12
February 2007
1. "12,000 Kurds protest in Strasbourg for PKK head’s release", at least 12,000 Kurds from many different countries demonstrated in the French city of Strasbourg Saturday for the release of jailed former Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan.
2. "PKK leader applies to European court, again", Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), applied again to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, complaining that he had not been given a fair trial, reported the Anatolia news agency late on Thursday.
3. "DTP’s Türk: Turkey’s Kurds don’t want a Kurdish state", Turkey's fears that the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq could stir up separatism among its own Kurds are unfounded, the leader of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish political party said on Friday.
4. "Deadly Nationalism: The Struggle of Orhan Pamuk and Turkey's Intellectuals", the culture war in Turkey against critical authors and journalists is intensifying, as murderous nationalists agitate against dissidents. Many liberals are under threat, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, who has now left the country.
5. "American Envoy host DYP members in Ankara", issues ranging from the Armenian genocide resolution, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Iraq to the rise of nationalism and the murder of Hrant Dink were discussed.
6. "Turkish Journalist Kara Sent to Prison", Turkish Journalist Sinan Kara had been taken under custody and sent to prison, while visiting Batman, for a pending sentence. He'll stay 146 days in prison, told Becerikli of IHD. Sinan Kara had faced numerous trials for his articles in his now-closed newspaper.
1. - DPA - "12,000 Kurds protest in Strasbourg for PKK head’s release":
STRASBOURG / 11 February 2006
At least 12,000 Kurds from many different countries demonstrated in the French city of Strasbourg Saturday for the release of jailed former Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Ocalan was abducted in Kenya in February 1999 and sentenced to death in Turkey for high treason.
The sentence was later commuted to life in prison.
Kurds, primarily from Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, have been campaigning in February for Ocalan's release in Strasbourg, which is the seat of the European Court of Human Rights.
The organizers of the demonstration said that 25,000 people
took part, while the police put the figure at 12,000. 
2. - Turkish Daily News - "PKK leader applies to European court, again":
ANKARA / 10 February 2007
Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), applied again to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, complaining that he had not been given a fair trial, reported the Anatolia news agency late on Thursday.
Öcalan, in his application prepared by his lawyers in Britain, claimed that he had not been re-tried though the court ruled in 2005 that Turkey violated Öcalan's right to a fair trial.
In May 2005, the court ruled that Turkish authorities
had breached international treaties by denying Öcalan the right
to a fair and independent trial and by barring his legal representative
from contacting him after he was detained. The ruling also said Öcalan
had not been tried by an independent and impartial tribunal in 1999,
had not been brought before a judge promptly after his arrest, and that
his lawyers had not been given adequate time to prepare his defense.
3. - REUTERS / Today's Zaman - "DTP’s Türk: Turkey’s Kurds don’t want a Kurdish state":
ANKARA / 10 February 2006
Turkey's fears that the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq could stir up separatism among its own Kurds are unfounded, the leader of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish political party said on Friday.
On a visit to Washington this week, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül reaffirmed Ankara's opposition to a Kurdish state on its eastern border. Gül also urged US troops to crack down on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) members hiding in northern Iraq.
"We want the Kurds of northern Iraq to live well and in peace. But we don't want to join them in a Kurdish state," said Ahmet Türk, leader of the Democratic Society Party (DTP).
"There are 20 million Kurds here in Turkey. Our home is here, we want to build a more free and open society here. No Turkish Kurds want to go to Iraq. And after all, the Kurds of northern Iraq need Turkey," he told Reuters in an interview.
A majority of Turkey's Kurds, generally estimated to number 12-15 million, live in the poor Southeast region bordering Iraq, Syria and Iran, though Istanbul and Izmir in western Turkey are also home to big Kurdish populations.
Many analysts say any future Kurdish state in Iraq would be heavily dependent on Ankara because its trade routes and energy pipelines to the West would have to cross Turkish territory.
"Having a Kurdish neighbor would boost Turkey's role
and influence in the Middle East region," Türk said.
Ankara fears Iraq's Kurds plan to seize control of the oil-rich city
of Kirkuk as a prelude to declaring full independence from Baghdad.
Kirkuk's fate is due to be decided in a referendum later this year.
Rising nationalism
Türk said he was worried about an increasingly nationalistic mood in Turkey ahead of elections due by November.
"This mood harms both Turks and Kurds. This is a difficult period. We all have to show greater sensitivity," he said.
Turkey was rocked last month by the murder of Turkish Armenian editor Hrant Dink by a teenage nationalist gunman.
