15 May 2007

1. "Turkey's difficult balancing act", the country must to find equilibrium between hard-line secularism and religious extremism.

2. "'Republicans' Crowd Izmir This Time", hundreds of thousands march in Aegean city of Izmir this weekend, for a fifth "republican meeting" which was initiated by Kemalist NGO's as a protest to the government. The crowd urged the "social democrat" CHP and DSP to join forces for elections.

3. "Minority newspapers in Turkey", minorities, as defined by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, are protected under its terms. This provided for minority newspapers as well but this has made it difficult to open a newspaper in Kurdish, a minority in Turkey not recognized in the Treaty Among the problems that the minority newspapers have faced is the declining number of people who can read in Greek, Armenian and Judeo-Spanish.

4. "In Turkey's religious heartland, secularism thrives", fears of those kinds of restrictions have led thousands of Turks to march in many cities over the past month, inflamed by secularist politicians. A political party with a past in Islamic politics, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has tried to capture the country's highest secular post. Once it succeeds, their argument goes, Turkey will be dragged back to an earlier era when Islam ran the state.

5. "A Framework Settlement and Kurdish Concerns", while the Iranians are busy creating the framework for a comprehensive settlement with the United States over Iraq, the Kurds have good reason to be worried.

6. "'Honour Killing' Sparks Fears of New Iraqi Conflict", the Yezidi minority has so far stayed well out of Iraq’s internecine battles, but violence with their Muslim neighbours has escalated following the murder of a girl who apparently converted to Islam.

1. - Angus Reid Global Monitor - "Turkey's difficult balancing act":

The country must to find equilibrium between hard-line secularism and religious extremism.

13 May 2007 / by Rob Annandale

An inscription on a stone archway spanning a busy Istanbul street reads "Cumhuriyet ve demokrasiyi seviyoruz": We love the republic and democracy. Not many Turks would contest this statement but the current dispute over who should be the country’s next head of state is once again highlighting the long-standing tension between two political ideals.

While the level of democracy has fluctuated, the republic—or rather, its secular nature—has risen to quasi-sacred status in the years since Ataturk essentially built Turkey from scratch after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its occupation by the victors of World War I. Since Ataturk’s death nearly 70 years ago, the powerful military has been the self-proclaimed guardian of his vision of a modern Turkish state. In the course of this defence, the army has orchestrated the overthrow of four civilian governments. One such intervention led to the execution of a deposed prime minister who had loosened some of the legal restrictions imposed on Islam, the religion of over 99 percent of the population.

But other laws strictly regulating the public practice of religion remain, most notably the ban on headscarves in universities and official buildings. The presidential nomination last month by the moderate Islamist ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of foreign minister Abdullah Gul, whose wife covers her hair, has led to fears of a religious takeover. Although the post—elected by parliament rather than the public—is largely ceremonial, it holds certain veto powers that make it a significant component in the system of checks and balances intended to secure the secular order.

Gul’s nomination prompted protesters to take to the streets for massive demonstrations and the opposition to boycott the vote. The Constitutional Court subsequently annulled the results on the grounds that fewer than the two thirds of lawmakers required for quorum were present. Moreover, the military issued not-so-veiled threats that it would intervene if necessary to protect the secular republic.

In the face of such opposition, Gul withdrew his candidacy while Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan moved up the date of this year’s general election and is trying to push through a series of constitutional amendments, including one that would make the presidency a democratically elected position. Even if parliament were to pass the reforms, current president Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who is firmly in the secularist camp, is widely expected to use his veto.

Such a move could buy time for the secularists as a poll released by Sonar suggests the AKP may well lose seats in July’s election. Its current overwhelming parliamentary majority is a quirk of a system that requires parties to receive a minimum of 10 per cent of the popular vote before it can have any seats. In fact, the ruling party only received slightly over a third of all votes in the 2002 election, but because it was only one of two parties to cross that threshold, it currently holds 363 of the Great National Assembly’s 550 seats, just four shy of the two-thirds majority needed for changes to the constitution. The new poll places the AKP at 29.04 per cent, with four other parties over 10 per cent and two more within striking distance of the magic number.

If the Jul. 22 vote were to reproduce these numbers, Erdogan and Gul would have far less room to manoeuvre in parliament. And if the proposed constitutional amendments do not go through, the secularists may well dodge a bullet. For now. But if Turkey is ever to enjoy stability, it cannot be satisfied with such short-sighted tactics.

