5 February 2007

1. "Diyarbakir mayor decries military-based solution to Kurdish problem", a controversial southeastern mayor on Friday said that ignoring calls for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem over the last 20 years had led to the militarization of Turkish society.

2. "Turkey faces world jury after editor's killing", the bullet that killed a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor last month has put Turkey and its legal system before a world jury.

3. "Scandal In Turkey As Police Pose With Journalist's Murderer", the Turkish security forces faces fresh embarrassment after it emerged that some of its members had posed for "souvenir pictures" with the alleged murderer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

4. "Turkey to lobby U.S. over Kurd rebels in Iraq", Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, facing pressure on security issues ahead of elections, will send his foreign minister to Washington next week to lobby for a crackdown on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

5. "Kurds Train to Battle Iran", the PKK and its affiliates are spread through a region of some 35 million Kurds that straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. PEJAK, the newest group, claims to number thousands of recruits, and targets only Iran -- a mission which has made PEJAK the subject of intense speculation that it is being used to undermine the radical Islamic regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

6. "Turkey may conduct a cross border attack to Iraq", Kurds are systematically taking control of Kirkuk. Possible tension would increase violence. Controlling Kirkuk would strengthen Kurds for autonomy which would direct Turks for a cross border attack.

1. - The New Anatolian - "Diyarbakir mayor decries military-based solution to Kurdish problem":

ANKARA / 3 February 2007

A controversial southeastern mayor on Friday said that ignoring calls for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem over the last 20 years had led to the militarization of Turkish society.

Speaking at a conference on international tourism and peace in Eilat, Israel, Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir said that many people have been killed, the region's economy has been devastated and illegal organizations have mushroomed over the last 20 years due to the state's insistence on not recognizing Kurdish identity.

Baydemir also said that Turkey has an immediate need for a civil society movement that has a respect for differences, in order to resolve the Kurdish problem, responsibility for the establishment of which lies with the Turkish government, both Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals and international society.

2. - The Washington Times - "Turkey faces world jury after editor's killing":

NICOSIA / 4 February 2007 / by Andrew Borowiec

The bullet that killed a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor last month has put Turkey and its legal system before a world jury.

Hrant Dink, editor of the Agos weekly, died because an unemployed 17-year-old boy, Ogun Samast, claimed the editor had insulted "Turkishness," a concept that enshrines as sacrosanct the country's identity, state institutions and its army.

Critics of the concept are treated as criminals under Article 301 of Turkey's criminal code. Prominent writers, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, have been tried under the article.

The young assassin apparently acted according to the principles of patriotism instilled in him and in millions of others. His victim was a critic of some of the acts protected by a system he judged to be unjust and was a member of the Armenian minority all but extinct in Turkey.

Turkish liberals, international human rights organizations and European editorial writers demand a change in Article 301, which, if retained in its current form, is likely to keep Turkey out of the European Union. Turkey's EU membership negotiations are now stalled.

EU entry at risk

At Mr. Dink's funeral under the gray January sky of Istanbul, mourners carried placards denouncing the "301 Killer."

In Strasbourg, France, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, an advisory body, formally asked for changes in Turkey's criminal code, saying it "judicially limits freedom of expression and validates legal and other attacks against journalists."

Under the pressure of Mr. Dink's assassination, liberals hope for evolution in Turkish attitudes and laws, but rising nationalism across the country and the issues involved in parliamentary and presidential elections this year appear to preclude a change in the foreseeable future.

The country has become steeped in chauvinism, with schoolchildren reciting one of the favorite slogans of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic: "Lucky is he who can say, 'I am a Turk,' " and troops on parade roar, "One Turk is worth the whole world."

Although Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised to submit a review of Article 301 to parliament, his absence at the funeral that drew about 100,000 mourners was seen as less than encouraging.

"Evidently, the prime minister is unwilling to lose nationalist votes," commented the daily Kathimerini in Athens.

Disagreement punished

Headlines across Europe expressed shock, concern and the problem of a country that has yet to conform to European concepts of morality and politics but protects its system from criticism and punishes those who disagree.

There were no clear-cut answers after two weeks of soul-searching and analysis, with most analysts concluding that Turkey has been wounded. It is aware of the extent of the problem but cannot easily come to grips with the implications of Mr. Dink's slaying.

