2 April 2007

1. "DTP insists on independent Ocalan checkup", the pro-Kurdish Democratic Turkey Party (DTP) on Friday reiterated its call for an independent delegation to check on whether Abdullah Ocalan, inmate leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has been poisoned.

2. "Investigate Generals' Plans of a Coup", weekly Nokta magazine reveals plans to stage a military coup in 2004 by publishing a prominent general's diaries which quote relations between army officials and journalists, business people and others in great detail. "Investigation needed" says Alatas.

3. "Turkish punk song evokes popular frustration, but angers the state", last year, a Turkish teenager made a home video of himself lip-synching a punk rock song that blasted Turkey's tough system of university enrollment, and slapped the recording on YouTube. To some, it was a harmless act of adolescent rebellion. For the state, it was a threat in a country with strict limits on expression.

4. "Iraq's plan to relocate Arabs from Kurdish areas stirs new worries", Iraq's government has endorsed plans to relocate thousands of Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk as part of Saddam Hussein's campaign to force ethnic Kurds out of the oil-rich city, in an effort to undo one of the former dictator's most enduring and hated policies.

5. "Fire Damages Kurdish Centre in Brussels", Police fired water cannon and skirmished with up to 250 youths after a Kurdish community centre in Brussels was set on fire.

6. "Three Kurdish rebels killed in southeast Turkey", Turkish soldiers killed three militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) during clashes in the country's restive southeast, local officials said Sunday.

1. - The New Anatolian - "DTP insists on independent Ocalan checkup":

ANKARA / 31 March 2007

The pro-Kurdish Democratic Turkey Party (DTP) on Friday reiterated its call for an independent delegation to check on whether Abdullah Ocalan, inmate leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has been poisoned.

Concerning allegations that Ocalan was poisoned, a final declaration of the party assembly stated that a satisfactory reply regarding Ocalan, who it said launched the cease-fire process and had a "remarkable effect" on a solution to the problem, has yet to be made. "This adversely affects the cease-fire and whole disarmament process," the statement added.

The poisoning claim was produced by lawyers of Ocalan earlier this month, and the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party government sent a team of experts to the island to see whether the claims were true. The medical report said that Ocalan was not poisoned, while a former army general underlined that there is no such risk for Ocalan given the high security around him, but this failed to satisfy the party.

"In line with the demand of human rights and non-governmental organizations in Turkey, an independent delegation should be sent in order to probe the claims that Ocalan was poisoned, and the results of this should be announced to the public without delay," the party said.

The statement also claimed that the this month's Newroz celebrations were held in a festive atmosphere due to the supervision of the DTP.

The declaration said: "Our people expressed their social, cultural and political demands in a mass enthusiasm in Newroz and showed that they claim to be the owners of the values, initiatives and institutions that they have set up with determination."

It criticized recent detentions and arrests of DTP administrators, saying they are the result of impatience and illegal policies towards the party and free thought.

Saying that May's presidential election was also evaluated at the party assembly, the declaration said: "The president should be have full impartiality and an understanding that claims to grant all rights to our citizens."

The declaration added: "For continuation of the cease-fire process, the active efforts of NGOs, intellectuals and other democratic powers will make more contributions to ensuring peace in the country."

2. - Bianet - "Investigate Generals' Plans of a Coup":

Weekly Nokta magazine reveals plans to stage a military coup in 2004 by publishing a prominent general's diaries which quote relations between army officials and journalists, business people and others in great detail. "Investigation needed" says Alatas.

ISTANBUL / 30 March 2007 / by Tolga Korkut

Turkey's Human Rights Association (IHD) chair Yusuf Alatas criticized the high ranking army generals' plans to overthrow the government with a coup in 2004, as revealed in former Navy chief Gen. Özden Örnek's diaries published in this weeks Nokta magazine.

"If true, this constitutes the crime of intending to overhaul the constitution. These allegations should be immediately and thoroughly investigated".

Two different plans

Örnek's diaries quote in great detail how four major generals of the time conspired for a coup d'etat.

They also include a separate plan by chief of the gendarmerie, Gen. Sener Eruygur to overthrow the government and bypass the parliament.

Published texts constitute how the accused general planned to move step by step regarding relations with the media, MP's, political party leaders etc.

Although Gen. Örnek denied all allegations saying that he never kept a diary and all published texts are made-up, politicians and NGO's criticized the possibility of such an attempt.

On the other hand, alleged diaries give information about relations with key figures in media, business circles and politics as well as state officials in great detail.

At some point, Örnek even criticizes his fellow generals and the army's lack of contact with the public.

"Others must also be investigated"

Alatas urged an investigation into the allegations: "Courts must look into these serious allegations and reveal the authenticity of them".

Furthermore, he noted that a parliamentary commission must be established on the issue.

"I would be naive to think that the plans for a coup could be limited to four generals. During the investigation, all officials at all levels who are related to those plans should come into daylight. They should also face persecution".

Alatas says bar associations, which are bound to protect the constitutional system by definition, should also act. Lastly, all citizens have the duty to react to such, he added.