Rather, it must strive to find a balance somewhere between hard-line secularism and religious extremism. As a moderate Islamist party eager to join the European Union (EU), the AKP seems uniquely placed to undertake such a project. But it will need help from the EU—Turkey’s biggest trade partner and a club whose membership Turkish leaders have coveted for decades—which must overcome internal divisions over its relationship with an important regional player.

During its time in power, Erdogan’s party has performed much better than its predecessors in economic terms and undertaken a number of legal reforms required for the distant goal of EU accession. But its failed attempt to bring in a law criminalizing adultery last year set off alarm bells both domestically and in Europe. And in light of the latest crisis, Brussels can now add talk of a military intervention to its already long list of concerns ranging from poor economic fundamentals and human rights abuses to fears of a large Muslim population.

At the same time, Turkish opinion’s enthusiasm for accession has waned considerably in recent years and the apparent hostility of French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy to Turkey’s full EU membership does not bode well for brighter days. But good relations between Europe and Turkey are essential for the long term well-being of both. Europe cannot afford to ignore a country boasting the second largest military in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), geostrategic positioning to die for, and the soon-to-be biggest population on the continent. And a sense that Europe is not dealing fairly with Turkey could lead not only to a hardening of Islamist positions but also to continued gains for the extreme right-wing National Action Party (MHP), which Sonar’s poll puts in third place at slightly over 12 per cent.

The EU has said it will only deal with a democratic Turkey but the people’s will appears to be incompatible with the repressive secularism of Ataturk’s founding vision. It is incumbent on Turkey’s secular establishment to recognize this fact and to work with the AKP to reduce potentially dangerous limits on religious freedoms. As the current—and likely future—government, Erdogan’s party has to prove in turn it can avoid the slippery slope towards sharia that could tear the country apart. Although the EU cannot dictate Turkey’s future, by resisting its xenophobic impulses and setting fair and consistent objectives for Turkish accession, it just might be able to provide both parties with the incentive to reach the necessary compromise.

2. - Bianet - "'Republicans' Crowd Izmir This Time":

Hundreds of thousands march in Aegean city of Izmir this weekend, for a fifth "republican meeting" which was initiated by Kemalist NGO's as a protest to the government. The crowd urged the "social democrat" CHP and DSP to join forces for elections.

IZMIR / 14 May 2007

Hundreds of thousands gathered in Izmir this weekend for a fifth "republican meeting" after Ankara, Istanbul, Canakkale and Manisa.

Once again the crowd filled streets and avenues waving Turkish flags and chanting secularist slogans.

Main opposition in the parliament People's Republican Party (CHP) front man Deniz Baykal and Democratic Left Party (DSP) leader Zeki Sezer as well as Social Democratic Party (SHP) and Labor Party (IP) supported the meeting, organized by numerous NGO's like its precedents.

The crowd voiced demands that the CHP and DSP join forces for the up coming general elections on July 22.

Both leaders refrained from meeting at during the demonstration.

Izmir's municipalities -one of the biggest cities in Turkey on the Aegean shore and known as a social democrat stronghold- supported the meeting by distributing free Ataturk posters, hats and Turkish flags as well as providing free transportation to the arena.

Demonstrators carried placards critical of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

The series of "republican meetings" began as a protest against AKP's efforts to nominate and elect a partisan president at the parliament.

The party's Islamist background fears most as they would head the country towards a conservative, Islamist state.

3. - Turkish Daily News - "Minority newspapers in Turkey":

Minorities, as defined by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, are protected under its terms. This provided for minority newspapers as well but this has made it difficult to open a newspaper in Kurdish, a minority in Turkey not recognized in the Treaty Among the problems that the minority newspapers have faced is the declining number of people who can read in Greek, Armenian and Judeo-Spanish. The young people of the minority communities prefer Turkish and don’t want to learn the language of their ancestors.

ISTANBUL / 14 May 2007 / by Niki Gamm

Newspapers, as we more or less know them today, were first published in Germany if one is to decide by what little evidence remains today. Then we see them in France, Italy and England. As more and more commercial contact occurred between the European countries and the Ottoman Empire, this trade came to Turkey and was primarily in the hands of Turkey's minorities.

But the term minority has a rather different meaning when applied to the peoples of the Empire. When Fatih Sultan Mehmet conquered Constantinople in 1453, the question arose of what to do with the Jewish, Armenian and Orthodox communities whose lives were defined by their faith just as Muslims were. Since Muslim law differed from the practices of these three religious groups, Fatih decided that they should be administered by their own leaders, according to their own rules.