Like Dink and other intellectuals who have challenged Turkish nationalist taboos, Türk said he and his party have also received death threats and abuse by mail and via the Internet. Turkish nationalists view the DTP as a mouthpiece for the PKK.
Türk criticized a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights upholding Turkey's threshold of 10 percent for parties seeking to enter the Ankara Parliament.
"This threshold, the highest in the world, seems
designed to keep us Kurds out of Parliament," said Türk.
The DTP won about 6 percent of the national vote -- representing nearly
2 million people -- in the last general election in 2002 but won no
seats. In Diyarbakir, largest city of the Southeast, the DTP won more
than 50 percent of the vote.
"The threshold should be lowered for the sake of
peace. We want proper representation. ... We want to take the gun out
of politics," said Türk.
4. - Der Spiegel - "DEADLY NATIONALISM: The Struggle of Orhan Pamuk and Turkey's Intellectuals":
ISTANBUL / 11 February 2007 / by Annette Grossbongardt*
The culture war in Turkey against critical authors and journalists is intensifying, as murderous nationalists agitate against dissidents. Many liberals are under threat, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, who has now left the country.
Orhan Pamuk flew to the Cairo International Book Fair on the day of the funeral of his friend Hrant Dink. There is "great interest in all aspects of Turkish literature and culture" in the Arab world, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature said, but it sounded as if he were attempting to justify his trip abroad, now that the situation in Turkey has become precarious for him and other liberal writers and journalists.
By that point, Pamuk's moves were apparently prompted by fears for his own life. He did not attend the morning funeral procession two weeks ago for Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist who was murdered by ultra-nationalists. More than just a funeral procession, the event turned into a protest march of demonstrators who chanted "We are all Armenians," making a strong impression on Europeans. But despite his absence from the procession, Pamuk did not hesitate to publicly criticize the Turkish government, judiciary and society, which he held partly responsible for Dink's death. "The murder of my courageous, golden-hearted friend has soured my life," Pamuk confessed, "I am furious at everyone and everything, and I feel boundless shame."
As if to reinforce his words, Turkey was in an uproar last Friday over images of several police officers who were photographed in a chummy pose with the young murder suspect. The officers were suspended from duty, but not before the newspaper Sabah condemned the incident, writing that a nationalist murderer was being treated like a hero.
By then Pamuk, who has become the most prominent advocate of a modern, liberal, cosmopolitan Turkey, had already left Istanbul for the United States, where he plans to stay, for the time being, and give lectures at several universities. He cancelled a reading tour in Germany last week and ceremonies at the Free University of Berlin and the Catholic University of Brussels. Both institutions had planned to award Pamuk honorary doctorates, but the author simply declined to attend without so much as offering an explanation. The Carl Hanser Publishing Company, which has published his books in German, including "The White Fortress," "Snow" and, most recently, "Istanbul," received nothing but a blunt fax to explain Pamuk's absence. The answering machine at his house in Istanbul was switched off, and whenever journalists did manage to reach him, he would hang up the phone.
"More will die"
"Tell Orhan Pamuk to wise up!" one of the principal suspects in the Dink murder, right-wing extremist Yasin Hayal, a man with a criminal record, said publicly. The threat must have made a strong impression on the author.
Last week the self-proclaimed "Turkish Revenge Brigade" (TIT) posted a video on YouTube depicting Dink's corpse next to photos of Pamuk. The lyrics of a song that accompanied the images read: "We cannot be friends with them." The video ended with a shot of a Turkish flag and the head of a wolf -- the symbol of Turkish ultra-nationalists, and the threat: "More will die."
Pamuk, Turkey's most famous writer and a man who ought to be the pride of this country as it seeks European Union membership, has been pursued by hate-mongering nationalists for some time, and he is not the only one. About a dozen Turkish writers, journalists and academics are currently the targets of hate-spewing, fanatical right-wing extremists.
Pamuk's hasty departure shines a spotlight on the clash of cultures and the climate of agitation, intimidation and fear dissidents in Turkey currently face, especially those who dare to tackle national taboos -- of which there are many, including the 1915 genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which the Turkish government continues to dispute, Christian minorities, the Kurds and the PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party) and, of course, Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish state.
According to statistics compiled by the Turkish Human Rights Foundation, close to 100 intellectuals have already been hauled before courts for voicing their critical opinions. Most have been charged with the crime of "insulting Turkishness," or disparaging national institutions. Reactionary prosecutors use a notorious Turkish law known as Article 301 to persecute critical thinkers.
