11 April 2007

1. "Four soldiers killed in clash with Kurdish rebels in eastern Turkey", four more soldiers of Turkish security forces were killed and one soldier wounded in an armed clash with militants of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in eastern Turkey, an official statement said on Tuesday.

2. "Tensions on the rise between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds", tensions between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds are escalating as each side warns the other not to interfere in the other's affairs.

3. "Kurdish leader says his statements were to counter Turkish threats", Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani on Tuesday said remarks he made in a television interview — that drew a heated and threatening retort from Turkey — were nearly two months old and had been taken out of their chronological context.

4. "Nobel laureates seek Turk-Armenian peace", fifty-three Nobel laureates are calling on Turkey and Armenia to open their border and resolve their differences over the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century.

5. "Fear of Precarity Mistaken as Nationalism", Asst. Prof. Kentel says the recent perception of "rising nationalism" in Tukey is in fact the projection of a fear, resulting from the dissolution of the nation state and all promises related to it by the process of globalization.

6. "Same Case Two Courts Two Different Rulings", an Istanbul court condemns Cumhuriyet daily for quoting a main opposition party members criticism about PM Erdogan while another court acquitted Radikal daily on the same allegations. Erdogan urged damages for being insulted by those remarks.

1. - Xinhua - "Four soldiers killed in clash with Kurdish rebels in eastern Turkey":

10 April 2007

Four more soldiers of Turkish security forces were killed and one soldier wounded in an armed clash with militants of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in eastern Turkey, an official statement said on Tuesday.

The statement released by Tunceli Governor's Office said that three PKK militants were also killed in the clash in PuLumur town of Tunceli province linking Kigi town of Bingol province on Monday.

"The PKK militants opened fire at the Turkish security forces when the latter urged the former to surrender", leaving four soldiers and three PKK militants dead and one soldier injured.

On Sunday, four deaths were reported from the security forces when they clashed with the PKK militants in Yayladere area of Bingol province, said the semi-official Anatolia news agency.

Turkish army has launched large-scale operations against PKK since the beginning of this spring, when the harsh climate there turned to mild and was in favor of the military operations.

At least 3,000 Turkish soldiers, backed by helicopters and Turkey's village guard militia, were taking part in the operations in the mountains of Sirnak province near the Iraqi border.

The continuing hot pursuit of PKK members by Turkish military showed great determination of Turkish government on crack down on Kurdish rebel actions in its border area with Iraq.

PKK launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

The intensity of the fighting eased after PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured and imprisoned in 1999, but fighting has flared up again in the past years.

Turkish Land Forces Commander General Ilker Basbug said on March 10 that PKK members infiltrated into Turkey from northern Iraq, where about 3,500 to 3,800 PKK members were located.

Amid constant bloody clashes between Turkish troops and PKK Kurdish rebels operating out of northern Iraq, Ankara is weighing up a cross-border incursion to attack PKK bases.

2. - CBC News - "Tensions on the rise between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds":

10 April 2007

Tensions between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds are escalating as each side warns the other not to interfere in the other's affairs.

On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Iraqi Kurds that if they meddled in southeastern Turkey, where the Kurdish majority is fighting Turkish security forces, "the price for them will be very high."

He was responding to Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, who said Iraqi Kurds would retaliate for any Turkish interference in northern Iraq by stirring up trouble in southeastern Turkey.

"He's out of place," Erdogan said of Barzani. "He'll be crushed under his words."

On Saturday, Barzani gave an interview to al-Arabiyah television in which he said, "Turkey is not allowed to intervene in the Kirkuk issue and if it does, we will interfere in Diyarbakir's issues and other cities in Turkey."

Diyarbakir is the largest city in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast.
Continue Article

The war of words between the leaders was echoed on the ground at the funeral of a Turkish soldier on Monday. Thousands of Turks chanted about being martyrs who will live forever and crush the Kurdish traitors, reporter Dorian Jones told CBC.

The funeral was for one of eight soldiers killed over the weekend by the Turkish Kurdish group, the PKK. The PKK has many bases in the mountainous Iraqi Kurdish region.

Ankara accuses the Iraqi Kurdish leadership and the United States of failing to reign in the separatists who are fighting for a homeland inside Turkey.

The funeral marks the start of the widely expected resurgence in fighting which traditionally follows the melting of winter snows.

On the Iraq side of the border, the oil-rich city of Kirkuk has a large minority of ethnic Turks as well as Christians, Shia and Sunni Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians.

Kurds, many of whom returned to Kirkuk after the fall of Saddam Hussein four years ago, want to incorporate the city into their nearby autonomous region.

It is now believed that Kurds form the majority in the city and that a local referendum on attaching Kirkuk to the Kurdish autonomous zone would pass easily. The referendum is scheduled for November.

Tensions are sure to rise even higher as the date draws near. Ankara fears Kirkuk oil wealth would bankroll an independent state, which could fuel secessionist demands from its own Kurdish population.

