19 April 2007

1. "Turkish policemen cleared oin killings of Kurdish father and son", a Turkish court on Wednesday acquitted four policemen of the controversial killing three years ago of a Kurdish boy and his father in southeastern Turkey, the Anatolia news agency said. Police said Kaymaz and his son were gunned down in an operation against rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but local activists and neighbours said the two were unarmed civilians.

2. "Nationalism suspected in 3 deaths in Turkey", change is opening up Turkish society, and a nationalist fringe - xenophobes for whom the ethnic and religious purity of the Turkish state is worth killing for - have been using violence against its proponents more often in recent months.

3. "Turkish PM to announce presidential candidate next week", Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he would announce his party's presidential candidate next week as the secular nation nervously waits to see if the former Islamist will run himself.

4. "Report: U.S. backs militant Kurdish group", U.S. officials ignored the presence of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party in northern Iraq to encourage the PKK to launch attacks in Iran, a report said.

5. "Oil victim of Turkey, Kurd fight", Iraq's already-fragile northern oil sector could be the victim - along with Iraqis and Turks - if Ankara gives the green light for troops to invade northern Iraq on the hunt for the Kurdistan Workers Party.

6. "US says 'no' again to Turkey's cross border operation on N. Iraq", US spokesman of foreign affairs Sean McCormack said 'the U.S cares about Iraq's territorial integrity.'

1. - AFP - "Turkish policemen cleared oin killings of Kurdish father and son":

ANKARA / 18 April 2007

A Turkish court on Wednesday acquitted four policemen of the controversial killing three years ago of a Kurdish boy and his father in southeastern Turkey, the Anatolia news agency said.

The acquittal came after the prosecution argued that the defendants acted in self-defence in the November 2004 shooting of Ahmet Kaymaz and his 12-year-old son, Ugur, outside their house in Kiziltepe, in Mardin province.

The indictment originally called for up to six years in prison for the four officers on the grounds that their action went beyond the limits of self-defence.

Lawyers for the victim's relatives said they would appeal the sentence.

Police said Kaymaz and his son were gunned down in an operation against rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but local activists and neighbours said the two were unarmed civilians.

A parliamentary investigation in 2004 accused police of "heavy negligence" and concluded that Kaymaz and his son could have been captured unharmed.

The incident had created a furore in Turkey and the trial was moved from Mardin to the western city of Eskisehir for security reasons.

Turkish security forces have faced widespread accusations of human rights abuses in their fight against the PKK, which took up arms for self-rule in the southeast in 1984.

But the authorities have been reluctant to look into such cases and convictions of security personnel for torture or other abuses have been rare.

Cases of rights abuses are seen as a test for Turkey's commitment to respect democratic norms in its bid to join the European Union.

2. - International Herald Tribune - "Nationalism suspected in 3 deaths in Turkey":

ISTANBUL / 18 April 2007 / by Sabrina Tavernise

Three people were found with their throats slit in a publishing house in eastern Turkey that had printed Bibles and other Christian literature, the authorities said Wednesday. One of the victims was a German citizen.

The authorities detained five men for questioning, three 19-year-olds and two 20-year-olds, but did not publicly identify them. However, the publishing house in Malatya, a town with a nationalist reputation, has had trouble in the past over a shipment of printed Bibles, and it seemed likely that the attackers had a nationalist agenda.

Change is opening up Turkish society, and a nationalist fringe - xenophobes for whom the ethnic and religious purity of the Turkish state is worth killing for - have been using violence against its proponents more often in recent months.

Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian descent killed this winter was one of the victims. A Roman Catholic priest killed last year was another.

The trend is worrying for the government, whose prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been pushing hard for Turkey to gain entry to the European Union.

Some European politicians have opposed Turkey's membership arguing that Turkey does not fit culturally or religiously, and the killings of Christians, though rare, do not help Turkey's case.

The victims were found seated in chairs, their hands and feet bound, said Halil Ibrahim Dasoz, a government official in Malatya in comments on Turkish NTV television. One died later from his wounds. He had also been stabbed in the back and stomach.

The state-run Anatolian agency identified the victims as Tilman Ekkehart Geske, 46; Necati Aydin, 35; and Ugur Yuksel, whose age was not given. The German ambassador, Eckart Cuntz, confirmed through a spokesman that one of the victims was a German citizen. He declined to give further details.

Reuters quoted Carlos Madrigal, an evangelical pastor in Istanbul, saying that he knew the victims and that they were evangelical Protestants.

The killings took place in the building where the publishing house was based, the Turkish interior minister, Abdulkadir Aksu, said at a news conference on national television.

The five suspects were apprehended quickly, because a police station was located close by, Aksu said. Several of the young men were carrying weapons. Another, who had broken his leg in a jump from a window, was also detained. NTV television broadcast footage of authorities rushing four young men down the stairwell of a building.

