29 March 2006

1. "Kurds clash with police at rebels' funeral", Kurdish demonstrators clashed with police and vandalized shops here Tuesday as funerals of Kurdish rebels killed in fighting with the Turkish army degenerated into violence.

2. "Kurdish protesters rampage in Turkey", thousands of Kurdish protesters rampaged after funerals for Kurdish guerrillas killed by Turkish troops, hurling firebombs at armored police vehicles and smashing windows at a police station. Forty people were injured.

3. "Turkish prosecutor risks sanctions in row with army", a Turkish prosecutor who called for a probe into a top general for acting outside the law in the fight against Kurdish rebels may face disciplinary sanctions, Anatolia news agency reported Tuesday, citing justice ministry inspectors.

4. "Talking Turkey", despite phenomenal progress in improving the parameters of free speech and beginning to confront the legitimate demands of the Kurds, Alevites and other minorities in recent years, Turkey still has not faced up to its two big outstanding historical questions.

5. "Newroz in Turkey", the festival was illegal until 2000 in Turkey, where most of the Kurds live, and Turkish forces arrested Kurds celebrating Newroz. However, today Turkey celebrates Newroz as a Turkish spring holiday although it is still considered as a potent symbol of Kurdish identity in Turkey.

6. "EU enlargement chief sees tension ahead with Turkey", relations between the European Union and Turkey will face turbulence later this year over Cyprus and it will take deft diplomacy to avoid a “train crash,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Tuesday.

1. - AFP - "Kurds clash with police at rebels' funeral":

DIYARBAKIR / 28 March 2006

Kurdish demonstrators clashed with police and vandalized shops here Tuesday as funerals of Kurdish rebels killed in fighting with the Turkish army degenerated into violence.

At least 15 people were injured, among them seven policemen, including one in serious condition, hospital sources and local officials said.

About 2,000 people gathered in Diyarbakir, the main city of the predominantly Kurdish southeast, for the funerals of the four militants, who were among 14 members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed over the weekend in a major security operation in the region.

Demonstrators refused to disperse after the ceremony, shouting "vengeance" and hurling petrol bombs, sticks and stones at the security forces, who responded by spraying the crowd with pressurized water and tear gas.

At least two armored police vehicles briefly caught fire after being hit by petrol bombs.

Demonstrators broke the windows of shops and public buildings and stoned ambulances sent to the scene to pick up injured people.

Several dozen paramilitary officers were called in to reinforce police and at least one of them was seen firing warning shots in the air.

Two policemen were stabbed, and one was in serious condition, medical sources said. Three journalists were among the injured.

The governor's office said 23 protestors were detained.

Similar unrest took place in the southern city of Adana during the funeral of a fifth PKK rebel, the NTV news channel reported.

Tension in Turkey's southeast has markedly escalated since June 2004, when the PKK called off a unilateral ceasefire.

The conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984 when the PKK took up arms for Kurdish autonomy in the region.

2. - AP - "Kurdish protesters rampage in Turkey":

ANKARA / 29 March 2006 / by Selcan Hacaoglu

Thousands of Kurdish protesters rampaged after funerals for Kurdish guerrillas killed by Turkish troops, hurling firebombs at armored police vehicles and smashing windows at a police station. Forty people were injured.

The fighting Tuesday was among the worst street battles in overwhelmingly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in years. Turkish authorities took the unusual step of calling in paramilitary police to help police restore order.

The violence broke out after the funerals for four Kurdish guerrillas killed by Turkish troops in the past week. Riot police fired tear gas at the crowd and used pepper spray, triggering street clashes in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the southeast.

Protesters later overturned and set fire to two police cars and set fire to a bank.

The injured included two police officers who were stabbed and four people with gunshot wounds, hospital officials said. The governor's office said at least seven police officers were injured, and police detained 23 protesters.

The slain guerrillas were among 14 killed by soldiers in the province of Mus in a two-day clash that ended Saturday. They belonged to the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984.

Footage from private NTV television Tuesday showed an armored police vehicle engulfed in flames after being hit by a firebomb.

