19 April 2006

1. "Kurdish rebel, soldier killed in fighting in Turkey", a Turkish soldier and a separatist Kurdish rebel have been killed in clashes in the southeast of the country, security officials said Tuesday.

2. "Turkey’s Kurds push for autonomy", in a growing climate of fear punctuated by riots and bomb explosions, Kurdish nationalists in Turkey are pressing their claim for autonomy.

3. "Turkey seeks to extend, toughen anti-terror law", the Turkish government submitted a bill to parliament late Tuesday toughening and extending the scope of an existing anti-terror law as a bloody Kurdish rebellion intensified in the country's southeast, parliamentary sources said Wednesday.

4. "DTP: Dozens of members detained, offices raided", a pro-Kurdish party said on Tuesday that Turkish security forces have raided several of its offices and detained dozens of its members over the past few weeks.

5. "Dilemma of ''restriction'' in Kurdish broadcasting", in Turkey where about 542 local, national and regional institution made limitless broadcasting in Turkish without any hindrance, many restriction were brought on local televisions which were permitted to air on 4 hour in ' local languages and dialects'.

6. "The Race to Tap The Next Gusher", Kurdistan is rich in oil resources, and the Kurds are ready to deal. But global oil giants have been aced out by a small Norwegian outfit.

1. - AFP - "Kurdish rebel, soldier killed in fighting in Turkey":

DIYARBAKIR / 18 April 2006

A Turkish soldier and a separatist Kurdish rebel have been killed in clashes in the southeast of the country, security officials said Tuesday.

The fighting broke out late Monday during a security sweep of the countryside near Pervari town, Siirt province, for rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the sources said

In the eastern city of Tunceli police on Tuesday detained 23 people -- most of them members of the country's main Kurdish Party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP) -- on suspicion that they had links with PKK rebels, local sources said.

The DTP condemned the detentions as the latest move in an official campaign to put pressure on the party since late March when Kurdish riots shook urban centres for a week, claiming 16 lives.

"Since the latest incidents, several party headquarters have been raided and some 50 senior members have been illegally and arbitrarily detained," it said in a statement.

Turkish officials have accused the PKK of orchestrating the riots and the DTP of toeing the PKK line by repeating the banned organization's appeal for civil disobedience.

Violence has been on the rise in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey since the riots which were followed by clashes in the countryside between the army and the PKK.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara, the European Union and the United States, took up arms for self-rule in the southeast.

2. - The Washington Times - "Turkey’s Kurds push for autonomy":

NICOSIA / 19 April 2006 / by Andrew Borowiec

In a growing climate of fear punctuated by riots and bomb explosions, Kurdish nationalists in Turkey are pressing their claim for autonomy.

Turkish military leaders and politicians feel that granting such a demand would be tantamount to storing dynamite under the republic's foundations, and likely to result in Turkey's fragmentation along ethnic lines.

As the country counted its latest victims of clashes between the army and Kurdish rebels, Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, chief of the general staff, called for "unity, loyalty and self-sacrifice" from Turkish soldiers so that "no one will be able to divide the homeland." He addressed the troops in the provinces bordering Iraq and Iran, where recent clashes took place.

The problem of the Kurds, a tormented nation-tribe deprived of statehood throughout its history, also affects Turkey's neighbors Iran, Iraq and Syria, where an estimated 10 million Kurds live.

It clouds U.S. policies in the area and Turkey's candidacy for membership in the European Union, which has been pressing the Turkish government to show restraint in the face of Kurdish violence spilling from the bleak mountains of southeastern Turkey to the urban ghettoes of Istanbul, where a number of Kurds have settled.

To the Turkish government, the creation of a semiautonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq has brought the specter of autonomy for Turkey's Kurdish population. The Kurds have braced themselves for more bloodshed and turmoil, while Syria and Iran hint darkly at what they perceive to be the Bush administration's intention to carve out a Kurdish state from their territories.

In recent weeks, suicide bombers have appeared in the conflict, which since the 1980s has claimed an estimated 37,000 lives in the war between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Hardly a day goes by without rioting and clashes in the mountains, where Kurdish fighters are reportedly supplied with weapons from Iraq. The victims include Kurdish guerrillas and an increasing number of Turkish soldiers.

Although the PKK has proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire in its campaign, local clashes accompanied by mass demonstrations and rioting have led to a general deterioration of the situation.

According to some diplomatic reports, a number of Kurds doubt the validity of armed struggle, now that Turkey has become an EU candidate. They argue that time should be allowed for the EU to exert more pressure on Turkey to recognize the validity of Kurdish demands.