When foreigners began coming to the Ottoman Empire, several countries successfully negotiated treaties called capitulations that allowed their foreign nationals special privileges, even their own courts. When the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923, the Jewish, Armenian and Orthodox communities were recognized as minorities, the only minorities in Turkey. No account was taken of other minorities in the modern sense, for example the Kurds. While Fatih's organizational method worked well when countries were defined by religion, it no longer held up when nations based on citizenship or ethnic identity began appearing in the 19th century. In 1923, the foreign powers with which Turkey was negotiating this treaty were uninterested in or unaware of any other group in the country that might qualify as a minority.

The earliest newspapers in Turkey were those of the French and other minorities. It is known that there were five French, four Greek and one Armenian language newspapers in Istanbul and Izmir had two in French, one in Greek and one in Hebrew. Today there are two Armenian, two Greek and one Jewish newspaper, which still prints one page in Judeo-Spanish.

Turkey's oldest minority newspaper

The oldest minority paper is the 83-year-old Greek language Apoyevmatini. As it was distributed in the afternoon, the newspaper was given the name it bears because it means ?mid-afternoon? in Greek. The idea behind it was to provide information about the Greek community in Turkey and to encourage the younger people of that community to learn the language. Of course when it was started in 1925, there were many more Greeks of Turkish origin (known as Rums) in Turkey. Today there are 2,000 or so Greeks and consequently the paper is only published once a week.

Mihail Vasiliadis, the editor in chief of Apoyevmatini, took over the newspaper in 2002 after an extensive journalistic career elsewhere. Since the beginning, the paper's philosophy has been against offering opposition. Much of the content that Vasiliadis publishes is information about Turkish-Greek history and relations. He's concerned that TV and the Internet may have already won over the youngsters in the community but he does not expect newspapers to just disappear.

Today the atmosphere has changed just as it has in the relations between Turkey and Greece. The Turkish press has become warmer, friendlier towards the Greek press in Turkey, according to Vasiliadis. He is even optimistic enough to talk about the possibility of starting a Turkish-language newspaper here and is generally optimistic about the future. However, he believes that Turks have to change their attitude towards the minorities in the country if they are going to succeed in entering the European Union. He is hopeful that people in Turkey will eventually see that it is better to be in the EU than to not be.

Nor Marmara, one of Turkey's Armenian papers

The second oldest minority paper is Nor Marmara, one of the two Armenian language newspapers that began publishing in 1940 and is now in its 67th year. At first it was published as a weekly but then became a daily paper as more and more people wanted to read it. Rober Haddeler took over the newspaper as its editor-in-chief in 1967 and now has passed most of the work on to his two sons.

At present Nor Marmara comes out six days a week because of the difficulty of distributing it on Sundays and on Fridays a supplement is given in Turkish so that Armenians who do not know Armenian and people interested in Armenian culture can learn what is happening in the community.

Haddeler was a graduate of Istanbul University's Philosophy Department, knows four languages and basically was a writer before he became a journalist. As a result he brings a thoughtful background to his position as editor-in-chief.

Among the problems that he has faced is that of a declining readership. The younger members of the Armenian community prefer to read in Turkish because of the difficulty of the Armenian alphabet. And they are interested in Turkish television, radio and newspapers and don't find the cultural publications produced anywhere near as fascinating as the Turkish.

Although the EU adaptation process has been initiated, that does not mean that the Armenian community's problems have been solved. The most important of these, according to Haddeler, is the non-implementation of laws for the minority groups in Turkey that concern the acquisition of property, the disposal of money and the election of members of the various foundations' boards that oversee the community's affairs. He added that the government was aware of the problems faced but nothing has been done until recently; however, the government has now promised to pass a revised law regulating foundations prior to general elections in July. The Armenian community has expressed its pleasure over the changes to the law.

Haddeler also pointed out that the Armenian press abroad followed the Turkish Daily News quite closely because it was considered the best at reporting events. At the same time people are astonished that Nor Marmara is published in Turkey and that it is at such a high level. He emphasized that this was good for Turkey because it is read and admired by the Armenian community abroad for its coverage of events whether or not the reader liked Turkey.

Shalom, the Jewish community's newspaper

Established in 1947, Shalom was published in Judeo-Spanish at first since that is the language that the Jewish community in Istanbul knew. But in 1983, it turned to Turkish because the young people no longer used Judeo-Spanish in their every day lives and older members who did had either died or had moved to other countries such as Israel and the U.S. in large numbers. Still the weekly publication continues to publish one page in Judeo. It maintains this tradition and a very extensive archive.