According to the assessment of one Western embassy, the killing shows a "dangerous conflict, which pervades state and society in Turkey."

"The bullets that brought Dink down also wounded Turkey's hopes for better days," said Greek political commentator Nikos Konstandaras. "The battle for the country's future looks difficult."

On the island of Cyprus, where Turkish guns imposed the security of the Turkish-Cypriot minority, the English-language Cyprus Mail described the situation in Turkey as "pathological nationalism nurtured by the state, by its worship of the founding father, its obsession with the flag, its violent sensitivity to anyone who insults the nation."

Ataturk's mixed legacy

In Western Europe, analysts generally agree that Turkish nationalism has been nourished by political credos and myths rooted in the ideology of Ataturk, who founded the republic in the 1920s on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

"Dark nationalist forces rise in Turkey" was the headline in Kathimerini, the Athens daily.

Thus, nearly 70 years after the death of Ataturk, his effort to instill national awareness and pride in the population has stumbled over unsolved issues that include:

• The demand of Turkey's Kurdish minority for recognition of its language and culture, which has led to a stubborn guerrilla war that so far has claimed 38,000 lives and devastated entire villages.

• The slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians during World War I and a forced march across the desert sands to Syria, a massacre whose extent Turkey refuses to acknowledge to this day.

• The dominant role of the Turkish army, self-imposed guardian of Ataturk's heritage and of the country's republican system.

• Turkey's military presence in the north of the independent island of Cyprus, where a separate state under Turkey's protection has been established.

Kurds denied self-rule

Occasional explanations offered by Turkish officials over the years have shown little intention for significant compromise or an admission of wrongdoing.

Thus the demands of the Kurds, particularly for some form of ethnic autonomy, are seen as dynamite under the foundations of the republic. The Armenian massacres of 300,000 victims -- according to the official version -- were caused by the role of the Armenians as a "fifth column" aiding Russia in its war against Turkey.

The Turkish military presence in Cyprus is essential, Turkish officials say, to guarantee the safety of the Turkish-Cypriot minority on the divided island.

While Turkey has found some international sympathy for its stand on Cyprus, its refusal to admit the nature and extent of the Armenian massacres has caused diplomatic clashes, problems and condemnation from Western governments.

Unlike Germany's atonement for Nazi crimes, particularly the Holocaust, Turkey has shown no such inclination on the Armenian issue and has shrugged off all international appeals to acknowledge the 90-year-old atrocities. Today, an estimated 60,000 Armenians live in Turkey -- most of them in Istanbul -- the remnant of 2 million at the start of World War I.

France raises pressure

One of the latest examples of foreign pressure on Turkey was the adoption last October by the lower house of the French parliament of a draft law calling for up to one year in jail and a heavy fine for anyone who denies that the massacre of Armenians was genocide.

Ankara denounced the bill as a "heavy blow" to bilateral relations, but no economic sanctions followed. However, the Turkish army announced it was "freezing" military contacts with France. Both countries are NATO members, though France is not part of the alliance's military structure.

Although, under European Union pressure, Turkey has taken considerable steps toward reducing the military's political role, the army remains the country's most respected institution, though some critics call it "a political lobby with heavy weapons."

It is generally assumed in Turkey that political chaos or any form of internal turmoil would cause military intervention, as it did three times in the 20th century. In every case, the army purged the political establishment and returned to barracks when it judged that the country's stability was no longer threatened.
Turkey's ambition to join the EU is not new. The concept of "moving westward" originated with Ataturk, who introduced by fiat an ambitious program for the country's "Westernization." While not denying Ataturk's achievements, some historians say the reforms were superficial, without significant effects on the national mentality.

Though a penchant for Islamic fundamentalism is increasingly felt across Turkey, particularly in light of its EU membership application, little is being said of Ataturk's attack on the religion he thought to be the main obstacle to Turkey's European aspirations.

He abolished the Muslim Caliphate -- the reign of successors to the prophet Muhammad -- banned the teaching of religion in schools and the wearing of the fez, the red tapering man's felt hat once considered to be the Turkish national headgear. He also changed Turkey's Arabic alphabet to the Latin form and freed women from purdah -- their seclusion from most male contact.