While allowing the restive Kurds the right to use their language -- banned in public not long ago -- the Turkish authorities have vowed to suppress rioting and bombings by the PKK.

"Sinister plans buried in history cannot be revived. No one should dare defy the power of the state and of the nation," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu has promised that "our struggle against terrorism will continue with conviction and determination."

Since 1924, there have been 29 violent Kurdish uprisings.

According to Jean-Francois Perouse, a French specialist on Kurdish affairs, the Turkish Kurds have been "economically and politically marginalized, becoming the republic's second-class citizens, and prone to violence."

Though they weigh heavily over Turkey's stability, officially the Kurds don't exist. They are "mountain Turks" or "our eastern compatriots." Their number in Turkey is estimated at 8 million or more -- no reliable figures are available.

Addressing economic problems and marginalization in some predominantly Kurdish areas, Mr. Erdogan has promised a series of reforms that would reduce support for PKK militants roaming the mostly barren, wind-swept mountains.

"While they [the PKK] try to capitalize on hatred, we will build more roads, more hospitals, more schools and places of work for the mountain Turks. We will bring more freedom, more democracy, more welfare, more rights and justice."

Kurdish identity denied

Wrote Hikmet Cetin in the pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika: "We should not forget that the identity of the Kurds has always been denied and that efforts have always been made to annihilate them."

Seeking to satisfy some of their demands for freedom of expression, the government recently authorized private television channels to broadcast in Kurdish for up to 45 minutes per day. However, the measure is limited to 45 minutes a day for a total of four hours a week. All video must carry Turkish subtitles. Programs aimed at teaching or propagating the Kurdish language are banned.

Politically, the process of convincing Kurds that "it is not too late" to give up their fight is paralyzed. So far, Mr. Erdogan has refused to meet representatives of the Democratic Society Party, the main pro-Kurdish political entity, until it declares the PKK to be a terrorist organization.

Not all Turkish Kurds are impoverished and angry. According to one diplomatic assessment, "although their Kurdish origin is never mentioned publicly, many Kurds have reached high positions in the Turkish state and enriched many walks of Turkish life."

"There have been Kurdish judges, Cabinet ministers and members of parliament," a senior Turkish official said recently, adding that his wife is a Kurd.

Another assessment claims that since the creation of the republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s, successive governments "have pursued a policy of assimilation, repression and dispersal of the Kurds. Large numbers of Kurds have been transferred from the eastern provinces to other parts of Anatolia."

Because "the Kurdish problem" constitutes a considerable obstacle in Turkey's EU accession process, measures were recently announced to compensate Kurds for their losses in population transfers during which the Turkish army was accused of razing entire villages.

Diplomats say it is too early to assess how successful the compensation process has been.

Despite the great importance of the Kurdish problem, little has been written in Turkey about the Kurds' origins and aspirations.

The Kurds claim to be Aryans, are classified as a white race, and speak a language considered to be Indo-European. They have lived in parts of Anatolia since the 7th century B.C.

There are countless myths and legends about their history. One says the Kurdish nation sprang from 400 virgins raped by devils en route to King Solomon's court. There is a prophecy about a great Kurdish leader who will arise one day and throw off the yoke of his people's various oppressors.

For the time being, many Kurds look up to one leader, now in a Turkish prison. He is Abdullah Ocalan, 57, who once led the PKK and began the latest rebellion in 1984, today blamed for 37,000 deaths.

He was condemned to death for treason in 1999, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002 after Turkey abolished the death penalty as part of its efforts to adopt EU norms. Kurds have rioted on several occasions demanding his release, which has always been categorically rejected by the government, which considers him a public enemy.

3. - AFP - "Turkey seeks to extend, toughen anti-terror law":

ANKARA / 19 April 2006

The Turkish government submitted a bill to parliament late Tuesday toughening and extending the scope of an existing anti-terror law as a bloody Kurdish rebellion intensified in the country's southeast, parliamentary sources said Wednesday.

In one major amendment, the draft was extended to cover crimes such as narcotics and people smuggling that are not outright "terrorist acts," but can serve to support outlawed terror organisations.

It provides prison terms of up to three years for "propaganda" by way of shouting slogans and carrying banners during demonstrations in favour of "terror groups".

Under the new arrangement, wearing emblems or uniforms of outlawed groups or covering one's face during demonstrations are punishable under the propaganda charge.