The recent nationalist attacks are ghosts from Turkey's past. Malatya once had a heavy Armenian population, but lost it in the bloody founding of the Turkish state, which was trying to scrub the nation free of minority identity to build a new Turkey.

It encouraged nationalists to resettle in the area in an effort to preserve Turkish identity there.

"Nationalism is on the rise in Turkey," said Ali Bulac, a Turkish newspaper columnist in Istanbul. "It stands against the U.S. and the EU."

The Anatolian news agency reported that the young men had been staying at a youth hostel in town, preparing for university entrance exams. One had been thrown out for getting into a fight. It also reported that they had checked out of the hostel recently and that a note incriminating them in the killing was found on one of them.

The publishing house had changed its name after having trouble with nationalist groups that had forcefully blocked a shipment of bibles, Meftun Kilinc, a reporter for ERTV, a television station in Malatya, said in a telephone interview. She said the new name was Zirve Publishing.

Turkish nationalists tout their Muslim identity, but often have more in common with hard-line secularists of the state elite than with Islamists. The distinction is important because of the broad debate now roiling Turkish society over the role of religion and its proper relation to the state. That disagreement has come sharply into focus in recent weeks as the country faces an election to its presidency, the post safeguarding secularism.

Erdogan, whose political background is Islamic, may try to compete for it, a possibility that has hard-line secularists worried.

3. - AFP - "Turkish PM to announce presidential candidate next week":

ANKARA / 19 April 2007 / by Sibel Utku Bilal

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he would announce his party's presidential candidate next week as the secular nation nervously waits to see if the former Islamist will run himself.

"I will announce it (the candidate) on the day when my party holds its parliamentary group meeting," Erdogan told reporters, adding that this would be either next Tuesday or Wednesday.

But he did not say whether he would be the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) candidate, a prospect that has struck at the heart of this Muslim country's secular identity, with 500,000 people rallying in Ankara over the weekend to urge the former Islamist to back off.

Although Erdogan has disowned his Islamist past and now describes himself as a "conservative democrat," opponents still suspect him of seeking a secret Islamist agenda.

The ten-day period to register presidential candidates ends at midnight next Wednesday. No one has registered so far.

Erdogan was speaking after the AKP's executive board gave him full authority at a day-long meeting to decide on their presidential candidate.

"I should underline straight away that no candidate names were discussed," Edibe Sozen, the AKP deputy chairwoman told reporters here after the eight-hour meeting.

"The AKP executive board has given the chairman full authority to finalize the process and consultations with civic bodies will continue until the last day of registration" of presidential candidates on April 25, she added.

The AKP candidate is virtually certain to win the race thanks to the party's comfortable majority in parliament, which elects the president.

An opposition leader who discussed the presidential elections with Erdogan Tuesday said he believed Erdogan would not run.

"I got the impression that he would not be a candidate," Mehmet Agar, head of the small center-right True Path Party, told the Sabah newspaper.

Opponents say that with Erdogan in the presidential palace, the AKP, which already dominates parliament and local administrations, will seize the last secular bastion of the state and advance an Islamist agenda.

Along with ceremonial duties, the president has the final word on appointing senior government officials and a right to reject bills enacted by parliament.

Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a hardline secularist whose seven-year term expires on May 16, has often put the brakes on the AKP.

He has sent back to parliament laws he considered breaches of the secular constitution and blocked the appointment of officials seen as Islamist government cronies.

The AKP, offshoot of a now-banned Islamist party, has disowned its roots, pledged commitment to secularism and carried out a series of democracy reforms to boost Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

But it has come under fire from those who say it is still pursuing Islamist ambitions.

Erdogan, a practicing Muslim who was once convicted for religious sedition, is strongly opposed to a long-standing ban on the Islamic headscarf in government offices and universities.

But he has failed to abolish it, wary of the secular establishment that sees the veil as a symbol of political Islam.

His government has also made unsuccessful attempts to criminalise adultery, restrict places that serve alcohol and ease access to universities for graduates of religious schools.

4. - UPI - "Report: U.S. backs militant Kurdish group":

ANKARA / 18 April 2007

U.S. officials ignored the presence of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party in northern Iraq to encourage the PKK to launch attacks in Iran, a report said.

The New Anatolian, an English-language Turkish newspaper, said the Bush administration actively courted PKK leaders and Iranian opposition groups based in Iraq to stir up trouble inside Iran. The Kurdistan Workers Party is a designated terrorist group in Turkey, and Ankara has pressured the United States and Iraq to crack down on its bases in Iraq's northern Kandil Mountains, the report said.

Iraq Monday handed over to Turkish authorities two PKK deserters who surrendered to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Today's Zaman, Turkey's third-largest newspaper, said.

Turkey has warned it will take military action against the outlawed guerrilla group if the United States and Iraq don't.

5. - UPI - "Oil victim of Turkey, Kurd fight":

WASHINGTON / 18 April 2007 / by Ben Lando

Iraq's already-fragile northern oil sector could be the victim - along with Iraqis and Turks - if Ankara gives the green light for troops to invade northern Iraq on the hunt for the Kurdistan Workers Party.

