1 March 2006

1. "Turkey rights group says 2005 a 'lost year'", a Turkish human rights group said on Tuesday that 2005 was a disappointing year for human rights despite positive expectations generated by the start of European Union membership talks.

2. "Two reporters accused of making fire-bombs face life imprisonment", Reporters Without Borders said today it was very concerned about two women journalists of the pro-Kurdish news agency DIHA, Evrim Dengiz and Nesrin Yazar, accused by police of making fire-bombs allegedly found in their car. They face life imprisonment.

3. "Belgium jails Turkish activists", Turkish activist Fehriye Erdal has been sentenced to four years in prison by a Belgian court for belonging to a criminal organisation. She was on trial with 10 other defendants from the banned Turkish group DHKP-C, or the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front.

4. "Pressure on Turkish finance minister to quit", Members of Turkey’s ruling party joined the opposition yesterday in calling on Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan to resign over corruption allegations, a source of increasing embarrassment for the government.

5. "The Antidote for Coups", Turkey has so far experienced three military coups and two attempted revolutions in its history. The date of February 28 has come to be called "postmodern coup".

6. "The Kurdish Factor", Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari traveled to Turkey on Feb. 28, drawing strong condemnation from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who accused him of making unilateral state visits without consulting the government. Talabani is well aware that Jaafari's discussions in Ankara will center on the issue of containing Kurdish aspirations for regional autonomy.

1. - Reuters - "Turkey rights group says 2005 a 'lost year'":

ANKARA / 28 February 2006

A Turkish human rights group said on Tuesday that 2005 was a disappointing year for human rights despite positive expectations generated by the start of European Union membership talks.

It said 721 people died due to clashes and extrajudicial killings in 2005, while 781 people were wounded. These were mostly in the conflict between the Turkish armed forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group.

"From the point of view of rights and freedoms 2005 was a lost year in terms of the future of (Turkish) citizens," Human Rights Association (IHD) Chairman Yusuf Alatas told a news conference to announce the group's 2005 report.

Turkey began EU membership talks last October but is not expected to join the wealthy bloc before 2015 at the earliest. Criticism of the country's human rights record has persistently dogged its progress towards joining the bloc.

"2005 was a year in which there were social provocations, aggressive nationalism was supported both openly and covertly and attacks on democratic rights and freedoms were encouraged," IHD said.

The vast majority of the deaths and casualties relate to the conflict between the armed forces and the PKK.

The PKK, seeking to establish an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeast, took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 and more than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Violence largely subsided after the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, but flared up again after the group called off a unilateral ceasefire in 2004.

The IHD number of claims of torture and mistreatment fell to 825 last year from 1,040 cases the previous year.

Alatas said this fall was a positive development but that authorities had failed to prevent the institutional, widespread and systematic conduct of torture.

"I thought that we would be able to prepare a 'smiling' report this year, but I am afraid a 'long-faced' report and tables have emerged," he said.

Turkey denies claims of systematic torture by its security forces, though it acknowledges isolated incidents and has pledged "zero tolerance" towards all forms of torture.

The EU has praised Turkey's progress on human rights but says it still has some way to go to reach European norms.

2. - RSF - "Two reporters accused of making fire-bombs face life imprisonment":

28 February 2006

Reporters Without Borders said today it was very concerned about two women journalists of the pro-Kurdish news agency DIHA, Evrim Dengiz and Nesrin Yazar, accused by police of making fire-bombs allegedly found in their car. They face life imprisonment.

Their car was stopped by anti-terrorist police in Mersin (300 km south of Ankara) on 15 February after they had covered a demonstration marking the seventh anniversary of the detention of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, head of the of PKK/Kongra-Gel party.

They were taken away from the car while it was searched, after which a policeman said he had found fire-bombs in it and accused them of making them for the demonstration. They were arrested and a judge later declared the case secret and the Mersin prosecutor called for life imprisonment under article 302-1 of the criminal code for “undermining the unity or independence of the state and nation.” The article excludes any possibility of amnesty.

“We are very concerned at the accusations against them and the harsh sentence proposed,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The circumstances of their arrest are very confused and do not clearly establish their guilt. The legal authorities must make every effort to determine the origin of the firebombs, the only evidence against them. The judge has hastily declared the matter secret and is blocking all openness.”

Dengiz and Yazar were interrogated for two days before being jailed on 17 February at the request of the Mersin prosecutor. Because of the secrecy, their lawyers have no access to the case-files, preventing them from preparing an adequate defence.