People who provide funds to "terror groups" will risk five years in prison, the sentence extended to seven-and-a-half years if they are public servants.

Suspects detained on terrorism charges can be denied access to a lawyer for the first 24 hours in custody, but cannot be forced to testify during that time.

The bill gives security forces the right to use weapons against "terrorist" suspects who ignore orders to surrender during a security operation.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the amendments did not mean that Turkey was backtracking from human rights reforms introduced to ease the country's entry into the European Union.

"Our aim is to absolutely eradicate terrorism," Gul said Tuesday. "But we will not go back on basic rights and liberties."

The move comes in the wake of bloody Kurdish riots that began late March during a funeral for rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed in clashes with the army in southeast Turkey.

During a week of violence that claimed 16 lives, masked protestors clashed with security forces and torched government buildings as riot police fired warning shots in the air.

Violence has been on the rise in southeast Turkey as the urban riots were followed by clashes in the countryside between the army and the PKK.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the outlawed Kurdish group took up arms for self-rule in the southeast.

4. - AP / Turkish Daily News - "DTP: Dozens of members detained, offices raided":

ANKARA / 19 April 2006

A pro-Kurdish party said on Tuesday that Turkish security forces have raided several of its offices and detained dozens of its members over the past few weeks.

The reported raids and detentions follow some of the most violent clashes in decades between Turkish security forces and Kurdish protesters, which left 13 civilians dead. Four other people were killed in attacks in Istanbul claimed by a militant Kurdish group.

The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) said several of its offices had been raided and some 50 party members, including five provincial leaders and nine local leaders, had been detained.

The party said the detentions were the result of accusations leveled by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the party.

Erdogan recently called on the party to denounce violence by the Kurdistan Worker's Party, or PKK. Leaders of the DTP have refused to call PKK violence "terrorism", leaving the group open to accusations that it sympathizes with the rebels.

Most of the mayors in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast are members of the Democratic Society Party.

DTP member Osman Baydemir, the mayor of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, and other officials have been accused of encouraging the rioters.

At the height of the clashes in March, Baydemir reportedly kissed a masked rioter on the cheek and told another group of rioters, "I congratulate you because of your courage."

The Interior Ministry and prosecutors are investigating whether Baydemir violated Turkish law by inciting violence.

5. - DIHA - "Dilemma of ''restriction'' in Kurdish broadcasting":

DIYARBAKIR / 18 April 2006

In Turkey where about 542 local, national and regional institution made limitless broadcasting in Turkish without any hindrance, many restriction were brought on local televisions which were permitted to air on 4 hour in ' local languages and dialects'.

Inspite of discourses of authorities as '' the way of Kurdish broadcasting is opened'' about the subject of Kurdish broadcasting, There are bluffs among institutions broadcasting in Turkish and those in other languages. The televisions which took the permission of airing on in local languages and dialects in last month, can make airing 4 hour 45 minute in a week. The flow of airing which have to be subtitled should be sent to RTUK( High Councill of Radio and Television) daily, weekly, monthly and annually.

Broadcasting oriented to language education, motion picture, discussion, religious programs, documentaries and advertisements were not included in this restricted right of broadcasting.

Turkish deciphering of the broadcasting should be sent to RTUK for RTUK does not have staff member knowing Kurdish.

Hundreds of national and local TV

The broadcatings in Turkish are not subjected to any restriction except the rules RTUK determined. While there is no Kurdish TV broadcasting 24 hour in Turkey, the number of national televisions which took licence from RTUK is 24, regional television is 16 and local television 214. Also until now 36 national radio, 101 regional radio and 951 local radio had taken licence from RTUK.

On the other hand while the number of televisions who took permission for broadcasting over satellite is 86, the number of radio is 49. The number of institutions making cablecasting is 65 according to data of RTUK. In Turkey where 542 institution broadcast in Turkish, Kurdish televisions should settle for 4 hour in a week.

While Kurdish broadcasting faces big hindrances, many televisions including ROJ TV, KURDSAT, Zagros TV, MMC, Sahar 2, Rojhilat TV are broadcasting over satellite for Kurds in Turkey.