The banning of the fez, replaced by European caps and hats, had more than a superficial implication: the brimless fez allowed Muslims to touch the ground with their heads while praying, while hats symbolized the non-Muslim West.

Ataturk's reforms profoundly affected the Turkish army, which has become their main defender. Typical was the case of Maj. Fethi Gurcan, one of the authors of the failed 1962 military putsch, sentenced to death after a three-month trial, who declared:

"Ataturk is dead, but he has not ceased to exist. I shall now die, but Ataturk's ideals, through my death, will acquire yet higher value."

3. - AFP - "Scandal In Turkey As Police Pose With Journalist's Murderer":

ISTANBUL / 2 February 2007

The Turkish security forces faces fresh embarrassment after it emerged that some of its members had posed for "souvenir pictures" with the alleged murderer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Film footage and photos leaked to the media showed 17-year-old Ogun Samast, who has confessed to the murder, displaying a Turkish flag, flanked by members of the security forces, some of them in uniform.

Behind them is a calendar featuring another Turkish flag and the words of the country's founder, Ataturk: "The motherland's soil is sacred. It cannot be left to its destiny."

The images were taken at the anti-terror department in the northern city of Samsun, where Samast was captured 32 hours after Dink was gunned down in central Istanbul on January 19, officials said Friday.

Dink, one of Turkey's most prominent ethnic Armenians, was loathed by nationalists for saying that the massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide, and was last year given a suspended six-month sentence for insulting "Turkishness."

The press was up in arms over the images and some newspapers suggested they indicated that certain members of the security forces sympathised with Samast's alleged ultra-nationalist motives and have treated him as a "hero."

"A kiss on the forehead is the only thing the murderer was not given," growled liberal paper Radikal. "This is the picture of the mindset that killed Dink".

"Shoulder to shoulder with the gunman," trumpeted the mass-circulation Sabah newspaper, while the popular Vatan said the images were "as grave as the assassination itself."

"The footage proves that the murderer and his associates are not alone, that their supporters... have penetrated all segments of the state," Radikal's editor-in-chief, Ismet Berkan, wrote.

The police are already facing allegations that they had received a tip-off last year about a plot to kill Dink but did not follow up on the intelligence.

They are also under fire for failing to grant Dink special protection, even though the journalist mentioned in articles in his bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos about receiving threats and hate mail.

Samsun's chief prosecutor Ahmet Gokcinar said he launched an investigation into the officers seen in the pictures on charges of commending crime and criminals and misconduct in office.

They belonged both to the police and a paramilitary force which is policing rural areas, he said, adding: "We will do what the law requires without delay."

Apart from Samast, seven other suspects have been arrested over Dink's murder, all young people from the northern city of Trabzon.

The nationalist stronghold has come under the spotlight with a series of violent incidents, including the murder of an Italian Catholic priest by a 16-year-old boy last year.

The probe has so far suggested that the suspects did not belong to any known underground group but were under the sway of ultra-nationalist ideas and wanted to take the law into their own hands against what they saw as rising threats to Turkey's unity.

Trabzon's governor and police chief were removed from office last week.

Despite the controversies, Dink had won respect as an earnest campaigner for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and about 100,000 people marched at his funeral.

4. - Reuters - "Turkey to lobby U.S. over Kurd rebels in Iraq":

ANKARA / 4 February 2007 / by Paul de Bendern

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, facing pressure on security issues ahead of elections, will send his foreign minister to Washington next week to lobby for a crackdown on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

Ankara has repeatedly threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to crush Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels if U.S. and Iraqi government forces fail to take action, though most analysts dismiss the threats as rhetoric to impress voters.

There are presidential and parliamentary polls in 2007.

Against a backdrop of rising nationalism in Turkey, partly due to disillusionment with the European Union accession process, the ruling centre-right AK Party says it cannot stand idly by if PKK attacks resume as expected in the spring.

Ankara says some 4,000 PKK rebels are based in northern Iraq from where they stage attacks into Turkish territory.