A member of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD) said Yazar had earlier been threatened by police who demanded that she stop working for DHA and said she would be punished if she did not.

3. - BBC - "Belgium jails Turkish activists":

1 March 2006

Turkish activist Fehriye Erdal has been sentenced to four years in prison by a Belgian court for belonging to a criminal organisation.
She was on trial with 10 other defendants from the banned Turkish group DHKP-C, or the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front.

The group is blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by the European Union.

Erdal is also wanted in Turkey for her alleged role in the assassination of a prominent Turkish businessman.

Four of the defendants were acquitted by the court in Bruges, while the other six received sentences ranging from four to six years for possession of illegal weapons and false documents.

Erdal was arrested in 1999, but Belgium refused to extradite her because at that time the death penalty was still in force in Turkey.

She went on hunger strike in protest against her arrest. Later, Belgian prosecutors decided they were not legally competent to try her for the killing.

4. - Reuters - "Pressure on Turkish finance minister to quit":

ANKARA / 1 March 2006

Members of Turkey’s ruling party joined the opposition yesterday in calling on Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan to resign over corruption allegations, a source of increasing embarrassment for the government.

Unakitan, 60, one of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s closest aides, has been accused of abusing his office to secure favours for his son, a flourishing businessman, and ensure that public tenders are won by favoured companies.

The allegations have raised doubts over Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) commitment to combatting widespread corruption in the country, a key electoral pledge when it came to power in November 2002.

The controversy surrounding Unakitan followed a heated debate over Erdogan’s own wealth, which forced the prime minister to reveal earlier this month that he had bank accounts and real estate worth $1.2m.

The opposition tried in mid-February to push a censure motion against Unakitan, but the AKP, which holds a comfortable majority in parliament, blocked the move following a call by Erdogan “not to create the impression that our unity is in danger.”

Since then, however, dissent has grown within AKP ranks over clearing Unakitan under party disciplinary procedures without probing the allegations.

5. - Zaman - "The Antidote for Coups":

ISTANBUL / 1 March 2006

Turkey has so far experienced three military coups and two attempted revolutions in its history. The date of February 28 has come to be called "postmodern coup".

New York University Economy Professor Jess Benhabib, who conducted detailed analysis of all coups in the world, approaches the issue in a remarkable way.

According to the distinguished professor, there is a direct relationship between democracy and income distribution; thus as people's income increases, the possibility of a coup falls.

Benhabib says renouncing democracy loses its appeal as the national income reaches $6,000 in developing countries.

The survey's main point has been agreed upon by experienced politicians in Turkey that brought the national income to $5,000. Former minister Hasan Celal Guzel says it is necessary to see a $10,000 nation-wide income for a real democracy. "If we can take this country forward with no coup for five more years, then we can reach $8,000 and exceed the coup threshold."

Former Parliament speaker Husamettin Cindoruk emphasizes the possibility of a coup will disappear as the Turkish economy progresses, though he warns: "Opposition against democratic countries is an established practice in some countries."

The results of the survey conducted by Jess Benhabib and Adam Przeworski from New York University in countries that adopted democratic regime from 1950-1999 are quite striking.

In countries where the national income per person remained below $1,000, the possibility of coup is 1/12.

This ratio falls to 1/28 in countries with an income of $1,000-3,000 per person, and to 1/61 in countries with an income of $3,000-6,060.

A development supporting Benhabib's thesis took place a few weeks ago in Spain, where the national income per person is $20,000. Land Forces Command number two ranked Gen. Jose Mena Aguado opposed the new autonomy status demand the Catalan Autonomous Administration offered to the Spanish Parliament by saying "If constitutional limits are exceeded, a military coup will take place," and was sentenced to an eight day home imprisonment.

As with many developing and developed countries in the world, Turkey has borne military challenges over the past years.

The Democratic Party (DP) was overthrown on 27 May 1960 when a group of army officers led by General Cemal Gursel came to power overnight.

Then Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and two other ministers were hanged.

Other revolutionary acts on February 21 and May 22 failed to fill in the blanks left open from May 27, although Talat Aydemir differed; he was also sentenced to death.

On 12 March 1971, commanding army officers forced Suleyman Demirel to resign by pressing for the formation of a government that would serve each party equally.

It was on 12 September 1980 when the army took the charge again.

The Refah-yol administration was overthrown when the army collaborated with civilians on February 28.

Professor Benhabib, a Bogazici graduate who received his doctorate degree at the University of Columbia, currently teaching economics at the University of New York, examined a number of coups that took place in various parts of the world.