6. - Time Magazine - "The Race to Tap The Next Gusher":

Kurdistan is rich in oil resources, and the Kurds are ready to deal. But global oil giants have been aced out by a small Norwegian outfit

16 April 2006

For most of his life, Khadir honed the occupation he learned as a child: fighting in the Kurdish militia against Saddam Hussein's forces. He was jailed seven times since the age of 14 and saw a favorite uncle executed. Now, at 32, he is perfecting an entirely new skill that could change this region as much as have the wars in which he has fought: drilling for oil. Since late November, he has toiled about 9 m aboveground on the first derrick erected in Kurdistan in decades — by a Norwegian outfit using a Chinese rig, of all things. From the top, there is a panoramic view of the hills around his tiny village of Tawke, where 30 families eke out a meager living herding sheep. It hardly looks like the location for a major economic boom. "We are poor," he says, sitting on his bunk during a break between shifts in January, when Time was invited for a rare visit to the oil operation. "We have nothing."

But that could soon change — perhaps dramatically, according to oil engineers. Last week, Kurdish officials announced that the rig outside Tawke would begin producing oil early next year — Iraq's first new foreign oil production since the U.S. invasion three years ago. Turkish, British and Canadian oil companies have been negotiating with Kurdish officials in recent months to revive old oil fields and drill new ones. "There's a race on to get fields into production," says a Western consultant in Kurdistan, too fearful for his safety to be named. "People are very, very optimistic." Because Kurdistan — the region that comprises the three northernmost provinces of Iraq — is seeing little of the deadly mayhem evident around Baghdad, its economy has the potential for sharp growth. But its very success, as sectarian killings are pushing other parts of Iraq toward civil war, could jolt the country's precarious ethnic and political balance by injecting sizable revenues and foreign investment into an area which already has strong desires for independence.

Ironically, the first winner isn't an oil giant from the "coalition of the willing" but DNO ASA, a small company traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange. DNO in early 2004 negotiated the rights to drill in about 3,900 sq km, inking the contract in the final week before Iraq's interim government took over from the U.S.-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority. DNO's managing director, Helge Eide, said he felt he "had to do it before the interim government came in," fearing Iraq's new rulers might strip the Kurds of rights to negotiate their own energy deals. It was a highly risky move. Iraqi politicians remain bitterly divided over who will ultimately control the country's massive oil resources under its new constitution. Yet as that argument raged, DNO quietly hired the seismic company Terra Seis (Malta) Ltd. to survey its area. The results were stunningly clear. "We could tell very quickly that there was structure containing hydrocarbons," says Kevin Plintz, a Canadian geophysicist who owns Terra Seis.

That wasn't too surprising in Tawke, where generations have watched oil seep out on the surrounding hills and turn to a slick black film in the gnawing winter cold. Sitting cross-legged on his living-room carpet over a lunch of mutton, village chief Tahir Ezeer Omar remembers that when he was 10, a German visitor told his grandfather that the oil in the hills "was like gold, that it would someday create wealth for us." The locals were unimpressed. "All we knew was that the sheep and cows kept getting stuck in the stuff," Omar says.

So far the Norwegians' political gamble seems to have paid off. Last October Iraqis ratified a constitution giving each region the right to cut oil deals — the most bitterly fought-over item during months of wrangling — while allowing Baghdad to divide the revenues equitably between regions. Kurds will get 17%, their estimated portion of Iraq's population. As Iraqis voted, DNO had a 55-m rig driven across the Turkish border in about 100 trucks and then assembled it a few kilometers inside Iraq, near Tawke. The rig — owned and operated by the Great Wall Drilling Co., a subsidiary of China's state-owned National Petroleum Corp., has hit several potential deposits of oil more than 3,000 m underground. And a second DNO rig is planned to go up nearby in June. DNO has tried to tamp down soaring expectations. Eide says that although there is "movable oil, we still don't know how much."

Such measured comments have not stopped the excitement whipping across Kurdistan. "For us, new wells are very, very important," says Falah Mustafa Bakir, senior aide to Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, over coffee in Kurdistan's capital, Arbil. "It is the future, our means of prosperity." Sarbez Hawrami, ceo of Kurdistan's government-run Oil & Gas Petrochemical Establishment, says "about seven British companies" have approached him to discuss deals. Terra Seis now has 12 seismic machines in Kurdistan working for five oil companies, with a list of others waiting for its services. In the 40-year-old Taq Taq field east of Arbil, two Turkish firms are producing oil for local consumption, and one is drilling three new wells. Last September Canada's Heritage Oil signed an exploration deal. "There were always plans to produce oil in Kurdistan, but there were always objections" from Baghdad, says George Yacu, a Kurd who served in Saddam's Ministry of Oil for 30 years until 1999 and is now oil-and-gas adviser to Kurdistan's regional government.