Protesters armed with stones and clubs shattered the windows of a police station, banks, shops and a government health clinic. They also smashed the windows of parked police vehicles outside the police station.

Further west in Adana, some 3,000 Kurdish protesters attending the funeral of another slain guerrilla clashed with police, prompting the officers to detain several people.

Tensions have been running high in the southeast, where autonomy-seeking Kurdish guerrillas have escalated attacks recently.

3. - AFP - "Turkish prosecutor risks sanctions in row with army":

ANKARA / 28 March 2006

A Turkish prosecutor who called for a probe into a top general for acting outside the law in the fight against Kurdish rebels may face disciplinary sanctions, Anatolia news agency reported Tuesday, citing justice ministry inspectors.

Prosecutor Ferhat Sarikaya dropped a bombshell this month when he demanded that land forces commander Yasar Buyukanit be investigated for suspected links with rogue groups in the army seeking to stir tensions in the mainly Kurdish southeast and derail Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

The affair underscored tensions between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the offshoot of a banned Islamist movement, and the influential military, which has long held sway in Turkish politics as a self-declared guardian of the Muslim country's secular system.

The military condemned the allegations as "intentional" and urged the government to punish those behind "this onslaught... aimed at wearing down the Turkish armed forces."

The opposition has charged that Sarikaya acted under AKP influence in a bid to discredit the general ahead of his expected promotion to chief of staff this summer.

Justice ministry inspectors who were ordered to probe the prosecutor concluded that he went beyond the limits of his jurisdiction and demanded disciplinary sanctions, Anatolia reported.

A board of senior jurists will now determine the sanctions, which range from formal reprimand to expulsion from the profession, it said.

The accusations against Buyukanit were part of an indictment charging two soldiers and a Kurdish informer over the November 9 bombing of a Kurdish-owned bookstore.

The bombing, which took place in the town of Semdinli, claimed one life and sparked deadly Kurdish riots.

It also raised doubts about whether Turkey was succeedeing in purging rogue elements from the security forces accused of summary executions, extortion and kidnappings in the southeast in the 1990s, the peak years of a separatist Kurdish rebellion there.

The EU, which has long criticized army influence in Turkish politics, is closely watching the affair as a test of the supremacy of law in Turkey.

Sarikaya demanded life terms for the two soldiers and the Kurdish informer for the bookstore bombing, which he described as a provocation to stir unrest among Kurds, discredit the government and undermine Turkey's EU bid.

The chief of staff, whose permission is required for the prosecution of senior officers, has rejected Sarikaya's appeal for a probe into Buyukanit.

4. - Khaleej Times - "Talking Turkey":

28 March 2006 / by Jonathan Power

SAY what you like about the US State Department’s mastery of foreign affairs, its annual report on human rights practice remains a beacon of precise, honest and clear thinking. Published two weeks ago it rightly chided China for going backwards after years of progress. And here in Turkey its sharp critique has been well covered in the Press, giving the country a chance to see itself in the round.

Despite phenomenal progress in improving the parameters of free speech and beginning to confront the legitimate demands of the Kurds, Alevites and other minorities in recent years, Turkey still has not faced up to its two big outstanding historical questions — what has it done with all its Jews and Christians? — a very big question since Istanbul was the seat for centuries of the Byzantine Church and the Ottoman Empire was the principal place of refuge for the Jews after they were driven out of Christian Spain in the fifteenth century. And when will it have an honest discussion about the disappearance of the Christian Armenians, which some say was an act of genocide?

If we are all going to be forced to make the clash of civilisations the principal item on the geo-political agenda, as the Bush administration’s new National Security Strategy statement appears to suggest, then those who oppose such polarisation need to face up to why this modern, liberal Muslim state par excellence has not come to terms with its terrible past. Ironically, this law-abiding state, the creation of the pro-European, Westernising, Attatürk, has a worse record on these matters than its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. It is rarely acknowledged in the West that Islam, and in particular the Ottomans, has a much better historical record than Christianity in its tolerance of the other religions of 'the People of the Book'.

