10 March 2006

1. "Two Turkish Soldiers killed in fighting with Kurdish rebels", two members of Turkey's security forces were killed on Friday in fighting with Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey, security officials said.

2. "Kurdish rebels deny responsibility for deadly Turkish blast", Turkey's main armed Kurdish rebel group on Friday denied responsibility for a bomb attack in eastern Turkey a day earlier that killed three people and injured 19 others.

3. "Human Rights Violations in Turkey Continues", Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005, Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

4. "Turkey and the lost rights of its Kurds", after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the gaze of “western Europe” and others in the international community has shifted farther and farther east. Recently, with the EU beginning to consider Turkey a candidate state for membership, the university has followed suit.

5. "Semdinli Hearing Starts on May 4", the first hearing of the Semdinli case will be held on May 4. The Justice Ministry has launched an investigation on Prosecutor Sarikaya. The General Staff said that they could decide for the prosecution of any general, They haven't received any warnings.

6. "The Kurd Card", lost amid the news of all the bloodletting in Iraq is an important political development: The Kurds have switched sides. In the first parliament after the first set of elections, they allied themselves with the Shiite slate to produce the current Shiite-dominated government led by Ibrahim al-Jafari.

1. - Reuters - "Two Turkish Soldiers killed in fighting with Kurdish rebels":

VAN / 10 March 2006

Two members of Turkey's security forces were killed on Friday in fighting with Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey, security officials said.

"The fighting is still going on. The security forces' operation is also being supported from the air (by military helicopters)," one official told Reuters.

CNN Turk television said five people soldiers were also wounded in the fighting, in a remote rural area of Sirnak province near the Iraqi border.

Ankara blames the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the rebels launched their armed struggle in 1984 for an independent Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey.

Violence, which largely subsided after the 1999 capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, has ticked up since the group called off a unilateral ceasefire in 2004.

Four Turkish policemen were killed on Monday when PKK rebels ambushed their vehicle in the southeastern city of Batman.

Officials say the PKK may also have been behind an apparent suicide bombing in the eastern city of Van on Thursday in which three people died.

2. - AFP - "Kurdish rebels deny responsibility for deadly Turkish blast":

ANKARA / 10 March 2006

Turkey's main armed Kurdish rebel group on Friday denied responsibility for a bomb attack in eastern Turkey a day earlier that killed three people and injured 19 others.

In a statement published on the website of the Europe-based Firat News agency, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said it was not involved with the blast in the city of Van, which officials suspect was the work of a suicide bomber.

"Just as we have no information on the incident in Van, we do not organize attacks" that target civilians, the PKK said in a brief statement.

The explosion in central Van wrecked a municipal police vehicle parked near the governor's office, killing a city worker and a passer-by.

The third victim, whose body was badly mutilated, is believed to be that of the attacker.

Local security sources said initial suspicions fell on the PKK, which has waged a armed campaign in the country's eastern and southeastern regions since 1984.

The PKK has in the past conducted countrywide bomb attacks, including suicide bombings.

A radical Kurdish group officials say is an offshoot of the PKK has also claimed deadly bomb attacks on civilian targets in western Turkey.

Violence in Turkey's southeast has escalated since June 2004, when the rebels called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire and ended a period of relative calm in the region.

3. - U.S. State Department - "Human Rights Violations in Turkey Continues":

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005, Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

8 March 2006

Turkey, with a population of approximately 69.6 million, is a constitutional republic with a multiparty parliamentary system and a president with limited powers elected by the single chamber parliament, the Turkish Grand National Assembly. In the 2002 parliamentary elections, considered generally free and fair, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the majority of seats and formed a one party government. The civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.

The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; although there were improvements in a number of areas, serious problems remained.The following human rights problems were reported:

  • some restrictions on political activity
  • unlawful killings
  • torture, beatings, and other abuses of persons by security forces
  • poor prison conditions
  • arbitrary detention
  • impunity and corruption
  • lengthy pretrial detention
  • excessively long trials
  • restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association
  • restrictions on religious freedom
  • violence and discrimination against women
  • child abuse
  • child marriage
  • trafficking in persons
  • restrictions on worker's rights
  • child labor

Full version of the report: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61680.htm

4. - The Wake - "Turkey and the lost rights of its Kurds":

10 March 2006 / by Jessica Mann

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the gaze of “western Europe” and others in the international community has shifted farther and farther east. Recently, with the EU beginning to consider Turkey a candidate state for membership, the university has followed suit.

“The U has devoted more and more resources to this part of the word,” says Eric Weitz, director of the Center for German and European Studies, adding that the university has begun teaching Turkish as a foreign language.

However, with this newfound examination of Turkey come unpleasant revelations of human rights violations in the country’s treatment of its largest ethnic minority group—the Kurds.

Most Kurds, a primarily Sunni Muslim people with a unique language and culture, mainly live in the bordering areas of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Armenia and Syria. This mountainous region of southwest Asia is generally known as Kurdistan ("Land of the Kurds").