The original publisher, Avrom Leyon, placed the slogan, ?Speak a simple truth, call a spade a spade? on the masthead of the paper and it is still there to this day. Its current editor-in-chief, Tilda Levi, says that they follow this slogan but shy away from political comment. Unlike the Greeks and the Armenians, Jews have never been in conflict with Turks and even enjoyed the official protection of the Ottomans after they fled prosecution in Spain in the 15th century. Levi points out that there has not been any anti-Semitism in Turkey although she admits it does exist here and there and is generally based on misinformation or lack of information. On occasion when unpleasant events have occurred in Palestine, the paper has received angry mail. But she has no doubt that newspapers will continue in spite of the Internet and TV.

4. - International Herald Tribune - "In Turkey's religious heartland, secularism thrives":

KONYA / 14 May 2007 / by Sabrina Tavernise

In the not too distant past here in Turkey's religious heartland, women would not appear in public unless they were modestly dressed; a single woman was not able to rent an apartment on her own, and the mayor proposed restoring a segregation of the city's buses by sex.

Fears of those kinds of restrictions have led thousands of Turks to march in many cities over the past month, inflamed by secularist politicians. A political party with a past in Islamic politics, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has tried to capture the country's highest secular post. Once it succeeds, their argument goes, Turkey will be dragged back to an earlier era when Islam ran the state.

But here in Konya, a leafy city on the plains of central Turkey, the rule of Erdogan's party has done no such thing. In the paradox of modern Turkey, the party here has had a moderating influence, helping to open a guarded society and make it more flexible.

Konya is still deeply attached to its faith. Mosques are spread thickly throughout the city; there are as many as in Istanbul, a city with five times the population.

But in a part of the world where religion and politics have been a poisonous mix and cultural norms are conservative regardless of religion, it is an oasis: women here wear relatively revealing clothing, couples hold hands and bus segregation is a distant memory.

The shift shows the evolution of the Turkish Islamic movement, which has matured under Erdogan, abandoning the restrictive practices of its predecessors and demonstrating to its observant constituents the benefits of belonging to the European Union. It also follows a pattern occurring throughout Turkey, where the secularists who founded the state out of the Ottoman Empire's remains are now lagging behind religious Turks in efforts to modernize it.

But secular Turks, like those who took part in the recent protests, do not believe the religious Turks have changed. The mayor who proposed segregation, for example, is now part of Erdogan's party. They argue that the party might say it wants more religious freedom for its constituents, like allowing devout women to wear their head scarves in universities, but it has never laid out its vision for how to protect secular lifestyles going forward.

Erdogan's party has been the most flexible and open of all parties that consider Islam an important part of Turkish society. Its politics have so far been respectful of secular freedom in most cases. However, there are harder-line members who would like to see a more religious society, and secular Turks fear that their children's education and rights for unmarried women could be threatened.

In the country as a whole, religious Turks have felt like second-class citizens for generations, in part a legacy of Ataturk's radical, secular revolution in the early 20th century. Now, elevated by a decade of economic growth, they are pressing for a bigger share of power.

"We've been wearing the same dress for 80 years, and it doesn't fit anymore," said Yoruk Karatan, who travels extensively in Turkey.

"Things used to be black and white." Now, he said, "there are a lot of grays."

In Konya, some of the change started from the top. In 2003, around the time Erdogan's party came to power, an irreverent ophthalmologist and a veterinarian with long hair were appointed to run Selcuk University in Konya. They immediately began challenging the sensibilities of this conservative city, organizing concerts and encouraging student clubs.

Kursat Turgut, the veterinarian who became vice rector, said that he was confronted by a group of students who came to his office and demanded that he cancel a concert, because they did not like the singer. He refused.

"Change is the most difficult thing," Turgut said. "It takes time to change a mentality."

The students were from a nationalist group with an Islamic tinge that for years had used scare tactics to enforce a strict moral code on campus. When Umit, who did not want to give his last name, started at the university's veterinary school five years ago, he was chastised by students from the group for cuddling with his girlfriend, and, on another occasion, for wearing shorts.

"They thought they were protecting honor and morals," said Aliye Cetinkaya, a journalist. "If we crossed the line there was a fight."

Turgut and the rector, Suleyman Okudan, shut down the group's activities. Now, five years later, there are more than 80 student clubs, students like Umit behave and dress any way they choose, and Turgut's concerts, open to the public, draw large crowds.

"It is like a different century," said Cetinkaya, who moved here 12 years ago for college.

She still faces limitations. When she covered a protest in Konya last year over the cartoons published in Denmark, stones and shoes were thrown at her because she was not wearing a headscarf. But such incidents are rare, and far outweighed by improvements. For example, the two-year degree program she attended a decade ago only had about 50 women students.