The PKK - the party's Turkish acronym - is considered a terrorist organization by the US. It is accused of slipping into Turkey from bases in Iraq's Qandil Mountains to plant mines and detonate bombs. Sixteen PKK fighters were killed in the Kurdish area of Turkey Sunday and Monday by Turkish soldiers.

Turkey has threatened to invade Iraq before - and did numerous times in the decades before the 2003 invasion - to chase the PKK. (It also issued such threats if Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region declared independence.)

But exchanges over the past two weeks between Turkish military officials and politicians and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leaders have escalated, including threats Iraqi Kurds would interfere in Kurdish Turkey if Turkey interfered in the politics surrounding Kirkuk.

Kirkuk is officially outside the KRG area. Historically, Kurds were the majority with Turkmen, Christian, and Arab inhabitants. Most Kurds were forced out by Saddam Hussein. The KRG is demanding the referendum outlined in the 2005 constitution be held by the end of this year to decide whether Kirkuk, with its large amounts of oil reserves, is annexed. Turkey, Iran, and Syria fear this will embolden independence-minded Kurds in their countries.

The top Turkish general said he favors military action in northern Iraq, though he added it was a political decision to be made.

Alsumaria TV reports KRG President Masoud Barzani called for Iraqi Kurdish troops to line its border with Turkey.

"If the Turks intervene and there are pitched battles in the north - the Turks chasing the PKK and the Iraqi Kurds taking a stand against it - then clearly it is bound to affect not just the transportation but also the production of oil," said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkey and Caspian oil expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is director of the Turkey Project.

Most of Iraq's 2 million barrels a day of production are pumped from oilfields in the south, though more than a third of Iraq's 115 billion barrels of proven reserves are located in the north. Iraq's entire oil infrastructure needs major investment to update its aging system to produce at full capacity. And while violence in most of the country prevents such investment - as does the lack of a hydrocarbons law governing the oil resources, including possible foreign investment - the KRG is ready.

With an unofficial slogan of "Tourism not Terrorism," which a business leader promoted at a reconstruction conference in Washington last fall, the KRG has signed numerous oil development and other economic deals - including with Turkish firms.

Although investment in the north of Iraq is easier to shore up than investment in the more violent parts of the country, the new bluster across its northern border is a sure threat.

"It is clearly a short-term loss for the Iraqi oil industry, whatever happens, whether the Turks invade or just threaten to invade," said Alex Turkeltaub, managing director of Frontier Strategy Group, a global natural-resource consultancy. "It will certainly harm production if there were military action."

All of Iraq's oil exports - from which Iraq funds 93 percent of its federal budget - are shipped from the port of Basra in the south. A pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, Turkey, is attacked so often when it dips into Sunni areas it is considered inoperable. (Royal Dutch Shell, in partnership with the state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corp., wants to build another more direct pipeline.)

"The sector is so bad that you do not need to do much to hurt it now," said Gal Luft, co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, which publishes the Iraq Pipeline Watch Web site that tracks attacks on Iraq's oil sector (at least 399 from June 2003 to Feb. 27, 2007). "Anything that adds uncertainty or lack of security will just make things worse."

The Turkish army is reportedly massing on the border and making special forces moves into Iraq, according to The Jamestown Foundation. Aliriza said the US, European Union, Arab states, and Iraq would all oppose an incursion, though, which Ankara must weigh heavily.

"Nothing can be ruled out indefinitely," said Yasar Yakis, former Turkish foreign minister, a founder of the ruling Justice and Development Party, and current chairman of the parliament's European Union committee. "Turkey's security and stability is at stake, but a military solution has to be regarded always as the last resort," he told United Press International Monday during a Washington visit.

"Neither Iraq nor America is doing enough" to stop the PKK attacks, Yakis said.

Qubad Talabani, the KRG's Washington representative, called for dialogue, echoing many Iraqi and Turkish politicians.

"We are neighbors, brothers even," he said. "Iraqi Kurdistan today stands as Iraq's only stable and successful region, and that stability and prosperity will be seriously jeopardized if Turkey invades Iraqi Kurdistan.

"Make no mistake about it, however," Talabani said. "We are ultimately the guardians of our people's safety and security. It is our responsibility, and those of Kurdistan's defense forces, to protect our people, and we will do so if they are threatened in any way."

6. - Sabah - "US says 'no' again to Turkey's cross border operation on N. Iraq":

18 April 2007

US spokesman of foreign affairs Sean McCormack said 'the U.S cares about Iraq's territorial integrity.'

During his routine press meeting on Tuesday, McCormack once again said the U.S does not approve of Turkey's possible cross border operation on N. Iraq. 'The United States gives full weight to Iraq's territorial integrity,' he said.

Stating that Syria and Iran have no intention of attacking Turkey at the moment, McCormack indicated that the real problem is between Iraq and Turkey and both countries should work together to solve this problem.