3. - AP - "Kurdish leader says his statements were to counter Turkish threats":

BAGHDAD / 10 April 2007

Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani on Tuesday said remarks he made in a television interview — that drew a heated and threatening retort from Turkey — were nearly two months old and had been taken out of their chronological context.

Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, said the interview, aired Saturday by the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television, had been recorded on Feb. 26, at a time when Turkey was openly challenging Iraq's government to delay a vote on the fate of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Kurds are hoping a constitutionally mandated referendum, which must be held by year's end, will allow the Kurds to attach Kirkuk and its oil riches to the Kurdish semiautonomous region just to the north.

The city had a majority Kurdish population at the time of the last census in 1957 but since then, during Saddam Hussein's rule, became heavily populated by Arabs encouraged to move to the city by the dictator in a bid force out the Kurdish population. He believed Kurds disloyal and aligned with neighboring Iran.

Kirkuk also has a sizable Turkmen population in the region. Turkmen are ethnic Turks for which Ankara feels responsibility and who were the majority in the city when it was under the Ottoman Empire.

Since Saddam's ouster by American forces four years ago, tens of thousands of Kurds have returned to Kirkuk and the central government just decreed it would enforce a program to voluntarily resettle and compensate those Arabs who migrated to Kirkuk after 1958.

Barzani's remarks in the interview struck an extremely sensitive nerve in Turkey, where more than 37,000 people have been killed in fighting between Turkish security forces and Kurdish rebels since 1984, most of them in the southeastern region bordering Iraq.

Ankara is concerned that Kurdish control over Kirkuk and its oil riches will further embolden Iraqi Kurds to seek independence and could incite the estimated 14 million Kurds in Turkey into outright rebellion.

On Tuesday, Turkey's senior government and military officials discussed possible political and economic measures against Iraq if the country fails to move against separatist Kurdish guerrillas fighting Turkey.

A statement issued at the end of a four-hour National Security Council meeting Tuesday said Turkey will closely watch Iraq's response to a Turkish request that it take urgent measures against the guerrillas, who stage cross-border attacks on Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.

"My comments were in response to Turkish threats," Barzani explained in a speech in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil Tuesday.

In the interview that was aired Saturday, Barzani said, "Turkey must not intervene in the Kirkuk issue, and if it does, we will interfere in Diyarbakir other cities in Turkey." Diyarbakir is the largest city in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast.

Two days after the interview was broadcast, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Iraqi Kurds against meddling in Turkey's southeastern regions. He said the "price would be very high."

The Turkish leader further said Barzani was "out of place" and would be "crushed under his words."

On Tuesday, Barzani shot back that "we heard the Turkish officials comments and threats and sometimes the use of impolite language. ... I don't understand how a country allows itself to interfere in the affairs of others and become upset when others want to interfere in their affairs."

"We don't threaten anyone and we don't accept threats from anyone," Barzani said.

Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency reported Monday that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, called Erdogan to tell he had been saddened by the rising tensions.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Barzani's comments in the Al-Arabiya interview were "unhelpful, and they certainly do not further the goal of greater Turkish-Iraqi cooperation on issues of common concern, including fighting the PKK." The PKK is the Kurdistan Workers Party, the heart of the separatist movement in Turkey.

Besides Sunni and Shiite Arabs and Kurds, Christians, Armenians and Assyrians live in the ancient city of Kirkuk.

4. - AP - "Nobel laureates seek Turk-Armenian peace":

NEW YORK / 10 April 2007

Fifty-three Nobel laureates are calling on Turkey and Armenia to open their border and resolve their differences over the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century.

In a letter released Monday by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, the group urged Turkey to end discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities and to abolish a section of its penal code which makes it a criminal offense to denigrate Turkishness.

They said Armenia should "reverse its own authoritarian course, allow free and fair elections and respect human rights."

The letter referred to the Jan. 19 slaying of Hrant Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent who edited the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. The editor, who had made enemies among nationalist Turks by applying the genocide label to the mass killings of Armenians toward the end of the Ottoman Empire, was killed outside his office in Istanbul.

The laureates said the best tribute to Dink would be "through service to his life's work safeguarding freedom of expression and fostering reconciliation between Turks and Armenians."

The signers included Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner; J.M. Coetzee, the 2003 winner in literature; Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Betty Williams, the 1976 peace prize winners; and Wole Soyinka, the 1986 winner in literature.

"We do feel strongly that Turks and Armenians need to interact with each other," said David L. Phillips, executive director of the Wiesel Foundation. "The more they engage and trade personal stories, the deeper will be their understanding."

Turkey has denied the genocide claims and said Armenians were killed or displaced in civil unrest during the disarray surrounding the Ottoman Empire's collapse.

Calls to the Turkish mission to the United Nations and the Republic of Armenia's permanent representative to the United Nations seeking comment were not immediately returned.

U.S. lawmakers introduced a resolution in Congress earlier this year urging the U.S. government to recognize the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians at the end of World War I as genocide.