Born in Istanbul into a Jewish family, Professor Benhabib said factors were considered such as the level of income, the level of education, ethic background, and inequalities of income distribution; and underlined the higher standards of living people have, the less concession they make to the notion of democracy.

"Anyone with enough money to feel all right would not want to lose it," said the professor. He drew attention to the importance of balance in income distribution.

"If (income) distribution happens to be in favor of lower classes, a move is likely to come from the right. Those with enough support from the rich can take control. If the wealth of the rich increases, then a move is most likely to emerge from the left. That is why governments are careful to maintain a particular distribution of income in order to keep the regime alive."

Guzel, deputy secretary of the prime minister before 12 September 1980, tells a story of his own.

"The military sent out a warning to the government in January 1980. It was apparent that the military was preparing for a likely coup; however, the military was not courageous enough to make it happen then. Before the January 24 decrees were released, I accompanied Mr. [Turgut] Ozal to the Chief of General Staff. With a smile on his face, Ozal told the senior military officials: 'Anyone with a keen interest in governing the country should have a perfect awareness of the economic situation prevalent across the nation.' In other words, the late Ozal implied that a possible coup would have been an economic disaster in the end. After a period of time, senior military officials staged a coup when there was a decent economic atmosphere." The more people have to lose, the less they want to combat instability, said Mehmet Altan, a professor of economics at Istanbul University. The gradual increase in national revenues drives individuals to follow a more democratic line in their lives, said Altan.

Coup Attempts Occur in Weak Economies

Coup attempts in a country are closely linked with the economic situation of that country.

After the military coup of May 1960 in Turkey, the national income of $583 per capita dropped to $359. A year later, during the National Unity Committee’s administration of the country, the income decreased to $194. It was $1,570 in 1980 when Turkey experienced their third military coup. During the military guardianship regime, the national income decreased to $1,299. The national income per capita was $3,046 during the February 28 process. The Anasol-D government which followed the Refah-yol government, Democratic Left Party (DSP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and Motherland Party (ANAP) government pulled this figure down. During the Justice and Development Party (AKP) period, the amount of national income per capita became $4,208 at the end of 2004.

On the other side, there have been 70 coups in poor countries between 1955 and 1999.

Yet, there has not been a single coup attempt in 37 democratic and wealthy countries. The only exception is Argentina. Although the level of national income per capita was $6,055 during the 1976 coup, a dictatorship regime was adopted.

Benhabib- There is no possibility of a coup attempt in Turkey

As the income level of the public increases, the possibility of coup attempts weakens. Now, the income level is below $6,000 in Turkey; yet, I don’t foresee a possible coup attempt. If income distribution was damaged in the past, the army would come to power; but now, the economy collapses. Neither native investors nor the foreign ones who make investments in Turkey desire this. The recovery of the economy depends on a calm and stable environment.

Guzel- Soldiers do not understand economics

Soldiers do not understand economics in Turkey. They know how it is hard to administer the economy; they would not want to stick in the swamp. So, they have always waited for the recovery of the economy to realize a coup. The national income per capita should be around $10,000 so that democracy can dominate in Turkey in a real sense. If we can take this country ahead for five more years without any coups, we can reach $8,000 and surpass the coup threshold.

Cindoruk – Coups occur due to political reasons in Turkey

As the Turkish economy improves, the possibility of a coup attempt will be eliminated. Yet, it has become a tendency to oppose to the democratic structure in some countries. Political reasons were more influential in the 27 May 1960 and 12 September 1980 coups in Turkey. Unfair income distribution and a bad economic situation played an important role in the advent of Nazism in Germany and Bolsheviks in Russia.

6. - Stratfor - "The Kurdish Factor":

1 March 2006

Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari traveled to Turkey on Feb. 28, drawing strong condemnation from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who accused him of making unilateral state visits without consulting the government. Talabani is well aware that Jaafari's discussions in Ankara will center on the issue of containing Kurdish aspirations for regional autonomy. And as the chief representative of Iraq's Kurdish population in the central government, Talabani's response to Jaafari's visit has revealed a widening breach between the Shia and Kurds as negotiations toward the formation of the Iraqi government intensify.

Analysis

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Feb. 28 that he deeply regretted interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's unilateral decision to make a state visit to Turkey. He added that the Iraqi government is not committed to any agreement reached between the prime minister and Ankara.