Elif Shafak, 35, a popular and courageous female author, had done nothing more threatening than write a novel ("The Bastard of Istanbul") that tells the interweaving stories of a Turkish and an Armenian family in the United States and Istanbul. Her novel prompted a group of nationalist lawyers to take Shafak to court in 2006, merely because one of her characters says: "I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their lives to the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915."
Shafak was acquitted, but she confesses that she felt "quite shaken" by the "ordeal" of the trial. As happens in all of these trials, angry nationalist activists gathered outside the court house. The same brand of activists threw eggs at Pamuk, who was also accused of "insulting Turkishness," and berated Perihan Magden, a journalist who had written an article defending conscientious objectors, as a "whore of the PKK." Shafak was well into a pregnancy when her trial began. She had been receiving threatening letters for some time, but only after the Dink murder did the government finally acknowledge the danger she and other journalists faced. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has now assigned government bodyguards to writers and intellectuals considered in danger.
Grassroots snitches
Ideologically obsessed citizens often act as informers, such as the attorney from Izmir who filed a complaint against Muazzez Ilmiye Çig, a 92-year-old female archeologist. The case against Çig revolved around the religious headscarf, one of the central symbols of conflict in Muslim but highly secular Turkey. Çig, an expert in the history of the Sumerians, had written that headscarves were originally worn by Sumerian priestesses to initiate young men into sex. Çig was accused of "inciting hatred" but was acquitted.
The portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish nation, hangs in every Turkish government office, every business and every classroom. He has been dead 70 years, and yet criticizing him as a historic figure remains taboo. When Atilla Yayla, an Istanbul political scientist, dared to describe the first few years of Atatürk's government as a "step backwards, not a period of progress" and criticized the official cult of hero worship surrounding Atatürk, he was promptly suspended from his job.
When journalist Ipek Çalislar wrote about an episode in which Atatürk dressed in women's clothing to escape an assassination attempt, she was accused of having tarnished Atatürk's reputation. "Atatürk was an incredibly brave man and would never have done such a thing," wrote an angry reader who filed a complaint against the author with the public prosecutor's office. If Çalislar had been found guilty, she could have faced up to four and a half years in prison.
Even translators of undesirable books are not safe against persecution, nor are publishers like Fatih Tas, who published a study by an American professor on "the human costs of the US arms trade." Turkey, a US ally, is criticized in the report.
"A wave of nationalism"
For the European Union the trials, which seek to muzzle the freedom of speech, are a barometer for Turkey's suitability for EU membership. Each new trial creates fresh doubts as to whether the country is in fact succeeding in transforming itself into an open, pluralistic society.
The roots of the problem are deeply embedded in a highly traditional, conservative society, large segments of which have suddenly chosen to obstruct the country's efforts to become integrated into the West. "The Turkey of today harbors a smaller modern society and a vast pre-modern society that live side by side, but not in the same era," says sociologist Dogu Ergil.
Nationalists who prefer to drive their country into isolation rather than deliver it to "imperialistic enemies" in the West currently dominate the pre-modern segment of Turkish society.
The country has been seized by "a wave of nationalism of unprecedented scope," complains political scientist Baskin Oran, who was also once put on trial, in his case for writing a critical report about the situation of Turkish minorities. The Erdogan administration, which campaigned on a reform platform but is now eager to gain reelection, does little to stem the country's reactionary mood.
The other camp, the modern segment of Turkish society, is embodied by the 100,000 people who took to the streets to mourn murdered journalist Dink, but also by the country's economic elite, who know that Turkey can only have a future as part of the West. But the nationalists have met the show of solidarity with the country's Armenian minority with renewed attempts to wrest public opinion away from the demonstrators, and they are now holding up banners that read: "We are all Turks, our names are Mehmet, Hasan and Hüseyin, not Hrant Dink." A bitter fight has erupted over the future direction of Turkey, waged on one side in parts with murderous fervor. Which side will emerge victorious is still undecided.
Constant threats
The day Ismet Berkan, editor-in-chief of the liberal newspaper Radical, had to be accompanied by bodyguards to leave his office was the day he began thinking about leaving the country. "But that's exactly what they want," he says, "and that's why we must stay and raise our voices against those who want to cut Turkey off from the rest of the world."
This requires courage, especially for someone who receives up to 50 threatening anonymous letters a day, letters that read: "We will get rid of you, we will kill you." A year ago, Berkan and four other journalists were put on trial for having criticized a court decision banning a conference on the Armenian question.