Kurds were traditionally sheep and goat herders who lived nomadic lives throughout the Mesopotamian plains and highlands of Turkey and Iran. However, after World War I, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire created a number of new nation-states—but no Kurdistan, forcing Kurds to abandon their seasonal migrations and traditional ways.

The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which created the modern states of Iraq, Syria and Kuwait, was to have included the possibility of a Kurdish state in the region, but this was never implemented. After Kemal Ataturk’s overthrow of the Turkish monarchy, Turkey, Iran and Iraq each agreed not to recognize an independent Kurdish state, leaving a nation of people divided by imposed borders.

As a large minority group in several different states, the Kurds “have suffered tremendous human rights violations since the 1950s,” says Barbara Frey, director of the Human Rights Program in the Department for Global Studies. According to a 1999 report by the Washington Post, Kurds received especially harsh treatment in Turkey. The Turkish government tried to deprive them of Kurdish identity by designating them “Mountain Turks,” and outlawed their language. They were also forbidden to wear traditional Kurdish costumes in the cities. Turkey “continues its policy of not recognizing the Kurds as a minority group.”

In Iraq, Kurds have faced violent repression. After the Kurds supported Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein’s regime retaliated against them—razing villages and attacking peasants with chemical weapons. After the first Gulf War, the Kurds rebelled again, only to be crushed by Iraqi troops.

As a result of their harsh treatment under Hussein, the Kurds could be seen as the “accidental beneficiaries” of the current Iraq war, says Kani Xulam, founder and director of the American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN) and a well-known Kurdish human rights activist. In an impassioned speech entitled “U.S.-EU Public Policy and Kurdish Social, Economic and Cultural Self-Determination: Implications for Turkey’s Integration into the European Union” at the Nolte Center on Feb. 9, Xulam spoke about his hopes that Turkish Kurds will one day receive the benefits of freedom and called upon his audience to support their plight.

“Will this Kurd ever see a liberated Kurdistan?” he asked, referring to himself, and adding that 15-20 million Kurds live in what he considers “Turkish-occupied Kurdistan” or the “open-air prison of Turkey.” He alluded to “American ideals” of freedom and made reference to the words of many important American and European political figures, citing their calls for the cultural and linguistic freedom of different ethnic groups.

“Why do I speak better Turkish than Kurdish?” Xulam asked. He called the treatment of the Kurds by the Turkish government “racist” and compared the Kurdish campaign for human rights to the American civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Xulam also stressed the importance of maintaining and preserving Kurdish culture, for fear that it may someday disappear if it continues to be repressed.

“What is at stake is the culture of a nation that has survived thousands of years and has now been relegated to the dustbin of history,” he said. “What I tell you is not a figment of my imagination—it is my reality.”

At the event, Frey said she considered Xulam’s speech the “most articulate expression of raw anger that I have heard in a while.” In response, she posed several questions to the audience, analyzing the struggles of the Kurds within the functioning of the international state system, with its emphasis on state sovereignty. “How should the international community handle claims of self-determination of large ethnic minorities in sovereign states?” she asked. “The Kurds have also been very active in armed conflict in trying to establish a Kurdish separatist state, giving Turkey some legitimacy [for response],” said Frey.

“These are complex situations. There’s not necessarily a right or wrong here but we have to agree on standards for human rights. Instead of self-determination, the international community usually looks at minority rights within existing states,” she said.

Human rights are one of the main issues the EU will consider as it examines the possibility of Turkey’s accession. According to the EU website, high on the list of requirements are “the continuation of political reforms … including the respect for democracy and the rule of law, the protection of human rights and guaranteeing the rights of minorities.”

The EU has adopted a framework for accession negotiations with Turkey (which the United States supports) as well as a revised Accession Partnership, the purpose of which is “to assist the Turkish authorities in their efforts to meet the accession criteria” for Turkey in 2005. The next meetings of the Turkey-EC Association Council and a Parliamentary Committee consisting of representatives of the Turkish Grand National Assembly and the European Parliament are scheduled for May 2006.

As EU-Turkey negotiations progress, Xulam continues to ask questions of Turkey’s deservedness: “Is cultural genocide what Europe wants on its résumé?”

5. - Bianet - "Semdinli Hearing Starts on May 4":

The first hearing of the Semdinli case will be held on May 4. The Justice Ministry has launched an investigation on Prosecutor Sarikaya. The General Staff said that they could decide for the prosecution of any general, They haven't received any warnings.

VAN / 9 March 2006

Murat Timur, one of the lawyers of the Semdinli case, said the first hearing will be held on May 4.

Sergeants Ali Kaya and Ozcan Ildeniz and Veysel Ates are being accused for the bombing of a bookshop in the eastern town of Semdinli in November 2005.

Justice Ministry is investigating Prosecutor Sarikaya

Meanwhile, the Justice Ministry has launched an investigation on Prosecutor Ferhat Sarikaya, who, in the indictment, also accuses Land Forces General Yasar Buyukanit.

