had "no solid reason" to think the Oct. 3 date would be in jeopardy. Turkish accession was a decade away and the Europeans could not go on debating every day for 10 years whether Turkey should be a member, he argued.
Even those Europeans who opposed Turkish entry had a clear interest in Turkey adopting European standards and becoming as stable and prosperous as possible, he said.
Turkey's European friends urged it to counter any fallout from the French and Dutch referendums by giving a new, visible momentum to political and legal reform.
Sir David Logan, a former British ambassador to Ankara, said a new Turkish road map for reform measures would help forestall complications in the run-up to Oct. 3. Britain, a key supporter of Turkey's candidacy, will use its EU presidency from July 1 to try to smooth the start of negotiations.
Former Spanish ambassador Raimundo Bassols, who negotiated Madrid's EU accession, said Turkey had already accomplished a "silent revolution" that had enabled it to meet the political and human rights criteria for starting membership talks.
"Candidate countries should show they have done their homework intelligently," he advised the Turks.
Former European Parliament President Enrique Baron acknowledged that the issue of Turkey divided the EU legislature and urged Ankara not rest on its laurels.
"The most important reforms are still to come,"
he said, citing the need to overhaul the state structure, the judiciary,
agriculture, regional and social policy. 
2. - Turkish Daily News - "Majority of women in Turkey abused":
Turkish Women’s Union president claims lower education levels among women is state policy
ANKARA / 22 May 2005
Turkish Women's Union President Sema Kendirci said on Friday that 90 percent of all Turkish women encountered abuse, adding that the biggest problem for Turkish women was lack of education.
She said the physical, mental and economic abuse of women in Turkey was continuing without respite, adding that the lack of women in Turkish politics was also a form of abuse.
She claimed that there was a clear state policy to ensure that women were less educated than men in order to bind women to their homes. She said teaching women about their rights was more important than passing laws.
‘Women's shows are horrible'
Kendirci said the so-called women's shows on television needed to be stopped because they were tying women to their homes, while the union was trying to free them.
She said it was wrong to suppose that individuals alone
were affected by abuse, noting that people who watched this show thought
such incidents seldom occurred. She called for a state policy of gender
equality, adding that women's shows simply used women.
3. - Project Syndicate - "Turkey, Armenia, and the Burden of Memory":
20 May 2005 / by Charles Tannock*
All wars end, eventually. But memories of atrocity never seem to fade,
as the government-fanned anti-Japanese riots now taking place in China
remind us. The 90th anniversary of the Armenian massacres of 1915, ordered
by the ruling Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire and carried out with
the help of the Kurds, is another wound that will not heal, but one
that must be treated if Turkey’s progress toward European Union
membership is to proceed smoothly.
It is believed that the Armenian genocide inspired the Nazis in their plans for the extermination of Jews. However, in comparison with the Holocaust, most people still know little about this dark episode.
Indeed, it is hard for most of us to imagine the scale of suffering and devastation inflicted on the Armenian people and their ancestral homelands. But many members of today’s thriving global Armenian Diaspora have direct ancestors who perished, and carry an oral historical tradition that keeps the memories burning.
It is particularly ironic that many Kurds from Turkey’s southeastern provinces, having been promised Armenian property and a guaranteed place in heaven for killing infidels, were willingly complicit in the genocide. They later found themselves on the losing end of a long history of violence between their own separatist forces and the Turkish army, as well as being subjected to an ongoing policy of discrimination and forced assimilation.
Historically, the ancient Christian Armenians were amongst the most progressive people in the East, but in the nineteenth century Armenia was divided between the Ottoman Empire and Russia. Sultan Abdulhamit II organized the massacres of 1895-97 but it was not until the spring of 1915, under the cover of the First World War, that the Young Turks’ nationalistic government found the political will to execute a true genocide.
Initially, Armenian intellectuals were arrested and executed in public hangings in groups of 50 to 100. Ordinary Armenians were thus deprived of their leaders, and soon after were massacred, with many burned alive. Approximately 500,000 were killed in the last seven months of 1915, with the majority of the survivors deported to desert areas in Syria, where they died from either starvation or disease. It is estimated that 1.5 million people perished.
Recently, the Armenian Diaspora has been calling on Turkey to face-up to its past and recognize its historic crime. Turkey’s official line remains that the allegation is based on unfounded or exaggerated claims, and that the deaths that occurred resulted from combat against Armenians collaborating with invading Russian forces during the First World War, or as a result of disease and hunger during the forced deportations. Moreover, the local Turkish population allegedly suffered similar casualties.