Army intervention normalized

Nokta's article fits perfectly well within the web of relations between civilians, army officials, and journalists etc. who featured often in the "Kemalist-nationalist" movement gaining ground in recent years.

In the light of these scandalous plans, editor-in-chief of the magazine, Alper Görmüs points out the fact that there's sound reason to suspect the authenticity and sincerity of civic reactions, notably several street demonstrations which took place at the time.

"We can say that: Army intervenes into politics using 'civilians' so convey the legitimacy of its opposition to the government, deemed as Islamist and as a result anti-Kemalist".

Retired Gen. Eruygur, who features in both coup d'etat plans, is the chair of Kemalist Thought Association (ADD) now.

"This not a unique example" says Alatas. "There are many ex-army officials in nationalist/racist groups and associations. This is an important indication regarding the army's approach".

He thinks that the lack of a reconciliation in Turkey with its past contributes to the environment where new coups can flourish. "We witnessed the postmodern coup on February 28, 1997. No general has been held responsible for that".

Same applies to three others military coups in the past. "The main problem is when democracy is reconstituted, the crimes of the past have never been investigated. This apathy instigates new ones".

3. - AP - "Turkish punk song evokes popular frustration, but angers the state":

ISTANBUL / 31 March 2007

Last year, a Turkish teenager made a home video of himself lip-synching a punk rock song that blasted Turkey's tough system of university enrollment, and slapped the recording on YouTube.

To some, it was a harmless act of adolescent rebellion. For the state, it was a threat in a country with strict limits on expression.

Now the band that released the song faces charges of insulting state employees and will go on trial May 2 in the Turkish capital, Ankara. If convicted, the five musicians, along with their manager and a former band member, face up to 18 months in jail, although they could get off with a fine or a warning.

The quandary of the band "Deli," or "Crazy" in Turkish, reveals Turkey's contradiction in seeking European standards -- and EU membership -- while tolerating little criticism of state institutions and national identity. The conflict has been a part of Turkish society since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of the modern nation, took power after the Ottoman Empire fell in the early 20th century.

Several intellectuals, notably Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk and slain ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, were prosecuted on charges of "insulting Turkishness" for comments on mass killings of Armenians a century ago. In early March, YouTube was banned for two days in Turkey because of videos that allegedly insulted Atatürk. Deli might have eluded state scrutiny if not for the posting on YouTube. The clip shows a teenager bopping around and making obscene gestures against a blank backdrop while lip-synching the song. The minor, identified in media reports only by his first name, Hakan, will take the exam this year.

Hakan's video logged hundreds of thousands of hits and elevated the song to prominence among young Turks who dread the university exam, and many older Turks who viewed the experience as a trauma.

"It seems we have put our finger on the right point," Cengiz Sari, the wiry, bearded vocalist of the band, said in a cramped recording studio in Istanbul. "This is clear in the reaction we got."

The song is called "ÖSYM," the Turkish acronym for The Student Selection and Placement Center, the state institution that decides which students go to university, based on a three-hour exam every June on subjects including language, biology and mathematics. The process is highly competitive, reflecting a relative dearth of opportunities in higher education; a complex scoring system contributes to frustrations. In 2006, there were university spots for less than one-third of the 1.5 million students who took the test. Some students pay for private tuition to boost chances of passing, and those who fail try again the following year, or seek jobs in a nation of more than 70 million with 10 percent unemployment.

The pressure is so intense that a newspaper columnist once described students who took the exam as "war veterans."

"In Turkey, as in most other countries, the demand for higher education far exceeds the places available,» the university placement center said in a 2006 booklet. It said it aimed to select students «in a fair and economical manner while meeting the necessary deadlines," and noted efforts to impose objective, centralized testing over the decades.

The lyrics of "ÖSYM," a maelstrom of manic drumming and grinding guitar riffs, are a classic ode against the establishment:

"It has always been like this but it needs to be stopped,

Life should not be a prison because of an exam,

Three hours, a hundred and eighty questions,

May God protect my mind."

It goes on:

"I have got lost,

You have ruined my future,

I am going to tell you one thing,

Shove that exam..."

Mild stuff, by the standards of Western popular culture. Turkey, although democratic, has a history of violent conflict and military involvement in politics, and the state retains robust powers to ward off perceived threats. A popular attack on a pillar of the state, the education system, was too much to bear. Turkish media reported Prof. Ünal Yarimagan, chairman of the university placement system, as saying he enjoyed the YouTube video, but asked lawyers to investigate anyway.

"We opened the case and now it is in the hands of justice," state prosecutor Kürsat Kayral said.

The Deli musicians, in their early 20s, don't look like stereotypical punks. No spiked hair, lip or nose studs, drug addictions or taste for vandalism. Instead, they are polite, mild-mannered and irreverent. All passed the university exam, and some are still in school. Vocalist Sari, who is studying to become an art teacher, says they come from a tradition of satirical songcraft, citing Cem Karaca, a Turkish rocker whose anthems in the 1970s earned him an arrest warrant. He was in West Germany at the time, and only returned home after charges were dropped. Karaca died in 2004.