The Justice Ministry's inspection board has appointed two inspectors, with the orders of Justice Minister Cemil Cicek.

"I have authorized the inspectors to inspect the prosecutor," said Cicek. "Statements except this are speculations."

General Staff: We have not received any warnings or complaints

The General Staff on March 8, announced that they had not yet received any warnings or complaints by the Van Republican Prosecutor's Office.

The General Staff said the following on the trial of generals and admirals:

* Generals and admirals can only be investigated by the General Staff Military Prosecutors, and with the orders and permission of the Head of the General Staff.

* It is a general legal principle that all defendants are innocent until the investigation and trial has been completed.

* Republican Prosecutors send the possible accusations about generals and admirals to the General Staff, taking into account their seriousness.

* The General Staff has its legal consultants look into the allegations and decides whether an official investigation is necessary. Following the official investigation, the military prosecutor either opens a legal case, or decides there is no need for prosecution."

According to a report in daily Milliyet, Prosecutor Sarikaya said: "I have done my job as a prosecutor. I could not behave in any other manner."

6. - Washington Post - "The Kurd Card":

9 March 2006 / by Charles Krauthammer

Lost amid the news of all the bloodletting in Iraq is an important political development: The Kurds have switched sides. In the first parliament after the first set of elections, they allied themselves with the Shiite slate to produce the current Shiite-dominated government led by Ibrahim al-Jafari.

Now the Kurds have joined with the opposition Sunni and secular parties to oppose the Shiite bloc. The result is two large competing coalitions: (a) the Kurd-Sunni-secular bloc, which controls about 140 seats in the 275-seat parliament and would constitute the barest majority, and (b) the Shiite bloc, which itself is a coalition of seven not-always-friendly parties and controls 130 seats, slightly less than a majority.

If only it were that simple, Iraq would have a new, secular-oriented government. But to protect minorities and force the creation of large governing coalitions, the Iraqi constitution essentially requires a two-thirds majority to form a government.

If we had that requirement in the United States, we might still be trying to settle the 2000 election. In Iraq, the result for now is stalemate, which could lead to disaster if the whole system disintegrates because of the impasse. Or it could lead to a more effective, less sectarian government than Jafari's.

The key question is who is going to control the two critical ministries: interior and defense. In Iraq, as in much of the world, interior does not control the national parks. It controls the police. And under the current government it has been under Shiite control and infiltrated by extreme Shiite militias. Some of these militias launched vicious reprisal raids against Sunnis after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, jeopardizing the entire project of a national police force exercising legitimate authority throughout the country.

The main objective of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who worked miracles in Afghanistan, is to make sure that the Interior Ministry is purged of sectarianism by giving it to some neutral figure, perhaps a secular Sunni with no ties to the Baath Party. Similarly with the Defense Ministry, which controls the army. The army has, by most accounts, handled itself well following the mosque bombing and subsequent riots, and it has acted as a reliably national institution. It is essential that it not get into sectarian hands.

Political success in Iraq rests heavily on these two institutions. Which is why these negotiations, tiresome and endless as they seem, are so important.

The immediate issue is the prime ministership. An internal ballot among the Shiite bloc brought, by a single vote, another term for Jafari. The critical vote putting him over the top was the faction controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr, the radically anti-American and pro-Tehran cleric whose home base is the Shiite slums of Baghdad. For Sadr, a weak and corruption-ridden government that allows conditions to deteriorate would be the perfect prelude to his gaining power.

Not all parts of the Shiite coalition are happy either with Jafari's ineffectiveness or with his political dependence on Sadr. Splits are already appearing in that uneasy alliance. But the most important challenge to Jafari is the Kurds. They are wary of Sadr and unhappy with Jafari, under whom everything -- services, security, trust -- is deteriorating.

Admittedly, part of their calculation is sectarian. This is, after all, Iraq. Jafari has impeded Kurdish claims on Kirkuk and infuriated the Kurds by traveling to Turkey (which opposes all Kurdish ambitions) without their approval and with a traveling party that did not include a single Kurd.

The Kurd-Sunni-secular bloc wants a new prime minister who will establish a national unity government. Because the United States wants precisely the same outcome, the Kurd defection is very good news in a landscape of almost unrelenting bad news. The other good news is a split in the Shiite bloc, with a near-majority that favors a more technocratic prime minister and is chafing at Sadr's influence. Additionally, the Sunni insurgency is in the midst of its own internecine strife between the local ex-Baathists, who are not particularly religious and want power, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's foreign jihadists, for whom killing Shiites combines sport and religion and who care not a whit for the future of the country. There are numerous reports of Sunni tribes declaring war on these foreign jihadists and of firefights between them.

The security situation is grim and the neighboring powers malign. The one hope for success in Iraq is political. The Kurdish defection has produced the current impasse. That impasse has contributed to the mood of despair here at home. But the defection holds open the best possibility for political success: an effective, broad-based national unity government that, during its mandatory four-year term, presides over an American withdrawal.