Kurdish officials estimate their unexplored oil reserves at about 45 billion bbl. If that's accurate, Kurdistan's power could soar within Iraq, which depends almost completely on oil for its exports. Some researchers believe the Kurds' oil estimates are unrealistic, but geologist Plintz says his research suggests that unexplored reserves "could be among the biggest in the world." In addition, more than 10 billion bbl. of proven reserves lie underneath the city of Kirkuk, which is situated outside Kurdistan but whose political status is still disputed by Kurds. Though Kirkuk's oil production has plummeted because of repeated insurgent attacks, Kirkuk, like Kurdish fields, would have huge advantages over other Iraqi sites: its output could be piped a short distance to Turkish refineries without passing through any war zones.

Whether the gushers come in or not, Kurdistan is already booming. On the border with Turkey, about a half-hour drive from the DNO rig, it's clear Kurdistan has become Europe's gateway to Iraq. Trucks from Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Germany and the Netherlands are backed up for many kilometers. Sea cargo from Dubai is diverted through Jordan, Syria and Turkey before reaching Kurdistan, where it is transferred to Iraqi trucks before proceeding to Baghdad. That route is the only choice: driving north through Iraq from the Persian Gulf is too dangerous.

As one flies into Arbil, the sole sign of war is the airport's heavy security. Kurdish soldiers — or peshmerga, as they are known — sit in tall watchtowers along the perimeter, and civilian vehicles may not enter the airport gates, where baggage searchers wear ski masks to hide their faces. Flights from the new Kurdistan Airlines and other carriers arrive directly from Istanbul, Frankfurt, Dubai and Beirut. Austrian Airlines officials have agreed the company will be the first European airline to fly to Arbil, with three Vienna flights a week scheduled to start sometime this year.

That's just the start. A sprawling $200 million airport is being built on the existing grounds and is scheduled to open next year. Its 4.8-km runway will be wide enough to land the new Airbus 380 — or, for that matter, the space shuttle, boasts Zaid Zwain, Kurdistan's director of civil aviation. "Imagine, people used to fear the sound of jets because of the bombing," he says, standing on the vast, still unpaved runway.

Indeed, the sensation of not being in Iraq is a key factor in Kurdistan's boom. Almost no Iraqi flag flies, and fewer than 1,000 U.S. soldiers are deployed in the territory. In the lobby of Arbil's only five-star hotel, filled with American and European businessmen discussing prospects, the buzz in the crowd has one persistent theme: in the world's most dangerous country, foreign businesses can work safely by basing their Iraq operations in Kurdistan rather than 320 km south in Baghdad. "For anybody wanting to do anything in Iraq today, the entry point is Kurdistan," says Magne Normann, DNO's senior vice president and Iraq project director. "It's a stepping-stone for moving into the rest of Iraq when the time is right." Last November a television campaign funded by the Kurdistan Development Corp. was launched on U.S. networks showing serene rural scenes, using the slogan the other iraq. Still, that message has not translated for some. "People in the States think I'm living in the desert, one step ahead of someone who wants to put me in an orange jumpsuit," says Harry Schute, a consultant to Kurdistan's Interior Ministry who was deployed to Iraq in 2003 as a U.S. Army reservist.

Yet keeping Kurdistan calm requires a heavy military force. Time traveled four hours north from Arbil to DNO's rig in an armored vehicle, on a road marked by several peshmerga checkpoints. DNO asked Time not to publish its Kurdish employees' real names for fear they would be attacked for working for a foreign oil company. (Khadir is not the oil worker's real name.) Kurdistan's fragile peace could end quickly if Baghdad's government tries to curb the Kurds' growing economic clout and political autonomy. Most Kurds don't seem to want any part of a greater Iraq — especially while ethnic violence continues in Baghdad. Large oil finds in the territory "would bolster the sense on the street that the Kurds can survive on their own," says the Western consultant who did not want to be named.

Tawke's residents are focused on more basic problems these days. Over the mutton, Normann asks Omar, the chief, and the rig's star worker, Khadir, how the company can help the villagers. Omar says they need a water well and 50 desks for the tiny village school. Away from the chief, Normann says he knows that such goodwill can help secure the rig's safety from possible attack. Insurgents last year launched more than 200 attacks on Iraq's oil facilities, and have made more than 30 already this year. But Khadir, who earns $500 a month as a oil-rig roughneck — in a village of poor sheep farmers — says an attack against DNO would surely fail. "Everyone in the village would protect the company, even the kids, because this oil is our future," he says. And while DNO waits for the oil to flow, it seems likely that Tawke's children may soon sit in class at desks.