Now that number is above 1,000, she said.

Konya's deep-rooted religiosity found public expression in politics in the late 1980s, when it became one of the first cities in the country to elect a pro-Islamic part - the Welfare Party of Necmettin Erbakan - to run the city. Erbakan himself was elected to Parliament from Konya.

The administration was restrictive: It was a Welfare Party mayor, Halil Urun, who proposed, unsuccessfully, segregating the buses in 1989. But the city kept electing the party to run it, up until the late 1990s, when the party was shut down by the state for straying from secularism.

Then, in 2000, a young member of the banned party, Erdogan, began the Justice and Development Party. It was unclear whether Konya voters would accept it.

They did. Of the 32 members of the City Council, all but two are now members of Erdogan's party.

It was economics that persuaded Ahmet Agirbasli, a 57-year-old businessman who sells car parts and pasta. He opposed Erdogan until the party began reforms to join the European Union, and his business began to grow. Now he sells macaroni to 50 countries. Five years ago it was only 10.

Akif Emre, a columnist at Yeni Safak, a conservative newspaper in Istanbul, argues that Erdogan has helped to bridge the gap between Turkey's religious heartland and urban, secular Turks.

"They really accept secularism," he said of Erdogan and his allies.

"They are changing the mentality. Conservative people changed their lifestyle toward a more secular way."

Religious Turks, for their part, are still wary of the state. New civil organizations are more focused on building mosques than on engaging in public debate, and people scrupulously avoid talking about politics.

But an unspoken understanding between Konya's religious Turks and the secular state is in place, in which the mosques are left alone, but religious Turks do not press too many demands on the state.

5. - Stratfor - "A Framework Settlement and Kurdish Concerns":

11 May 2007

While the Iranians are busy creating the framework for a comprehensive settlement with the United States over Iraq, the Kurds have good reason to be worried.

Analysis

Following the May 3-5 Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt, the Iranian government has thrown out a number of indicators that it is making serious moves toward reaching a comprehensive resolution with Washington over Iraq. The Iranians presented a detailed paper at the summit outlining Tehran's demands for Iraq, and essentially demonstrated that the appropriate concessions will be made to appease Iraq's Sunni faction as long as the government in Baghdad falls within the Iranian orbit of influence.

The United States is most unlikely to be completely on board with all of Iran's demands, and there are still lengthy negotiations to be had. But now that the Iranian proposal has been thrown out into the public view for the Sunni Arabs and Kurds to see what plan the Iranians have cooked up for Iraq, Washington is facing quite the damage-control task to assure these factions that any deal it works out with Iran will not compromise their core interests.

The Iranian paper acknowledges that Iraq's Sunni faction would have to be appeased in a number of ways to quell the insurgency and allow the Iraqi government to function. The relevant proposals include making amendments to the constitution to give 40 percent of the seats in Baghdad to the Sunnis; altering the de-Baathification law to allow the rehiring of former Iraqi army personnel; holding fresh parliamentary elections; and reaching an agreement on the "fair" distribution of oil revenues, "especially the regions in the center of Iraq" (a direct reference to the oil-deprived and Sunni-dominated central region of the country).

These proposals give Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) much to worry about. Currently, the Iraqi 275-seat parliament is divided to give the Shia about 47 percent of seats, the Sunnis 20 percent and the Kurds 21 percent. Iran's suggested doubling of the percentage of Sunni seats, with the Shia maintaining the overall majority, leaves little room for Kurds in the parliament.

The Kurds are not going to be enthusiastic about amending the Iraqi Constitution in any event. When the charter was formulated in late 2005, the Sunnis opted for the insurgency and boycotted the political realm. Without the Sunnis in play, the Kurds took advantage of the situation and helped design a constitution largely favorable to Kurdish interests. This is particularly true of the intentionally ambiguous clauses on oil legislation, which allow the regional governorates considerable authority over decisions related to developing oil fields, exploring new and undeveloped fields, and dividing revenues.

The Kurdish faction will hotly contest any attempt to give the Sunnis a larger piece of the oil pie, especially by re-establishing the state-owned Iraq National Oil Co. As Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the KRG representative to the United States, recently threatened, "The oil issue for us is a redline … if a centralized oil regime is imposed on us, we will not participate in the state of Iraq." The Kurds see the recent add-ons to the oil legislation by the Sunni and Shiite factions as an outright attempt to rob the Kurds of their prized oil resources. No major concessions by the Kurds can thus be expected on this subject in the near future, particularly when the Kirkuk issue remains unsettled.

