7 February 2007

1. "Turkey seeks US support on Kurdish problem", Ankara expects more cooperation from Washington in dealing with militants on both sides of the Iraqi border.

2. "Torture News Condemned as Accused Walk Free", the Supreme Court of Appeals overrules a ruling that acquitted three police officers of allegations of torture despite scientific evidence by forensic medicine. They walk free because of prescription but a journalist that followed the case got condemned.

3. "'Turkishness' remains under new joint Article 301 proposal", a high-profile meeting bringing together several prominent civil society representatives to discuss controversial Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 301 came to an end Monday with an agreement in principle which is likely to bother anti-301 groups as well as the European Union.

4. "Syrian court jails 12 Kurds, including three minors", twelve young Kurds, including three minors, have been sentenced to jail terms of between two-and-half and seven-and-a-half years for "membership of a secret organization," the independent National Organization of Human Rights in Syria says.

5. "Kurds displaced in effort to preserve ancient city", in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Kurdish authorities are trying to turn a historic landmark into a United Nations-approved World Heritage Site.

6. "Kirkuk Arabs face relocation", Human Rights Watch says that more than 120,000 Kurds, Turkomans and Assyrians were forcibly expelled from northern Iraq from 1991 and replaced by Arab families from mainly Shia regions of Iraq "to drastically alter the ethnic demographics of Kirkuk".

1. - The Guardian - "Turkey seeks US support on Kurdish problem":

Ankara expects more cooperation from Washington in dealing with militants on both sides of the Iraqi border

6 February 2007 / by Mark Tran

It is a safe bet that the Kurdish question will receive an airing when the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, meets the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, in Washington today.

Mr Gul is likely to discuss with US officials renewed activity by Kurdish rebels using northern Iraq as a springboard for attacks on Turkish territory.

Turkey, a Nato member, has been dissatisfied with the level of cooperation in dealing with militants from the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK). It expects a current ceasefire to end in the spring and is bracing itself for further attacks.

Retired General Joseph Ralston, a former Nato supreme allied commander, has been coordinating US efforts for countering the PKK and the state department yesterday said Gen Ralston was working to decrease tensions on both sides of the border.

Such reassurances will cut no ice with Turkey as US troops in the region have done little to prevent cross-border raids.

But the PKK is only part of Turkey's worries. Ankara's nightmare is an independent Kurdish state bringing together some 15-20 million Kurds who live in a region that straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

That scenario could move a step closer this year if Iraq goes ahead with a referendum in the northern city of Kirkuk. Article 140 in the Iraqi constitution called for a census and a referendum in oil-rich Kirkuk to reverse Saddam Hussein's "Arabisation" policy that drove out Kurds and replaced them with Arabs.

The referendum will determine whether Kirkuk will become part of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region. For the Kurds, the answer is a no-brainer as they want the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to become the capital of their region.

Because the Kirkuk referendum has all the makings of a flashpoint, the Iraqi Study Group recommended postponing such a vote. A postponement, however, risks inflaming Kurdish sentiment.

For the Kurds, such a move would be seen as the latest in a series of betrayals. In 1975, the former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger brokered the Algiers agreement that ended Iranian support for the Kurds, leaving them at the mercy of Saddam. Encouraged to rise up by the George Bush Snr in 1991, they were left again to face Saddam. Thousands fled to Turkey when the rebellion failed.

Various Kurdish leaders such as Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish president, have warned that the region would plunge into war should the referendum be postponed. Yet any move towards secession would increase the chances of Turkish military intervention, not only to prevent its own Kurdish population from seceding, but also to "protect" northern Iraq's Turkmen population, who are ethnic Turks.

Tension in Kirkuk is already rising, although it has been spared the bloodletting that has engulfed the rest of Iraq. At the weekend, two people were killed in car bombings in the city. Last month, a UN report voiced concerns at reports of mistreatment of ethnic Turkmen and Arabs by the Kurdish majority and warned that the deteriorating human rights situation in Kirkuk could be a prelude to a looming crisis in the Kurdish region.

Some analysts believe that the Kurdish issue could push Iran and Turkey closer together, hardly something Washington would welcome. Omer Taspinar, a fellow at the Washington thinktank the Brookings Institution, said the meetings between Turkish and US officials should put an end to the Bush administration's "happy talk" about the stability of Iraqi Kurdistan.

"This is an election year in Turkey," he wrote in Newsweek, "and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has every incentive to demonstrate his nationalist credentials against political rivals, many favouring military intervention. All this will inevitably push Turkey toward Iran - and may even end up creating an unprecedented Sunni-Shia axis of frustration against America."

2. - Bianet - "Torture News Condemned as Accused Walk Free":

The Supreme Court of Appeals overrules a ruling that acquitted three police officers of allegations of torture despite scientific evidence by forensic medicine. They walk free because of prescription but a journalist that followed the case got condemned.

ISTANBUL / 5 February 2007 / by Erol Onderoglu

Turkey's Supreme Court of Appeals condemned three police officers of torture but they got acquired by prescription. On the other hand, Cumhuriyet daily reporter Alper Turgut has been fined to 20 thousand YTL (about 11 thousand euros) of causing "prejudice to a court's decision" because of his article on the trial.

As a result, only a journalist had been punished in the torture case despite high court's ruling that acquiescence of the alleged crime.

Police officers walk free

Istanbul 7th High Criminal Court dropped the case in question on grounds of prescription on December 6, 2006.

The same court had acquitted the defendant police officers Mahmut Yildiz, Seref Bayrakçi and Mehmet Hallaç on September 30, 2004. They were charged with allegations of torture to three suspects taken under custody for being a member to an illegal leftist organization called "Ekim".

The case was then taken to the Supreme Court of Appeals, where the judges overruled the court's decision and demanded that the police officers should be penalized of the alleged crime. The Supreme Court took into account the medical jurisprudence reports that predicated physical evidence to the allegations of torture.

As the case returned to for a reexamination, 7th High Criminal Court dropped the case on prescription as the incident took place on November 15 1998 and the legal time limit of 7 and a half years was passed.

Article 19 of the Press Law

Although the police officers walked out on the case, journalist Turgut, who relayed the news got condemned of causing "prejudice to a court's decision".

In his article Tugut wrote, "despite scientific evidence of torture provided by a university, three police officers got acquitted".

Article 19 of the Press Law prohibits the publication of prosecution's judgments or other documentation relevant to the case between the preliminary investigation and the court's decision to file or drop the case depending on that investigation.

3. - The New Anatolian - "'Turkishness' remains under new joint Article 301 proposal":

ANKARA / 6 February 2007

A high-profile meeting bringing together several prominent civil society representatives to discuss controversial Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 301 came to an end Monday with an agreement in principle which is likely to bother anti-301 groups as well as the European Union.

The representatives declared that they agreed to keep the notion "Turkishness" in the law, which has been used as a tool to prosecute and sentence several authors and journalists.

The multilateral efforts -- stretching since since last year -- to submit proposals to the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party government regarding changes to the controversial article may prompt backlash from the EU, as the bloc insistently asks the government to resolve the debate over the notion Turkishness.

The debate was rekindled after Armenian-origin Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, tried and sentenced to prison under the law on charges of "insulting Turkishness" in a column he wrote for his bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was gunned down by an teenager last month. It is claimed that Dink was subjected to a smear campaign during his trial and the state dropped his protection request.

Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah, in an immediate comment after the gunman was caught, said that the teenager committed the crime under influence of his nationalist feelings.

The civil group representatives will make public the details of their proposal with a press conference on Thursday.

The latest meeting was held under the auspices of the Turkish Bars Union (TBB), which convened the civil groups in response to criticism from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the government has yet to receive a concrete proposal from civil society.

The premier said the government's inclination was far from annulling the whole article. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul also said last week that they are against changes which aren't in the interest of the Turkish people.

Major political parties, both left and right wing, are also against a change editing out the notion "Turkishness," from the article, but many argue that the vague language of the article should be cleared up to enable the judiciary to obey the wording rather than employing individual interpretations of the provision.

The proposal kept the notion but introduced "derision, or "hurling invective" instead of humiliation. The text agreed upon by all participants but the Revolutionary Workers' Labor Union (DISK) also introduced reduced penalty for the offense.

Under the proposal, people -- either in Turkey or abroad-- who deride or hurl invective at Turkishness, the Turkish Republic, Parliament, judiciary, military or police shall be given prison terms ranging from six months to two years.

The current article proposes different prison terms for insults targeting different organizations. While people insulting Turkishness, the Turkish Republic or Parliament are given three years prison terms at most, insults to the other institutions receive two years behind bars at most. The current article also proposes an increase of one-third of the original penalty should the offense is committed by a Turkish citizen abroad.

The proposal also defined Turkishness under Article 66 of the Constitution ,which says people who are tied to the Turkish Republic with a bond of citizenship are called Turks.

The civil groups also underlined that the judiciary should consider European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings when interpreting the article.

TBB head Ozdemir Ozok had said in the meeting that their aim was to evaluate well-intentioned suggestions for solutions and that they don't want to push the political powers to a deadlock.

The main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) Onur Oymen, on the other hand, defended the article in its current form, saying the law doesn't ban criticism but bans humiliation and insult. He added that no human rights documents accepts insult as a part of freedom of expression.

4. - AFP - "Syrian court jails 12 Kurds, including three minors":

DAMASCUS / 6 February 2007

Twelve young Kurds, including three minors, have been sentenced to jail terms of between two-and-half and seven-and-a-half years for "membership of a secret organization," the independent National Organization of Human Rights in Syria says.

The group said on Sunday they were accused before a state security court of belonging to a group which aimed "to annex a part of Syrian territory to a foreign state and commit terrorist acts." The Kurds were arrested at the end of 2005 after having hurled Molotov cocktails in Aleppo, according to the organization's head, Amer Qorabi.
The organization, which said the three minors were each given prison terms of two-and-a-half years, called in a statement for Syrian authorities to scrap emergency courts and release all political prisoners.

5. - NPR - "Kurds displaced in effort to preserve ancient city":

6 January 2007 / by Ivan Watson

In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Kurdish authorities are trying to turn a historic landmark into a United Nations-approved World Heritage Site.

The Sumerians built a town on the flat Mesopotamian plains here they called "Ur Bilum." Civilizations came and went. Each wave of new inhabitants - including Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Ottomans - built on top of the other. Today, a crumbling brick citadel looms over modern-day Irbil on a giant man-made hill.

"It's the oldest continuously inhabited place in the world," says Sami Al Koja, who serves as an adviser to the citadel's board of renovation.

Many scholars contest this claim. Al Koja says that the mountain upon which the citadel sits has never been excavated or studied by archaeologists, due to decades of conflict and isolation.

Within the fortress' massive walls, an entire city of sagging, brown-brick houses is divided by a labyrinth of winding, unpaved alleys. Until recently, this was a ghetto that reeked of raw sewage and housed thousands of Kurdish refugees. They moved here during the '70s and '80s after Saddam Hussein's army destroyed their villages in the countryside.

Out of the Old City and into the New

The citadel's once-lively ghetto has been transformed into a ghost town. Last month, local authorities evacuated all but one of the 828 families living in the city. Each family was given a plot of land and $4,000 for new homes. They've been relocated to a barren plain about 25 miles east of Irbil, where an entire new neighborhood is under construction. The homes there are made of gray cinderblock, but that hasn't stopped them from naming their neighborhood "the New Citadel."

The old citadel, however, is now empty. Doors were left wide-open, and forgotten belongings - a woman's shoe, a child's schoolbook, empty packets of cigarettes and garbage - are scattered on the ground.

The one family allowed to remain in the city is responsible for tending to the water tower, which supplies the city below. Aziza Kadr lives with her husband and children in the tower's shadow.

"I feel lonely here," she says. "It was very sad when all our neighbors left."

For Preservation's Sake

Lolan Mustafa, a local historian, has mixed feelings about the evacuation order. But he believes it will ultimately protect the history of the place.

When the houses are rebuilt, the idea is to bring back people but under the regular and control of antiquity," he says. "They should take care of the house, preserve the house. So it should be a living city again."

Two years ago, Mustafa opened a textiles museum in a renovated two-story house near the citadel's main gate. He's trying to preserve the traditional art of Kurdish carpet-weaving, which nearly died during Saddam's scorched-earth campaign to pacify the Kurdish countryside. Over 400 pieces are on display in his museum.

Not far from the textile museum, classical music echoes from another renovated mansion, where a Frenchman named Mathieu Saint-Dizier runs a European cultural center. It presents free Western art exhibits to the public. But the public, as it turns out, isn't very large.

"The problem is the place," Saint-Dizier says. "The citadel doesn't attract a lot of people. The citadel had in the past a bad reputation. Many poor people were working there."

Irbil city government adviser Sami Al Koja wants UNESCO - the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - to help guide the city's rebirth. He sees potential in the crumbling brown bricks on top of the mountain - for archaeological discovery and for tourism.

6. - Al Jazeera - "Kirkuk Arabs face relocation":

6 January 2007

An Iraqi government committee has decided to relocate tens of thousands of Arabs currently living in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.

The Iraqi Higher Committee for the Normalization of Kirkuk ruled that Arabs descended from those who moved to the city after 1957 would be returned to their original home towns and given compensation.

Rosh Siddiq, a Kurdish official familiar with the work of the committee, told Al Jazeera that the decision to move the - mainly Shia - Arabs to towns in central and southern Iraq had been taken earlier this week.

"The committee will allot them a lot of land and pay 25,000 US dollars [per household] as compensation", he said. The decision will now be sent to the Iraqi cabinet for approval.

The decision will only apply to Arabs who arrived in Kirkuk during the "Arabisation" campaign of Saddam Hussein's government; a move that seems certain to anger the Arab settlers.

"Kirkuk is Iraqi land and it's for all Iraqis, I will never leave," Khalaf al -Housouni, an Arab who moved to Kirkuk in 1990, told Al Jazeera.

During the rule of Saddam Hussein thousands of Arabs were moved to the city and thousands of Kurds were made to leave.

Mohammed Khalil, a member of the Arab Republican Union which represents Arabs living in Kirkuk, told Germany's Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency: "We refuse these new decisions and consider them a form of forced migration."

Human Rights Watch says that more than 120,000 Kurds, Turkomans and Assyrians were forcibly expelled from northern Iraq from 1991 and replaced by Arab families from mainly Shia regions of Iraq "to drastically alter the ethnic demographics of Kirkuk".

In an earlier meeting, the Iraqi committee decided that the people who were driven from Kirkuk would be allowed to return. They will be given land and also paid $7,000 compensation.

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq at least 300,000 Kurds have returned to the city that many of them believe should be part of autonomous Kurdistan.

"Kirkuk is part of the Kurdistan map. We have unfairly lost it, it was taken away by force," Ali Namir Saleh, a member of the Kirkuk governing council, said.

Referendum by end of 2007

A referendum to decide whether the city will remain Iraqi or become part of Kurdistan is due to be held by the end of year.

Sheikh Abdul-Rahman Minshad al-Asi, head of the Arab Gathering party and a chief from the Obaid tribe, said that carrying out a census and referendum will guarantee that Kirkuk would be annexed to Iraq's Kurdistan region.

"Arabs and Turkomans are studying all options, including force to defend their existence", he said.

Kurds, Arabs, Turkomans and Assyrians have been living in the ethnically mixed city for centuries.

Tensions have increased in recent months and there have been sporadic acts of violence, the most recent being five suicide bomb attacks at the weekend.

Kirkuk is vital to the future of Iraq because it sits on two per cent of the world's proven oil reserves.