Turkey thus argues that the charge of genocide is designed to besmirch Turkey’s honor and impede its progress towards EU accession. There are also understandable fears that diverging from the official line would trigger a flood of compensation claims, as occurred against Germany.
For many politicians, particularly in America, there is an unwillingness to upset Turkey without strong justification, given its record as a loyal NATO ally and putative EU candidate country. But, despite almost half a century of membership in the Council of Europe – ostensibly a guardian of human rights, including freedom of speech and conscience – Turkey still punishes a crime against national honor any suggestion that the Armenian genocide is an historic truth. Fortunately, this article of Turkey’s penal code is now due for review and possible repeal.
Indeed, broader changes are afoot in Turkey. The press and government, mindful of the requirements of EU membership, are finally opening the sensitive Armenian issue to debate. Even Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, under increasing EU pressure as accession negotiations are due to begin this October, has agreed to an impartial study by academic historians, although he has reiterated his belief that the genocide never occurred. In France, the historical occurrence of the Armenian genocide is enshrined in law, and denial of its occurrence is regarded in the same way as Holocaust denial.
The European Parliament is pressing for Turkish recognition of the Armenian genocide. It is also calling for an end to the trade embargo by Turkey and its close ally Azerbaijan against the Republic of Armenia, a reopening of frontiers, and a land-for-peace deal to resolve the territorial dispute over Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan and safeguard its Armenian identity.
Armenia, an independent country since 1991, remains dependent on continued Russian protection, as was the case in 1920 when it joined the Soviet Union rather than suffer further Turkish invasion. This is not healthy for the development of Armenia’s democracy and weak economy. Nor does Armenia’s continued dependence on Russia bode well for regional co-operation, given deep resentment of Russian meddling in neighboring Georgia and Azerbaijan.
There is only one way forward for Turkey, Armenia, and
the region. The future will begin only when Turkey – like Germany
in the past and Serbia and Croatia now – repudiates its policy
of denial and faces up to its terrible crimes of 1915. Only then can
the past truly be past.
* Charles Tannock is Vice-Chairman of the European Parliament’s
Human Rights Subcommittee.
4. - AFP - "Syrian Kurds demonstrate over missing
cleric":
DAMASCUS / 21 May 2005
Some 10,000 Kurds demonstrated in northern Syria Saturday to demand news on the whereabouts of a Kurdish Muslim cleric widely believed to have been detained by Syrian police, a Kurdish leader said.
Sheikh Mohammed Maashuq al-Khaznawi has not been heard from since he left Damascus’s Islamic studies centre, of which he is vice president, on May 10.
Hassan Saleh, secretary general of the Yakiti party, said he had issued an open call during the demonstration in the northern town of Qamishli for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to "shed all possible light" on the disappearance.
On Wednesday, an interior ministry official denied claims that Khaznawi had been arrested.
Even so, human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni, who represents numerous opposition figures, said the authorities are "responsible for the life and liberty of Sheikh Khaznawi."
The sheikh, who teaches that Islam and democracy are compatible, is widely popular in Syria.
Syria is home to some 1.5 million Kurds, around nine percent of the population. They are fighting to have their language, culture and political rights recognised.
In March 2004, clashes pitted Kurdish protestors against Syrian security forces and Arab tribesmen in Qamishli and Aleppo. The Kurds said 40 people died, while the Syrian authorities gave a death toll of 25.
Hundreds of Kurds were arrested following the disturbances. On March 30 of this year, Assad ordered all of them released.
But Saleh said earlier this month that the pardon had not been fully carried out, and that "more than 100 Kurds still remain in prison."
He also claimed that the government was carrying out fresh
arrests of Kurdish political activists.
5. - AFP - "Three Kurds jailed for 30 months in
Syria":
DAMASCUS / 22 May 2005
Syria’s state security court on Sunday sentenced three Kurdish activists to prison terms of 30 months for "membership of a secret organisation", said lawyer and human rights activist Anwar al-Bunni.
He told AFP the alleged aim of their organisation was for "a foreign country to annex part of Syrian territory".
Those convicted were part of a group of 16 militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned in Syria, being tried before the security court. The verdict for the other defendants is due on June 26-27, said Bunni.
The PKK, founded in 1978, waged an armed campaign against the Ankara government from 1984 to 1999. The separatist campaign claimed some 37,000 lives in southeast Turkey.
The group proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire in September 1999 after its leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in Nairobi, tried and sentenced to death by a Turkish court. The sentence was later commuted to life in jail.