Baskin Oran also refuses to be driven out. The 62-year-old political science professor perseveres in his small row house in Ankara, clinging to the conviction that Turkey "is getting better every day, even if we are passing through hell on the road to paradise." He solicits understanding for his country, which he says is rushing through a development process in a matter of decades that lasted for centuries in Europe. Oran regularly receives e-mails, telephone calls and faxes in which fanatics disparage him as a "bastard" and "traitor," messages peppered with threats like "we will fuck your mother" and "we will kill you." In a report he wrote on Turkish minorities, Oran proposed the use of the term "citizens of Turkey" instead of the ethnically defining word "Turks."
Prosecutors accused Oran of "inciting hatred" and, with his ideas, of promoting "chaos" and jeopardizing the "fundamental elements of the Turkish Republic." Oran defended himself with a 40-page "counter-accusation," which he said he owed to his students, "whom I have been teaching, for the past 37 years, to take a stand against anti-democratic positions." His efforts were successful -- for the time being. But he nevertheless requires police protection every time he leaves his home.
"I live in a country that celebrates and honors its generals, police officers and statesman, even while they are still alive, but persecutes its writers with court trials and prison sentences," Pamuk said last year, when he was still embroiled in his own trial.
A difficult relationship with intellectuals
The hostile mood in Turkey reflects the country's difficult relationship with its intellectuals and its deep distrust of its pro-Western authors who criticize the system from within.
"We are always seen as potential runaways, if not potential traitors," says writer Shafak. "Criticizing the country is considered practically the equivalent of hating it." In a recent television interview, she was asked: "Did you ever say that you were not feeling at home in Turkey?"
When Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in October, a first for Turkey, his otherwise staunchly nationalist fellow Turks were restrained in their praise for the author. To this day many are convinced that the only reason Pamuk received the prize was that he openly criticized the Armenian genocide.
Pamuk has toned down his rhetoric since then. "Especially now that I am a Nobel Prize winner," he says, "I am no longer interested in talking about minor political matters as much," he admits. Nevertheless, he adds, he sometimes becomes so furious that he is unable to hold his tongue. It seems that there are currently plenty of reasons for Pamuk to begin talking again.
* Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
5. - Zaman - "American Envoy host DYP members in Ankara":
ANKARA / 10 February 2007 / by Ercan Yavuz
Nancy Mc Eldowney, the deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Ankara, hosted True Path Party (DYP) officials at a working dinner on Thursday.
DYP deputy chairmen Nedim Bilgiç, Gültekin Uysal, Umut Arik, Hatay deputy Mehmet Eraslan, Denizli deputy Ümmet Kandogan and Ankara provincial chairman Bülent Kusoglu were in attendance.
Issues ranging from the Armenian genocide resolution, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Iraq to the rise of nationalism and the murder of Hrant Dink were discussed. The Americans asked about DYP leader Mehmet Agar's new policy of "politics on the plain," upon which the DYP's top-ranking officials expounded.
Mc Eldowney stated that the US administration was doing its best to halt the Armenian genocide resolution. "Although the current administration is against the Armenian resolution, it does not have the majority. So there is a risk. We will do our best. The resolution was introduced by the Democrats, and they are currently in the majority," she said.
Turkish-American relations would be disrupted in the event
the resolution passes, the DYP officials warned. If the US fails to
keep its promises concerning the PKK, passage of the resolution might
increase anti-American sentiment in Turkey, they cautioned.
6. - Bianet - "Turkish Journalist Kara Sent to Prison":
Turkish Journalist Sinan Kara had been taken under custody and sent to prison, while visiting Batman, for a pending sentence. He'll stay 146 days in prison, told Becerikli of IHD. Sinan Kara had faced numerous trials for his articles in his now-closed newspaper
BATMAN / 8 February 2007 / by Erol Onderoglu
Journalist Sinan Kara has been taken under custody and sent to Batman prison concerning a standing conviction.
He was arrested as he was visiting the southeastern city of Batman for preparations of an upcoming book on the region.
Kara would serve his 146-day imprisonment sentence pending from a case that was put forward while he was the owner of the now-closed Datça Haber local newspaper, Human Rights Association (IHD) Batman branch chair Saadet Becerikli told bianet.
He had founded another newspaper, Ege'nin Sesi, as Kara faced numerous trials for trivial violations of procedures or such during his time with Datça Haber.
Lastly, he was convicted of affronting Datça province
governor Savas Tuncer in the book that he wrote during a previous imprisonment.