The final status of the ancient, multiethnic and oil-rich city of Kirkuk is supposed to be settled in a local referendum by the end of 2007 under the constitution. Turkey, Iran, and Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions all have a vested interested in making sure Kirkuk's oil wealth does not officially fall under the Kurds' control, and are actively working to settle more Arabs in the city to reverse the demographics back in their favor.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders regret not taking Kirkuk at the outset of the Iraq war, and know that the longer the referendum is delayed, their chances of securing Kirkuk will be further diminished. With Turkey making threats across the border and the United States with its hands full in dealing with the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias farther south, the Kurds are pushing for the referendum to take place before they lose their chance altogether.

In essence, Iraqi Kurds are looking at a whole new ball game in post-Hussein Iraq. Iraq's Kurds are experiencing the highest degree of independence in their history. For the first time they have their own political system (in which the two main rival Kurdish parties are united for a change), security forces and a steady source of income, which is why desperately holding on to the region's oil resources has become such a vital issue. Needless to say, the KRG is not willing to easily surrender any of that.

And if history serves as a lesson, the Kurds cannot be all that assured that they will not again end up on the losing side. The aftermath of 1991 Gulf War, when the United States essentially reneged on a backdoor deal to support Kurdish and Shiite uprisings in the north and south, leaving both factions to get brutally crushed by Saddam Hussein's forces, is still fresh in the minds of Iraqi Kurds. Knowing full well that the United States is anxious for an exit strategy from Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds are not completely confident that Washington will not overlook Kurdish interests in an effort to reach a final settlement on Iraq.

And though Tehran has a long history of working with Iraq's Kurds -- particularly the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by KRG President Massoud Barzani -- against the Sunni-led regime in Baghdad, with a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, the Iranians and Iraqi Kurds no longer have a common enemy to battle. The Iraqi Kurds already knew the tenuousness of such working relationships given the 1975 Algiers accord between Iran and Iraq, which halted Iranian support for a Kurdish rebellion in Iraq, seriously crippling the movement.

In addition, the Iraqi Kurds are fully aware they represent the common adversary to Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions, and that once the attention shifts from the sectarian violence farther south, they will face familiar moves from Baghdad to suppress Kurdish autonomy. The Iraqi Kurds also enjoy no assurance that the deep historical rifts between Barzani's KDP and President Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan will not end up compromising Kurdish interests in the long run, particularly if Talabani's health begins to fail.

Do-or-die time for the Kurds to consolidate their gains has arrived. The KRG can pressure Washington to keep Kurdish interests in mind during these negotiations by issuing veiled threats to withdraw from the central government and halt peshmerga support for U.S. forces, but in the end, a significant compromise of some sort looks inevitable. The adage that history repeats itself holds especially true in geopolitical matters. Unfortunately for the Kurds, their history is all too painful a reminder of what could lie ahead.

6. - IWPR - "'Honour Killing' Sparks Fears of New Iraqi Conflict":

The Yezidi minority has so far stayed well out of Iraq’s internecine battles, but violence with their Muslim neighbours has escalated following the murder of a girl who apparently converted to Islam.

By IWPR staff in Iraq (ICR No. 221, 14-May-07)

Bashiqa, a small town sitting in lush green hills east of the city of Mosul, used to be regarded as an island of peace and stability while vast areas of post-Saddam Iraq were plunged into civil war.

Home to a population that is 70 per cent Yezidi - members of an old sect that is neither Muslim nor Christian - Bashiqa was spared the sectarian and ethnic strife between Arabs and Kurds, radical Sunnis and Shia that plagued surrounding areas. People from Mosul would drive the 25 kilometres to Bashiqa to have picnics and to enjoy the tranquility of a little town where Yezidi temples, Muslim mosques and Christian churches stand in close proximity, presenting a rare image of tolerant coexistence.

Until April 7, that is. On that day, a furious mob stoned a 17-year-old girl to death while bystanders applauded and filmed the killing on their cell phones.

Her crime? Duaa Khalil Aswad, a Yezidi, had run away from home because she had fallen in love with a Muslim boy. It was not the first love story of its kind, nor was it the first “honour killing” in a region where women are subject to strong social restrictions and face severe punishment for disregarding family, tribal or religious traditions.

Such cases can no longer be covered up as easily these days, because of pressure from local women’s activists - but they rarely cause a stir.

Duaa’s case was different. This killing has had much wider impact - unleashing widespread inter-communal strife in a formerly peaceful area, which has resulted in at least 20 deaths and the threat of more violence.