5. - Bianet - "Fear of Precarity Mistaken as Nationalism":

Asst. Prof. Kentel says the recent perception of "rising nationalism" in Tukey is in fact the projection of a fear, resulting from the dissolution of the nation state and all promises related to it by the process of globalization.

ISTANBUL / 10 April 2007 / by Tolga Korkut

Professor of sociology at Istanbul Bilgi University, Ferhat Kentel says that the common perception of rising nationalism in Turkey is false in a manner that the determining sentiment in contemporary Turkish society is "fear" as a reaction to the dissolution of the nation-state and and its presumptions by globalization.

Kentel revealed the results of a recent research on nationalism in Turkey and he concludes that local identities and community values are gaining strength as a result of this fear, with a great tendency to exclude "others".

He defines two reasons for this trend to be conceived as "rising nationalism":

* Nationalism is the most common word. People lack any other concept to explain themselves. An example is a man who said, "I'm a Çorum -a town in mid Anatolia- nationalist".

* Nationalist discourse and symbols are widespread, so they're used more often to express oneself.

Kentel interviewed 90 people in 16 cities around Turkey for this research, which will be published by Turkey's Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV).

You say that it's fear that's rising in society, not nationalism. People are afraid of what exactly?

They fear from the uncertainties, insecurities, anxieties brought by an ever fast changing world. People experience this transformation as a constant attack on their value systems.

Concepts like "nation-state", "national identity" which we feel comfortable to hold are going down. Modern nation state had a promise founded on progression which would benefit each and every one of us but now this promise is not realizing.

Is it globalization that triggers this transformation?

Globalization introduces an ambiguity to all boundaries. Above all, the belonging foreseen by the national identity has been damaged within this process. With new forms and identities rising, the homogeneity presupposed by a national identity doesn't look possible anymore. Ethnical, religious, local identities are coming forward. Globalization is the most comprehensive word to describe this transformation.

Does this process affect everyone in the same manner?

All are affected but in a different manner and with a different intensity. If you're a worker, if you're living on the outskirts of Istanbul, it's different; in Kayseri, Erzurum it's different.

But even the homogeneity asserted by the nation state wasn't fulfilled; such differences hid within. Now, the promise itself is challenged.

Does the transformation of the capitalism cause this?

It's an important factor. We can never say that capitalism was bounded by national frontiers but the national capital and its relations have also been transformed.

Social securities based on citizenship, protective frames of the social welfare state have been cut off. As a result, now there are social classes who feel insecure and unprotected. There is an issue of social injustice. Both ideological and economical protection of the nation state has been diminished. This brings a risky life.

So everybody turned to cultural values to eliminate this feeling of insecurity and risks. Religion, Turkishness, respect, destiny... Since long time, those are the concepts we use to make a meaning out of this world. This leads to a community spirit to build up and we take this as "nationalism". Everybody knows "nationalism", so uses it to cover such needs.

Does the utilization of nationalist symbols contribute to this trend?

Symbols render the complex as basic. They provide some kind of a guarantee, a sens of sustainability. People replace their own fragmentation with the continuity of those. With the symbols of mosque, flag, Ataturk etc. And they're commonplace.

But different symbols are at stake in different places, cities. Both a kemalist in Izmir and a conservative islamist in Kars use symbols like the national flag to express themselves but in fact they're not alike at all.

What do we have to do then to overcome this situation?

Clear solutions aren't possible. We've to find ways to communicate, to understand each other. An anti-nationalist discourse wouldn't solve the problem. We have to problematize the issue.

A new language, which would enfold the ones different to us should be established. Because all those we encounter are a representation of the troubles people are facing. It's a twisted consciousness regarding those troubles.

But a new language isn't enough, social justice must be reestablished. This is the function of politics, we need new ways of politics which would restore social justice in the society.

And all these aren't limited to Turkey. For example, in France right now Nicholas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal both race their nationalisms for the same reasons. The immigrants living at French banlieues are feeling the same.

6. - Bianet - "Same Case Two Courts Two Different Rulings":

An Istanbul court condemns Cumhuriyet daily for quoting a main opposition party members criticism about PM Erdogan while another court acquitted Radikal daily on the same allegations. Erdogan urged damages for being insulted by those remarks.

ISTANBUL / 9 April 2007 / by Erol Onderoglu

Two courts gave opposite rulings in two similar cases where two newspapers reported the same declaration by main opposition People's Republican Party (CHP) parliamentary group vice chair Haluk Koç about PM Erdogan.

Cumhuriyet daily chief editor Ibrahim Yildiz has been condemned to 23 months imprisonment by an Istanbul court, following PM Erdogan's complaint that Koç's speech included insult to his personality.

On another account, an Ankara court acquitted Radikal daily administrators on the same allegations.

Koç had said that PM Erdogan "is twisting the facts" -in a less formal way-, criticizing the PM for not declaring his assets during a press conference, which was quoted by both newspapers.

The prosecution rejected PM Erdogan's complaint about Haluk Koç.

But Sisli 2nd Court of First Instance condemned Cumhuriyet daily for quoting his words following the public prosecutor's demand.