For 700 years Jerusalem was under Muslim rule. The churches were open. The Jews were given funds to rebuild their synagogues. Likewise, from the fifteenth century on, when the majority of Arabs lived under Ottoman rule, Christians and Jews were recognised and protected.

Historically, there has never been a sustained, continuous, clash between these great civilisations. Undoubtedly there have been particular clashes and until the fall of the Ottoman Empire the Muslim world won most of them. Yet in victory the Muslims invariably showed greater magnanimity and tolerance than the Christian powers when they triumphed. So why is it that the dying Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey have such a poor record?

Some Turks would say in their defence it is because, since the Great War of 1914-18 and the break up of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious British and French, the West has inflicted one grevious blow after another on the Muslim world. This has pushed Turkey — and much of the Muslim world in this region — into an uncharacteristic degree of defensiveness and intolerance.

Caroline Finkel, the author of the big new study on the Ottomans much praised by Turkey’s most famous novelist, Orhan Pamuk, who was recently prosecuted for speaking in favour of honesty about the Armenians, argues that maybe it can’t be legitimately termed 'genocide' when 80,000 Armenians have continued to live unmolested all these years since in Istanbul. Nevertheless, as she told me in her home in Istanbul, 'terrible massacres did take place on both sides. That’s not in doubt. But the devil is in the detail. No ‘smoking gun’ has been found in the Ottoman archives', although she adds that some documents could have been lost 'perfectly innocently or removed'.

Finkel, whilst unsparing of the savagery of Ottoman forces in killing off so many Armenians, reminds her audience that more Muslim Turks than Armenians were killed in the war and that the fifth column activities of the Armenians made inevitable their relocation to Syria and Iraq, well away from the Ottoman-Russian front line.

An open reckoning of the evidence by an independent panel of distinguished historians should now be commissioned by the EU and paid for by the Turkish government. The longer the Armenian issue is left to stew, manipulated by the ignorant, the more damage to the EU digestive tract, as the EU entry negotiations proceed, it is going to cause. Likewise, a separate inquiry into what happened to the Jewish and Christian minorities needs to be undertaken and why even today the continued existence of a major Orthodox seminary near Istanbul remains under threat.

The past weighs too heavily upon modern Turkey, even though its media and intellectuals can be very forthright about these issues. The Turkish government still needs to open up. Denial is no substitute for the whole truth. And if Turkey truly wants to enter the EU it must get on with it, sooner rather than later.

* Jonathan Power is a veteran foreign affairs commentator. He is currently visiting Turkey.

5. - Cultural Heritage News Agency - "Newroz in Turkey":

28 March 2006

In Turkey, the first 12 days of March represent the months of the year and the events to come during the year are believed to be foretold by the events that take place during these days.
Tehran, 28 March 2006 (CHN) -- Norouz is known as "Nevruz-i Sultani,” "Sultan Nevruz", "Sultan Navriz", and "Mart Bozumu" (harvest time in March) and is still a living and vibrant tradition in Turkish society. Norouz is called "Sultan Navriz" in Gaziantep and the surrounding area. According to folk belief, Sultan Navriz is a pretty girl who moves from West to East by making sounds with her ankle bracelet and doing embroidery on the night of March 22nd and 23rd. According to another belief, Sultan Navriz is a holy person who can change into the shape of a bird and fly by making sounds with her ankle bracelet. It is believed that all the wishes of those who are awake as Sultan Nevruz passes overhead will come true.

Pastry with spinach, eggs painted with onion skins, thin pastry breads, burma sweets, candies, roasted chick peas and Turkish delight are among the dishes served on Norouz in Turkey. Meanwhile, relatives and neighbors start visiting each other.

On March 23rd, people wake up early. They go to the cemeteries wearing new clothes and with the food they have prepared beforehand. At the graveyard, people chat while drinking coffee. Everybody has to visit the graves close by and drink coffee or tea there. Any woman who wants to make a wish picks one stone from each grave until a total of 40 have been collected. She makes her wish, puts the stones in a bag and hangs it up at home. The bag will stay hanging on the wall for a year. It is believed that if the wish is granted then the total amount of stones in the bag when it is opened will be 41. The stones are replaced one year later, whether the wish has come true or not.

Later, people get together to eat. During the meal, people play musical instruments and sing folk songs. Swings are suspended from the trees and children fly kites which are called "bayrak" (flag).

In the afternoon, women carry out another custom called "hak ulestir" (sharing equally) by putting appetizers onto a large plate. These appetizers are offered to people walking in front of the house, and in return the recipients chant "I hope it helps the souls of the dead." After the meal, members of the family one by one kiss the tombstones and leave the cemetery.

In the evening, neighbors and relatives continue eating, drinking and chatting until morning. During this holiday everybody is cheerful. Other people’s transgressions are forgiven. Participation in the celebrations is mandatory, and those who do not take part are ostracized by the village residents.

All the cups in people’s houses are filled with water, and people stay awake all night. A basin full of water is also left in the courtyard to reflect the moon, and people worship all night long. According to local belief, if someone’s wish has been granted then the water in the basin will turn into gold. The next morning, everybody goes to recreation and picnic areas, where they play various games and eat raw meatballs, rice, egg and piyaz (a savory food prepared with boiled beans).

Among the Yoruks (a nomadic shepherd group in Anatolia), Newroz means the end of winter and beginning of spring. It is celebrated on March 22nd in villages and high plateaus, although if this does not fall on a Sunday, it is celebrated in the cities on the first Sunday following Newroz. On the morning of March 22nd, villagers begin to move to plateaus. Those who arrived earlier and settled into buildings called "davar evi" (cattle houses) welcome their relatives and neighbors from the villages. When the group already on the plateau and the arriving villagers meet, they salute each other by firing a single pistol shot and say, "Happy Newroz, and may your seed be plentiful and good for you." The arriving guests are settled in tents and are served refreshments. The meat of animals which has recently been sacrificed by their owners is eaten collectively. Entertainment is organized by the young people, who sing folk songs and play games, and this continues until late at night.

On the morning of Newroz, after prayers led by the head of the dervish order, people drink milk. The day is celebrated with candies, sherbet (non-alcoholic drinks made from sugar and spices or sugar and fruit juice) and other refreshments.

Around Tunceli on that day, men smear soot on their foreheads and go to the water springs. There they clean those marks off, pray and make wishes. Other practices aimed at warding off trouble and difficulty is also to be witnessed.

After mutual visits there is feasting, games are played, wishes are made and entertainments organized and big fires lit. On the night of 22-23rd March, folk plays are performed, and the games and chatting continue until late in the evening.

In a game called "pamuk igne" (cotton needle), two girls from the village perform their ritual ablution and go to a frozen water place with a pot in their hands. They break the ice and immerse the pot in the water, recite one small section of the holly Qoran seven times and remove the pot.

In Sebinkarahisar Township, it is believed that if someone bathes in a flowing river on the morning of March 22nd that will give him strength and good health.

In another practice, young girls or boys eat a salty pastry called "tuzlu gilik" on Wednesday night and discuss whom they will marry.

Among other Norouz traditions observed in Anatolia are "Mart ipligi" (March yarn) where pieces of cloth are tied to trees in order to protect them from the sun and "Mart bozumu" (harvest in March) which is especially seen in the Giresun area. In "Mart bozumu", water taken from the rivers is sprinkled over people’s houses. People wait for a visitor who is known as the bringer of good luck to come and say, “I am unfastening your March."

Another tradition seen in some regions of Anatolia in March is the tradition of "Black Wednesday," the first Wednesday in March. At this time, different ceremonies take place and various dishes are prepared and eaten communally. In Kars and the surrounding area at this time, traditional practices like listening at doors and "baca-baca" (chimney-chimney) take place. Household members give fruits to anyone who throws a shawl down the chimney.

In the practice called scratching chimneys, or placing stones in line with the "Black Wednesday" tradition, people place small stones around the chimney, each stone representing one member of the family. The bottoms of the stones are checked early in the morning. It is believed that if an insect is found under any of the stones, this will bring good fortune to the whole household.

It is known that the old calendar used to begin in March. In Turkey, the first 12 days of March represent the months of the year and the events to come during the year are believed to be foretold by the events that take place during these days. It is a tradition for seven specially selected couples only to eat things beginning with the letter S.

The festival was illegal until 2000 in Turkey, where most of the Kurds live, and Turkish forces arrested Kurds celebrating Newroz. In Newroz 1992 at least 70 people celebrating the festival were killed by Turkish security forces. However, today Turkey celebrates Newroz as a Turkish spring holiday although it is still considered as a potent symbol of Kurdish identity in Turkey. Newroz celebrations are usually organized by Kurdish cultural associations and pro-Kurdish political parties. Thus, the Democratic Society Party was a leading force in the organization of the 2006 Newroz events throughout Turkey. In recent years, the Newroz celebration gathers around 1 million participants in Diyarbakir, the biggest city of the Kurdish dominated Southeastern Turkey. As the Kurdish Norouz celebrations in Turkey often are theater for political messages, the events are frequently criticized for rather being political rallies than cultural celebrations.

Among the Turkish communities of Central Asia, the Azeris, Kazakhs, Khirghiz, Türkmens, Uzbeks and Uyghur Turks, the Anatolian Turks and the Balkan Turks have kept the Norouz tradition alive up to the present day.

Despite some differences in practice, Norouz has become a traditional festival and is observed among the Turkish communities of Central Asia, in Iran, Anatolia and the Balkans on the same dates and for very much the same social and specific reasons.

6. - Turkish Daily News - "EU enlargement chief sees tension ahead with Turkey":

ANKARA / 29 March 2006

Relations between the European Union and Turkey will face turbulence later this year over Cyprus and it will take deft diplomacy to avoid a “train crash,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Tuesday.

The EU has said Turkey, with which it began membership talks last October, must open its ports and airports to traffic from Greek Cyprus this year under an agreement extending its customs union to the 10 new countries that joined the 25-nation bloc in 2004.

Turkey has so far refused, linking the issue to an ending of an economic blockade of the Turkish-populated northern part of Cyprus, which the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot administration in Nicosia has prevented Brussels from easing.

“We may face a period of political tension in EU-Turkey relations,” Rehn said in an interview with Reuters news agency.

“The [European] commission is working to avoid a train crash at the end of the year. The Finnish presidency will have to use all its diplomatic skills, inherited from the period of neutral policy, to avoid this train crash.”

Finland will hold the EU's rotating presidency in the second half of this year.

Rehn said the commission, the EU's executive arm, had recommended opening the first detailed accession negotiations with Ankara on education, culture, science and research and it was now up to member states to agree a mandate.

In parallel with that process, Turkey had a timeline for abiding by its commitments under the so-called Ankara Protocol to its EU customs union, and the commission would assess progress “in the course of 200.”

“The sooner Turkey will open the ports and fully implement the protocol, the better. But we will have to present our assessment in the course of this year,” he said.

Rehn acknowledged that the decision to begin talks with Turkey, a sprawling, poor country on the Southeast edge of Europe with a mainly Muslim population of more than 70 million, had sharpened debate in the EU about the limits of expansion and the bloc's capacity to absorb newcomers.

A majority of EU citizens polled for the commission's regular Eurobarometer opinion surveys oppose Turkish membership, with up to 80 percent against in current EU president Austria.

However, Rehn said the crisis in the Muslim world over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in European newspapers had shown just how valuable a bridge Turkey could be.

“I wonder if there is still anybody in Europe who questions the strategic value of opening the accession negotiations with Turkey after what we have seen in the cartoon crisis and in the wider Middle East,” he said.

“I felt much better having [Turkish Foreign Minister] Abdullah Gül sitting next to me in Salzburg giving a very sensible and balanced intervention on European values including freedom of expression and respect of religious beliefs, than having a Turkish foreign minister agitating his troops in the streets of Ankara or Diyarbakir,” he added.