Since the PKK launched its armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in 1984 more than 30,000 people have been killed, mostly in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul will hold talks with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

"Gul will seek U.S. support in cracking down on PKK rebels. It's a major security concern for us," said a Turkish diplomat.

"We can't just sit on the sidelines when our boys are being killed. We have been promised action but seen few results."

IMPORTANT ALLY

Relations between NATO member Turkey and the U.S. have improved after a low in 2003 when Ankara denied U.S. forces permission to use its territory for the Iraqi invasion, but Gul will still face a tough time.

While the Americans value Turkey as an ally -- the country's neighbours include Iraq, Iran and Syria -- and consider the PKK a 'terrorist organisation', Washington may be wary of a crackdown in northern Iraq because the area is a rare haven of relative calm in a country ablaze.

Turkish media have said the government may propose a compromise deal where Turkish, U.S. and Iraqi forces jointly carry out attacks against PKK targets.

Armed forces chief General Yasar Buyukanit will follow in Gul's footsteps a week later for talks with Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Hadley -- also focused on Iraq.

"This will be a more important meeting as the U.S. military has no love lost for Turkey," said CNN Turk diplomatic editor Semih Idiz.

"The Turkish military is concerned that the Americans are in cahoots with the (Iraqi) Kurds and in contact with the PKK."

Talks will also probably touch on Kirkuk, an ethnically-mixed northern Iraqi city which has vast oil reserves.

Kurds want to annex the city for their capital and Iraq's new constitution mandates a local referendum on the issue later this year.

Turkey is worried that greater autonomy for the Kurdish-controlled area will threaten Turkey's own security and has said it wants the referendum postponed.

5. - AP - "Kurds Train to Battle Iran":

QANDIL MOUNTAIN RANGE / 2 February 2007 / by Kathy Gannon

Deep in the mountains of eastern Iraq, a cluster of mud huts and the chatter of machine gun fire reveal another piece of the jigsaw puzzle called Kurdistan.

Here, recruits are training to fight Iran, one of the four countries that rule the fractured Kurdish people. And although they belong to an organization officially outlawed as terrorist by Washington, they appear to be operating unhindered from Iraqi territory controlled by U.S. forces.

A boulder-studded road spirals up through sun-soaked mountains to a pale yellow building that flies the flag of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

A giant face of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK founder who is serving a life sentence in Turkey, is painted on the mountainside. Ten miles farther on lies the Qandil range, which runs like a snow-dusted spine along Iraq's northern border with both Turkey and Iran.

In the camp, lugging heavy machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles, are men and women of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK, an offshoot set up by the PKK in 2004 to fight for Kurdish autonomy in Iran.

The PKK and its affiliates are spread through a region of some 35 million Kurds that straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. PEJAK, the newest group, claims to number thousands of recruits, and targets only Iran -- a mission which has made PEJAK the subject of intense speculation that it is being used to undermine the radical Islamic regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In the Nov. 27 issue of The New Yorker, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that PEJAK was receiving support from the U.S. as well as from Israel, which fears Iran's nuclear ambitions and Ahmadinejad's call to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

PEJAK says it regularly launches raids into Iran, and Iran has fired back with artillery. In October the English-language Iran Daily, published by Iran's official news agency, said Iran accused PEJAK of killing dozens of its armed forces in insurgent attacks.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a presidential candidate who claims the White House is overplaying the Iranian threat, last year wrote to President Bush expressing concern that the U.S. was using PEJAK to weaken Ahmadinejad.

James Brandon, an analyst for the U.S.-based Jamestown Foundation, told The Associated Press that PEJAK has refused to discuss its funding sources. But he said its greatest threat to Iran is not military. It has veins running deep into the Iranian Kurdish population and is offering to join forces with other restless minorities in Iran, he said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said "Israel is not involved in any way in what's going on there."

Meir Javedanfar, an Israel-based Iran expert, noted however that Israel has a long-standing relationship with Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani and "It would not surprise me to discover that Israel is using the Kurdish areas of Iraq to undermine Iran's influence in Iraq and monitor what's going on along the Iranian border, as well as to undermine the Iranian government itself."

The AP recently spent two winter days at a PEJAK training camp tucked in the shadow of the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, listening to its followers describe their goals and operations in Iran.