Deli will release its first album in April, and didn't include the song "ÖSYM" to avoid controversy.

"We are not EMI or Sony, with big lawyers to defend us," said Bahadir Dikeçligil, a director of the alternative label, Kadikoy Müzik Yapim, that is releasing the album online and as a compact disc.

Base guitarist Enis Çoban, who studied textile manufacturing, said there was more censorship in Turkey than in Europe or the United States, but less than in China or Iran.

"Compared to dictatorships, Turkey is like heaven," Çoban said. "Turkey still has a lot missing, but we believe that it is on the right track to improve itself."

4. - The International Herald Tribune - "Iraq's plan to relocate Arabs from Kurdish areas stirs new worries":

BAGHDAD / 1 April 2007

Iraq's government has endorsed plans to relocate thousands of Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk as part of Saddam Hussein's campaign to force ethnic Kurds out of the oil-rich city, in an effort to undo one of the former dictator's most enduring and hated policies.

Separately, the Interior Ministry gave its first official reckoning Saturday of the truck bombing last week in the northern city of Tal Afar, putting the death toll at 152 people, a number about double that in early reports.

The bombing, which left 347 other people in a poor Shiite neighborhood wounded, set off a wave of reprisals by Shiite police officers and others that left another 47 people dead and shattered the image of Tal Afar held up by U.S. politicians last year as a model of a turbulent city turned peaceful.

The contentious decision on Kirkuk was confirmed Saturday by Iraq's Sunni justice minister as he announced his resignation. Almost immediately, opposition politicians said they feared it would harden the violent divisions among Iraq's fractious ethnic and religious groups and possibly lead to an Iraq divided among Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites.

The plan was virtually certain to anger neighboring Turkey, which fears a northward migration of Iraqi Kurds - and an exodus of Sunni Arabs - will inflame its own restive Kurdish minority.

The ancient city of Kirkuk has a large minority of ethnic Turks as well as Christians, Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians. The city is just south of the Kurdish autonomous zone stretching across three provinces of northeastern Iraq.

Iraq's Constitution sets an end-of-the-year deadline for a referendum on Kirkuk's status. Since Saddam's fall four years ago, thousands of Kurds who once lived in the city have resettled there. It is now believed Kurds are a majority of the population and that a referendum issue on attaching Kirkuk to the Kurdish autonomous zone would pass easily.

Justice Minister Hashim al-Shibli said the cabinet agreed on Thursday to a study group's recommendation that Arabs who had moved to Kirkuk from other parts of Iraq after July 1968 should be returned to their original towns and paid compensation.

Shibli, who had overseen the committee on Kirkuk's status, said relocation would be voluntary. Those who choose to leave will be paid about $15,000 and given land in their former hometowns.

"There will be no coercion and the decision will not be implemented by force," Shibli said.

Tens of thousands of Kurds and non-Arabs fled Kirkuk in the 1980s and 1990s when Saddam's government implemented its "Arabization" policy. Kurds and non-Arabs were replaced with pro-government Arabs from the mainly Shiite impoverished south.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Kurds and other non-Arabs streamed back, only to find their homes were either sold or given to Arabs. Some of the returning Kurds found nowhere to live except in parks and abandoned government buildings. Others drove Arabs from the city, despite pleas from Sunni and Shiite leaders for them to stay.

5. - Reuters - "Fire Damages Kurdish Centre in Brussels":

Police fired water cannon and skirmished with up to 250 youths after a Kurdish community centre in Brussels was set on fire.

BRUSSELS / 1 April 2007

The fire caused damage early on Sunday to the building in a district where there is tension between Kurdish and Turkish residents, a police spokesman said.

Spokesman Johan Verleyen said a small group of Kurds gathered at the centre and were attacked by a group of youths.

Police attempted to keep the two groups separated and were themselves attacked by the youths, who threw metal bars and bottles, Verleyen said. Seven were arrested.

Verleyen did not identify the ethnicity of the youths but the Belga news agency said they were Turkish.

"It is well known there is tension between the Turks and the Kurds, both of whom live in the area," Verleyen said.

An estimated 12 to 15 million Kurds live in Turkey, mainly in the southeast of the country where Turkish security forces have been battling separatist rebels for more than two decades in a conflict that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

Turkey has eased some restrictions on the Kurdish language and culture as part of its efforts to join the European Union. But Brussels says Ankara needs to do more to boost freedom of expression.

6. - AFP - "Three Kurdish rebels killed in southeast Turkey":

ANKARA / 1 April 2007

Turkish soldiers killed three militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) during clashes in the country's restive southeast, local officials said Sunday.

The fighting broke out during a security operation in the Bestler region in Sirnak province which borders Iraq and Syria, the Sirnak governor's office said in a statement, carried by the Anatolia news agency.

The PKK called a unilateral ceasefire on October 1, saying it hoped to pave the way for a peaceful resolution of the conflict with Ankara.

The truce, like previous ones called by the rebels, was rejected by Turkey, but fighting has decreased markedly since then.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK took up arms for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast.