14 February 2006

1. "Kurdish militant group claims supermarket bombing in Istanbul, 15 wounded", a hardline Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that wounded 15 people at an Istanbul supermarket Monday, a Kurdish news agency reported. It was the second bomb attack in Istanbul by the same group within five days.

2. "Kurdish demonstrators attack Turkish police, set bus on fire", about 200 pro-PKK demonstrators on Sunday attacked the police with stones and gasoline bombs and set a bus on fire to protest the solitary confinement of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on a prison island off Istanbul, Turkish media reported.

3. "Kurdish problem can't be resolved via security measures", Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir, who has been in Washington for a visit, claimed that Kurdish problem in Turkey can't be resolved through security measures.

4. "DNA tests reveal buried bones belonged to villagers", bones found in a mass grave in the southeastern Anatolian province of Diyarbakir belong to 11 villagers who disappeared during a security operation in the region, DNA tests on the bones revealed. Eleven villagers disappeared during an operation conducted by a commando unit near Alaca village in Kulp in October 1993. A mass grave containing the bones was discovered on Nov. 4, 2004. The European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to pay YTL 1 million in compensation to families of the 11 villagers in May 2001.

5. "So-called ‘honour killings’ are not a cultural phenomenon, but a crime against women, regardless of cultural background", as news of a missing Kurdish woman spread across the UK this week, with the Metropolitan police distributing missing persons leaflets and requests for help from Kurdish communities in London, the British media quickly picked up the story, and we hear increasing talk of another so called ‘honour killing ’.

6. "Sentences handed down against Kurdish rebels in Syria", the Syrian Higher National Security Tribunal on Monday handed down wide-ranging sentences to several Kurds found guilty of belonging to the banned United Kurdistan Democratic Party.

1. - AP - "Kurdish militant group claims supermarket bombing in Istanbul, 15 wounded":

ISTANBUL / 13 February 2006 / by C. Onur Ant

A hardline Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that wounded 15 people at an Istanbul supermarket Monday, a Kurdish news agency reported. It was the second bomb attack in Istanbul by the same group within five days.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons Organization, a hardline group believed to be linked to the main Kurdish guerrilla group, Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, claimed responsibility for the bombing in an e-mail, the Firat News Agency, based in the Netherlands, said on its Web site.

The same group had also claimed Thursday's bomb attack on an Internet cafe in the city, which killed one person and injured 15 others, including seven policemen.

The militant group said in its e-mail that it carried out the attack in response to Turkey's policies toward the Kurdish people, the Firat News Agency said.

The shadowy group has claimed responsibility for a number of bomb attacks in Turkey, including a blast in the Aegean resort town of Cesme last summer that wounded 21 people.

"From now on, we will continue our actions uninterrupted" until the Turkish government changes its policies, the militant group said.

Turkey maintains its military drive against the autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels and does not recognize its sizable Kurdish population as an official minority.

The bomb blast at the supermarket damaged a wall and shattered some windows. Police cordoned off the area and forensic teams searched for evidence under floodlights. The windows of a real estate agent's office, next door, also was smashed.

"I was sitting inside when the explosion shattered the windows," said Zikri Cetinkaya, 48, who had been in the real estate office. "I immediately ducked and waited inside, I saw the ambulances outside but I was so afraid to walk to the market."

The militant group had apparently targeted police officers who frequented the Internet cafe during Thursday's attack. But the supermarket bombing during rush hour Monday apparently aimed at terrorizing people.

Tensions have been high in Turkey with the approach of the seventh anniversary of the capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan on Feb. 15.

On Sunday, about 600 Kurdish rebel sympathizers clashed with police and set a bus on fire to protest the solitary confinement of Ocalan. Since his capture, Ocalan has been kept on the Imrali prison island, near Istanbul.

Kurdish guerrillas have been fighting for autonomy in the southeast since 1984, a battle that has so far claimed 37,000 lives.

The fighting tapered off after a rebel truce in 1999. But there has been resurgence of violence since June 1, 2004, when the rebels declared an end to the cease-fire, saying Turkey had not responded in kind.

2. - AP - "Kurdish demonstrators attack Turkish police, set bus on fire":

ANKARA / 12 February 2006

About 200 pro-PKK demonstrators on Sunday attacked the police with stones and gasoline bombs and set a bus on fire to protest the solitary confinement of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on a prison island off Istanbul, Turkish media reported.

Masked Kurdish demonstrators, who unfurled banners of the terrorist PKK, set up barricades in the street and threw stones and firebombs at police in low-income Bagcilar district of Istanbul, private NTV television and the Anatolia news agency said. The demonstrators also set a city bus on fire.

Police used water cannons and pepper spray to disperse the demonsrators and detained at least five protesters, the Anatolia news agency said.

Kurdish demonstrators, chanting slogans in support of Ocalan, staged similar protests in the Mediterranean port city of Antalya and Aegean port city of Izmir, Anatolia said.

Ocalan has been in solitary confinement on a prison island, Imrali, near Istanbul since his capture on Feb. 15, 1999.

PKK has been fighting for autonomy in the southeast since 1984. The fighting so far has claimed 37,000 lives.

3. - Cihan News Agency - "Kurdish problem can't be resolved via security measures":

13 February 2006

Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir, who has been in Washington for a visit, claimed that Kurdish problem in Turkey can't be resolved through security measures.

Baydemir told a press conference on Sunday in Washington that there should be a new move to open clean chapter. "It can be general pardon, or reconciliation law or redemption law."

The Pro-Kurdish Mayor said that USA as an ally could contribute to the democratization and civilization process of Turkish Republic.

Baydemir said that Turkey could be attraction center for the Kurds in the Middle East if peace and stability in the country was restored.

Osman Baydemir came together with US lawmakers Bob Filner and Chris Van Hollen who support Greek, Armenian and Kurdish thesis.

4. - Turkish Daily News - "DNA tests reveal buried bones belonged to villagers":

ANKARA / 13 February 2006

Bones found in a mass grave in the southeastern Anatolian province of Diyarbakir belong to 11 villagers who disappeared during a security operation in the region, DNA tests on the bones revealed.

The tests were conducted at a forensic laboratory in Istanbul by comparing blood samples from families of the villagers with the bones. The forensic authorities have sent their findings to the prosecutor's office in the Kulp district of Diyarbakir, which is in charge of the investigation.

Eleven villagers disappeared during an operation conducted by a commando unit near Alaca village in Kulp in October 1993. A mass grave containing the bones was discovered on Nov. 4, 2004.

The European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to pay YTL 1 million in compensation to families of the 11 villagers in May 2001.

Southeastern Anatolia witnessed clashes between the security forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for 15 years. Several villagers had to abandon their villages at the height of the clashes and some of them won compensation from Turkey for the treatment they were subject to at the European Court of Human Rights before Parliament passed a law ordering compensation for villagers who had to leave their homes and property in the region more than a year ago.

5. - Kurdish Media - "So-called ‘honour killings’ are not a cultural phenomenon, but a crime against women, regardless of cultural background":

14 February 2006 / by Kameel Ahmady

As news of a missing Kurdish woman spread across the UK this week, with the Metropolitan police distributing missing persons leaflets and requests for help from Kurdish communities in London, the British media quickly picked up the story, and we hear increasing talk of another so called ‘honour killing ’. The reports have invariably included details of her family and ethnic background, and mention that the woman in question, Banaz Mahmod Babakir Agha, was a victim of forced marriage as well.

The term ‘honour killing’ is now widely used by the mainstream media to label this type of crime, where a female family member is murdered by a close male relative, supposedly in order to restore the family’s ‘honour’. Our purpose here is not to question the existence of these crimes, or diminish the problematic nature of extreme beliefs about gender which they express, but to raise the issue of the term ‘honour killing’ as one which diminishes the crimes involved by simply explaining them in religious terms.

There have certainly been several high profile cases of this kind in the UK in recent years, where women who engaged in ‘unapproved’ relationships with men have become murder victims at the hands of their relatives. An increasingly popular discourse around ‘honour killing’ within the media has followed these events, and generally becomes attached to a wider public debate about ‘the Muslim world’ and representations of Islam in the media. What such media portrayals fail to analyse is the worrying nature of gender relations and control of women’s lives which these crimes indicate, and the prevalence of similar cases among white westerners.

By uncritically characterising ‘honour killing’ as a broad cultural phenomenon, such media portrayals diminish the crime itself, instead focussing on a problematic pattern supposedly endemic to certain parts of the world, usually with a vague suggestions that it is somehow connected to ideas in Islam itself. It is too easy to simply write such occurrences off as somehow linked to unexplained culturally or religiously determined ideas about ‘honour’, without ever discussing what lies behind such perceptions. The London based organisation Kurdish Women Against Honour Killing (KWAHK) reminds us that there is no such easy correlation with their slogan “no honour in murder”.

However, when speaking about ‘honour killing’ generally, we must be more cautious about our understanding of the phenomenon, and critical of such portrayals of non-western cultures generally. Why not call these acts as they are? They are crimes against women and family life in both Kurdish and British society. This is neither something that is culturally prevalent or acceptable according to the mainstream of Kurdish communities. Nor can it be summarily attributed to beliefs which exist in Islam, for it is certainly not the case that all Muslims would justify such criminal behaviour. By emphasising such murders as a religious phenomenon, media portrayals simultaneously devalue the lives of the victims by ignoring the criminal nature of the murders, and perpetuate negative stereotypes about ‘Middle Eastern’ or ‘Muslim’ cultures in Britain by suggesting this is a feature inherent to such cultures.

Violence against women is a social phenomenon that, sadly, cuts across all cultural divides. If we look at the nature of crimes against women in British society generally, we have a case in point. With alarming regularity, white British women, like their Muslim counterparts, fall victim to violence and murder at the hands of controlling ex-partners whose jealousy drives them to such ends. Yet we do not typically refer to the fact that the women involved were Christian, or Australian, or give other details of their biographies. We do not term such crimes ‘jealousy killings’, or try to diminish the lives of the victims by reducing the crimes to cultural beliefs, although we may be all too aware of the problematic attitudes towards gender which prevail in our society generally.

It is certainly fair to say that conflict over women’s rights expresses itself differently according to cultural variations, but the parallels which exist between incidents of this kind in Muslim and non-Muslim communities should be apparent. As critical media consumers and responsible citizens, we see a need to better understand the issues which lie beneath such violent acts before simply labelling them according to a popular rhetoric, the commonalities as well as differences across cultures, and work together – men, women, Kurdish, Christian, British, Muslim - to stop these crimes, to develop a more open dialogue about gender equality in all societies, and to support immigrants who face the difficult and sometimes traumatic challenge of adapting to a new culture and values.

6. - KUNA - "Sentences handed down against Kurdish rebels in Syria":

DAMASCUS / 13 February 2006

The Syrian Higher National Security Tribunal on Monday handed down wide-ranging sentences to several Kurds found guilty of belonging to the banned United Kurdistan Democratic Party.

According to the head of a Syrian law research and studies firm, Anwar Al-Bunni, the Kurds included Nejad Mahmoud Abdallah, a Kurdish Iranian, who was sentenced to seven and a half years on charges of conspiring to expropriate Syrian land for the purpose of adding it to foreign land and an Iraqi Kurd, Jawad Atark, who was sentenced to three years as well as Jawan Shamseddine Ibrahim, a Syrian Kurd, who was sentenced for two years for the same charge.

The tribunal postponed to March 16 proceedings against the spokesman for the opposition party, the Democratic National Gathering, Hassan Abdel-Azeem. On that day, he would receive a sentence after his defense attorney made a presentation on behalf of his client.

"The Syrian authorities are determined to continue to repress public freedom and use emergency laws against political and opposition activists," Al-Bunni said.