According to a camp commander, Hussein Afsheen, "PKK gives ideological and logistical support" while funding comes from Iranian Kurds. He said he didn't know of U.S. funding, but would gladly accept it.

The camp is designed to toughen up the new recruits, who numbered 38 during the AP's visit. Beds are single wool blankets spread over a rough concrete floor, or over a narrow steel bench that hugs an icy mud wall. The only heat comes from a wood-fired potbelly stove.

It's still pitch dark and freezing at 5 a.m., when the fighters line up and pledge allegiance to the Kurdish cause.

Soztar Afreen, a 22-year-old Syrian with a quick smile, says she joined five years ago and the first months were tough.

"I had trouble keeping up. You have to toughen yourself. The physical work is difficult but once you get used to it life here gets easier," she said.

She recalled that her parents, PKK sympathizers, sent her off with this plea: "Don't let down the struggle; make us proud."

Gunfire and explosions echo off mountainsides as recruits learn to fire artillery and rocket launchers and automatic rifles. They are taught to lay ambushes and to endure long hours isolated and in hiding.

Food is spartan -- potatoes, tomato broth, onions and a lot of bread baked flat in a deep stone oven.

Much time is spent in ideological training and studying Ocalan's vision of a united Kurdistan, which the guerrillas say has gradually shifted from demanding full-blown independence to settling for autonomy as a distinct culture within the various countries where they live.

PEJAK ideology is rigorously leftist and includes equality of the sexes -- unusual in this region. The camp has two leaders, a man and a woman.

The male one, Afsheen, is a Turkish Kurd who joined the PKK in 1990, at age 19. He said he enlisted after Turkish soldiers herded him, his family and his neighbors into the town square and burned down their homes.

Four shepherds were coming home and "The soldiers just opened fire on them. I had inside of me a lot of anger. I promised I would get my revenge," said Afsheen.

In training, "Recruits were put in a cave and left there for a month, allowed out only for half an hour each day. We walked for hours in frigid water," he said.

Afsheen said he has made several forays into Iran, including one monthlong trek to the Iranian town of Shahha three months ago, not to attack Iranians but to organize Kurds. "We were discovered. There was a firefight and it went on until dark. We were pinned down, trapped," he said.

"At nightfall we found an opening and we tried to slip out but we were discovered. The firing went on again and they called in their helicopters. One of our friends was wounded and three Iranian security men were killed."

Afsheen's co-leader is Beridon Dersim, who grew up in Austria and found her identity with the PKK.

"What I wanted I couldn't find from Turkey. I couldn't find from Europe. The PKK offered me answers about myself, about my ethnicity."

Dersim, 32, said she wanted to pick up a gun the day she joined the PKK at 17 but it was just before her 20th birthday that she was allowed into the guerrilla ranks.

Unlike Afreen of Syria, she did not have her family's blessing, she says, and her father, a Turkish civil servant, was tortured and left in a wheelchair. She said she has since fought in gunbattles.

The guerrillas vow not to marry or visit their families lest they put them in danger or be distracted from their struggle. Afsheen said he hasn't seen his parents since their village was destroyed 16 years ago. "I was the youngest of nine children, but maybe there are more now. I don't know."

Dersim says her presence encourages Kurdish women but also frightens the men.

"We go to a village and when we speak they are surprised and they ask us: 'Where do you get such power to do this? How can you speak like this and in front of men?'"

6. - Sabah - "Turkey may conduct a cross border attack to Iraq":

4 February 2007

"Kurds are systematically taking control of Kirkuk. Possible tension would increase violence. Controlling Kirkuk would strengthen Kurds for autonomy which would direct Turks for a cross border attack"

A large scale 90 page Iraq situation report revealed on last Friday has reflected the U.S Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's worries for a possible Turkish cross border attack to Iraq.

The report which was prepared by American intelligence experts mentions America's risk on Turkey. The report said "Kurds are systematically taking control of Kirkuk.

Their aim is to seize the majority of people and lands in order to win the referendum. Meanwhile Arabs are carrying on resistance to impede Kurdish control in these lands.

Possible tension would increase violence. Controlling Kirkuk would strengthen Kurds for autonomy which would direct Turks for a cross border attack".