In addition to fears of a new ongoing conflict between Yezidis and Muslims, the case highlights the absence of rule of law, and the acceptance that family disputes should be dealt with by relatives rather than outsiders from the judiciary, even when the resolution involves murder. At least one eyewitness said members of the security forces stood by and did not intervene as Duaa was stoned to death.

TRADITIONAL TABOOS LEAD TO MURDER

The story began when Duaa, a second-year student at the Fine Arts Institute in Bashiqa, fell in love with her neighbour, Muhannad, the owner of a nearby cosmetics shop. Muhannad used to wait for Duaa after her college classes, and her parents were aware of the relationship.

The Yezidis are ethnic Kurds who practice a unique religion that incorporates elements of ancient faiths such as Zoroastrianism, as well as drawing on Islam and Christianity. Dismissed by some as “devil-worshippers”, the Yezidis have coped with such misperceptions by keeping themselves to themselves, while seeking not to antagonise other communities.

One hard-and-fast rule of Yezidi tradition is that marriage outside the faith is not permitted. To circumvent this, Duaa reportedly asked Muhannad to elope with her, but he refused, saying that Muslim tradition recommends that both families give their a blessing to a marriage.

Finally, Duaa decided to convert to Islam so that she could marry Muhannad. She informed her parents, who were not pleased, but did not take any action to stop her. They appear to have regarded her decision as a domestic matter, and not one for the wider community.

When her tribe learned of her conversion, the girl took refuge with a Yezidi cleric, a common practice when people fear retribution. She stayed in the cleric’s home, and her parents begged him not to surrender her to anyone, according to Mustafa Muslim, a grocer in the town.

On April 7, Aswad’s uncles came to the cleric and told him that the family had forgiven the girl and wanted her to return with them.

“She thought they had really forgiven her, when she was going to her death,” said Muslim. “She was wearing a black skirt and a red jacket with her hair in a pony hair.”

After just a few yards, Duaa was surrounded by 13 of her cousins, together with a large crowd of other Yezidis.

“They started kicking and punching her, pulling her hair and forcing her to the ground,” said Muslim, who witnessed the event. “She was shouting for help. Her father tried to get to her but the people stopped him.”

In a subsequent interview with a local TV station, the father said he had sent his brother to bring the girl home, but had no idea that a group was waiting to kill her.

A brutal execution lasting two hours followed, most of which was filmed on mobile phones. The footage, which circulated first among Mosul residents and later on the internet, showed the girl on the ground surrounded by a frenzied crowd. Young men beat and kicked her, first throwing small stones and then fetching bigger ones and large concrete bricks.

The girl, bleeding heavily, desperately tried to protect her face with one hand and cover her naked legs with the other after her dress was been torn. After a while, she stopped moving. As she lay still, the cheering crowd continued to throw stones at her.

Later, her killers took her body to the outskirts of town, burned it and buried her remains with those of a dog, to show they regarded her as worthless and dirty.

A post mortem showed that Duaa died of a fractured skull and spine.

According to the police chief in Mosul, most of the killers were members of Duaa’s extended family - mainly cousins and their friends.

Several local people interviewed subsequently by IWPR reporters expressed support for the stoning, and only few said it was wrong.

Eyewitness Samir Juma, a teacher, said policemen as well as some Peshmerga soldiers belonging to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, stood and watched the killing without attempting to intervene.

The KDP seeks to control Bashiqa. Although it lies outside the self-governing Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the Mosul area is among the territories which could be transferred to that region in a referendum due later this year.

Police in Mosul say four people have been arrested in connection with the murder and two more are still on the run. All the suspects are relatives of Duaa.

Muhannad has fled the town.

MUSLIM OUTRAGE LEADS TO REPRISALS

The secluded nature of Yezidi society has enabled this small community to remain neutral in the face of growing tensions between Sunni and Shia groups.

But tradition, in this case the taboo on inter-faith marriages that applies among Yezidis and Muslims, created an atmosphere in which violence against transgressors became socially acceptable. In the case of Duaa’s murder, it paved the way for reprisals by angry members of the surrounding Muslim community, and potentially a growing sectarian conflict.

Duaa’s case is not the first time conversion and marriage prohibitions have led to violence. A few months before she died, a family killed their daughter because she had converted to Islam. They shot her with a single bullet to the head, and little attention was paid to the case.

Two months before Duaa’s death, a Yezidi man from Shekan, a village near Bashiqa, eloped with a Muslim girl. The girl was later found beheaded, allegedly by Muslims from her own village, and several Yezidi houses and religious sites were set alight.