In June 2004, the PKK announced the end of its unilateral truce.
Turkey and Syria came to the brink of war in 1998 over Ankara’s accusations that Damascus was sheltering Kurdish militants fighting the Turkish government.
The crisis was resolved when Damascus expelled Ocalan
and signed a security deal with Ankara, pledging to drop its support
of the PKK.
6. - AP - "Iranian Kurds inspired by success in Iraq":
QANDIL MOUNTAIN RANGE / 22 May 2005 / by Yahya Barzanji
Some 200 Iranian Kurds marched in single file up an icy mountain path, carrying automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. They were training for the day when they hope to cross the nearby Iraqi border into Iran, recruit supporters and reopen a rebellion they reluctantly abandoned long ago.
After more than 20 years of calm, fighters based in northern Iraq are itching to resume the Iranian Kurds' campaign for greater autonomy, emboldened by the success of their brethren in post-Saddam Iraq.
"We want to break the peace we were forced to accept," Piryar Gabary told an Associated Press reporter visiting Qandil Mountain, the group's base in northeast Iraq.
Such talk, however, doesn't sit well with the Iraqi Kurdish leadership, which is wary of provoking Iran and disturbing its new stature in Iraq's government and has vowed to prevent cross-border attacks.
The situation illustrates the Iraqi Kurds' delicate position in the reshuffled deck that has emerged in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
Their policy of preventing attacks on Iran is not new. Already in 1991, when they won their Western-protected autonomy in Iraq, Kurdish leaders banned the exiles among them from mounting cross-border attacks.
But the empowerment of Iraq's Kurds since the U.S.-led invasion has inspired their brethren spread across an area from western Turkey and Syria to eastern Iran, who yearn for an independent unified Kurdistan that would take chunks out of all those countries.
That means heightened pressure on the Iraqi Kurds not to antagonize neighboring Turkey and Iran, which have both sent troops into Iraq in the past to put down Kurdish rebels. Moreover, Iraq's Kurds are now in a government alliance with Shiite parties closely tied to Iran's clerical rulers.
When the AP visited the base in March, Gabary, a leading figure in the rebels' Free Life Party, vowed to open hostilities after the snows melted. Then, on May 9, after the thaw began, he claimed that some fighters had already crossed into Iran and waged a small clash with Iranian troops. He gave no details, and the skirmish could not be independently confirmed.
But the strong response from mainstream Kurds illustrates how anxious they are to keep the peace.
"Iran is a neighbor country and we will not allow any side to use our borders for military operations," warned Mustafa Sayid Qadir of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two parties that rule Iraq's Kurdish provinces.
Other Kurdish leaders in Iraq said they did not know of any clashes. Iran refused to comment, but former lawmaker Abdollah Sohrabi was among several Iranian Kurdish activists who told the AP they haven't heard of the Free Life Party.
Qadir dismissed it as a "very small" organization. Gabary claimed to have around 2,000 fighters - a number that could not be independently confirmed.
The four main Iranian Kurdish groups in Iraq said they had no plans to start a fight. Hassan al-Sharify, no. 2 in the largest one, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, said: "The Free Life Party consists of enthusiastic young men who cannot topple the regime alone."
The last full-scale rebellion by Iranian Kurds broke out in 1979, and after intense fighting the Tehran government re-established control over its Kurdish areas in 1983.
Since then Iranian Kurdistan has been largely peaceful. Kurds, who make up about 11 percent of Iran's 70 million people, complain of discrimination but have made no significant moves to break away. When Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was chosen this month as Iraq's new president, some Kurds in Iran celebrated in the streets, and there were unconfirmed reports of arrests.
The U.N. counts 4,600 Kurdish refugees from Iran in the Kurdish provinces of Iraq, with more drifting there from camps in western and southern Iraq.
The Free Life Party, grouping separate factions of Kurds from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, was formed in 2003.
Its fighters are operating under the radar of Iraqi and Iranian officials. Qandil Mountain, in Iraq's northeast corner near Iran and Turkey, is a rugged, isolated region where Kurdish authorities have little control.
The AP reporter who visited saw about 50 fighters being taught to dismantle and reassemble an automatic rifle. Women wearing traditional male Kurdish clothes sat in a circle with the men. Other recruits jogged uphill carrying bags of rocks.
In one of several rooms with tables fashioned from mud, a teacher wrote on a chalkboard, instructing students how to carry out hit-and-run shootings.
The diplomatic issues mean little to fighters like Gabary, 42.
"Politics in the Middle East is of no avail without
military forces," he said.