Talabani is slightly more than perturbed that Jaafari is acting on his own accord before even being reconfirmed as Iraq's prime minister. Moreover, Jaafari's visit to Turkey will be followed within days by a visit from radical Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Jaafari and al-Sadr are widely perceived by Kurdish leaders as the Shiite leaders least friendly to the Kurds in the government-formation talks. Jaafari's trip to Turkey has jabbed a sharp thorn into these negotiations, providing an opportunity for the Sunnis and Shia to serve their mutual interest by using the talks to contain the Kurds.

The Kurds are responding to the talks by pointing out that as outgoing interim prime minister, Jaafari does not yet have the authority to carry out negotiations with the Turks, even though he is prime minister-designate of Iraq's new full-term government. Talabani's remarks, in fact, underscore a deep rift between the Shia and the Kurds at a time when the Shia are also experiencing tenser-than-usual relations with the Sunnis.

The Turkish government will primarily address the Kurdish question in its talks with the Iraqi Shiite leaders. Turkey's concerns are clear. Like Iran, it does not want Iraq's reinvigorated Kurdish population to encourage Kurdish separatist movements within Turkish territory. Ankara also wishes to keep the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk out of Kurdish hands to deprive Iraqi Kurds of a key asset that would help finance their long-term goal of independence. Ankara also wishes to safeguard the interests of Kirkuk's Turkomen population. Also on Turkey's wish list is a guarantee that the peshmerga, or Iraqi Kurdish militia, will be disbanded under the new government.

The Kurds, on the other hand, are playing their cards carefully to ensure the advances they have made since the 1991 Persian Gulf War are not lost in the web of negotiations with the Shia and Sunnis. The Kurds opted for a more gradual approach in securing their autonomy in northern Iraq, realizing that an aggressive push for independence in the post-Saddam Hussein era would only have invited a messy reprisal from Turkey.

Thus, even though it is a priority for the Kurdish delegation to keep Kirkuk under the control of the Kurdish regional government, the Kurds are willing to offer the concession of allowing current oil revenues to filter through the central government in Baghdad. Displaced Kurds who were driven out of Kirkuk by Hussein's forces in his bid to "Arabize" the city are now returning; the Kurdish leadership hopes they will constitute a majority in the December 2007 census, so that a proposed referendum in the city will allow them to keep Kirkuk part of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region legitimately. And Kurdish leaders do not plan on disbanding the peshmerga, but will gradually integrate its guerrilla forces into the state security apparatus.

Washington likely will not endorse the Kurdish strategy fully. Kurdistan faces the dilemma of having its territory spread across four countries -- Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey -- each of which has a core interest in repressing its Kurdish minority to dampen any separatist tendencies. For its part, the United States has complex relations with each of these countries, and so cannot afford to promote the existence of an independent Kurdistan in the region.

Washington's main goal in the negotiations for the formation of Iraq's full-term government is to bring the Sunnis into the political fold. This is aimed at quelling the Sunni nationalist insurgency and bringing pressure to bear on the Sunni jihadists. And if containing the Kurds can be used as a lever to bring the Shia and Sunnis to the negotiating table, the United States will discreetly use that lever.

For the Kurds, this means a considerable number of obstacles lie in their path to regional autonomy. Not only must the Kirkuk issue be addressed within the framework of the Iraqi government, the method of carving up Iraq into federal regions or provinces must also be worked out among the factions. Earlier, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim -- who leads the main Iraqi Shiite political party, the United Iraqi Alliance, as well as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) -- loosely supported the Kurds in the idea of regional federalism during the referendum negotiations. At that time, the prospect of securing a Shiite enclave in the south looked promising.

While SCIRI, an Iranian creation formed in Tehran in 1982, saw federalism as being in its interest, Jaafari's Hizb al-Dawah and the movements of al-Sadr and Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani are much more centered on a strong central government. Thanks to the Shiite failure to achieve a consensus on the notion of federalism, the Sunnis won a chunk of the government in the December 2005 elections. When Sunni participation in the election decreased their influence, Shiite leaders joined al-Sadr's call for a strong central government. They also openly opposed the Kurdish preference for a regional federal structure, which essentially provides for an autonomous Kurdish region in the north that would include all the provinces with sizable Kurdish populations.

Given the complexity of the negotiations, the most the Kurds can hope for at this juncture is a political framework containing as many loopholes as possible to allow for their continued evolution into a sovereign entity. Moreover, for Kurdish aspirations to be met, the United States must maintain its military presence in Iraq to keep regional forces in check. What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that Washington's interests in Iraq do not clearly align with Kurdish interests.