These incidents may help explain why the killing of Duaa escalated so swiftly into bloodshed between Muslims and Yezidis.

On April 22, gunmen stopped a bus carrying workers from a textile factory in Mosul. All the Muslims on the bus were released unharmed. So were the Christians – a community who these days are a common target for Sunni extremists. Instead, the attackers took the 23 Yezidi workers to Mosul’s Nur neighbourhood and summarily executed them.

A Yezidi baker and three of his workers were killed in Mosul on April 26, and two Yezidi policemen were killed three days later.

In Mosul, Duaa was described by angry Muslims as “our martyred sister” as they vowed retaliation.

At the same time, Yezidis were beaten up and kicked out of their jobs and college dormitories not only in Mosul but also in Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah - the three major towns of the Kurdish region.

In Erbil, the owner of the Mergasur Hotel confirmed that up to 50 young men attacked the building and tried to beat up Yezidi workers who were living there. He closed the doors and called the police.

PUK Media, a Kurdish internet news outlet, reported that many Yezidi workers were leaving their jobs and returning to their villages for fear of retaliation. In Erbil, Yezidi students from the Mosul area left for home after some were injured in an attack on their dormitory.

IWPR was told that some Muslim residents of Bashiqa had been threatened and told to leave town.

FAITH OR TRADITION?

One contentious issue which may at first sight seem of little relevance, but which may determine the dynamics of Yezidi-Muslim conflict, is the argument over whether Duaa was stoned to death for converting to Islam or for losing her virginity before marriage.

Sources close to the girl’s family claim that she did not convert to Islam, but wanted to run away with Muhannad, and it was this that provoked her cousins to punish her.

A hospital autopsy confirmed she was a virgin.

IWPR was told in Bashiqa that the reason police did not intervene during the killing or take action immediately afterwards was that they believed Duaa was guilty of “immoral behaviour”, in other words of breaking a taboo prescribed by social tradition, rather than changing faith.

Only when police heard that Duaa might have been killed for abandoning Yezidism did they issue arrest warrants.

The supreme religious leader of the Yezidis, Tahsin Saeed Ali, condemned Duaa’s murder as "a heinous crime”.

He sought to downplay the inter-faith implications of the case, asserting that Duaa was killed because of “old traditions", implying that the motivation was social mores rather than religion.

POLITICAL CONSPIRACY THEORIES

In the complex political context in Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh region, speculation is rife that Duaa’s murder was really a plot by one of Iraq’s political factions. Some of the conspiracy theories seem to be coming from opposing factions seeking to capitalise on the incident. These theories abound despite the fact that the suspects are all relatives of the dead woman, rather than outsiders.

Mosul is the administrative centre of Nineveh governorate, but many Kurds aspire to reassign the town and adjoining areas to the self-governing Kurdish region. Under article 140 of the Iraqi constitution of 2005, a vote has to be held by the end of 2007 to decide whether disputed areas with mixed populations - principally Mosul and Kirkuk - should be annexed to the Kurdish region.

If the key “swing vote” between Kurds and Arabs in Kirkuk is held by the Turkoman, the Yezidis around Mosul could play a similar role. The majority of Yezidis live close to the current boundary, and they are believed to be divided on the issue of annexation.

Some Bashiqa residents interviewed by IWPR were convinced that the incident was in some way orchestrated by pro-annexation groups trying to push the Yezidis to side with the Muslim Kurds in a vote to determine the area’s future.

“It was fabricated to urge people to take the side of Kurdistan,” said Assim Khalil, a Yezidi civil servant, adding that he believed Kurdish politicians wanted to heighten fears of radical Islamists among the community.

A local Kurdish politician, Ghayyath Soorchi of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan countered with the claim that “Baathists and insurgents” were involved in the killing.

Yet more scope for conspiracy theories was created by the circulation of leaflets purporting to be from the “Islamic State of Iraq” and offering protection for any Yezidis who wanted to convert to Islam.

UNEASY PEACE

Meanwhile, a joint force of police and Iraqi army soldiers has been sent to cordon off Bashiqa to ward off reprisal attacks on either side.

Women’s groups and other NGOs staged a demonstration outside the Kurdish parliament to protest against the murder of Duaa and to call for changes to civil law and curbs on the influence of religious and tribal leaders.

Other voices calling for moderation were hard to hear above the recriminations, in an area that until recently was best known for peaceful coexistence.

Edo Bashar, a Yezidi and a former civil servant, was outraged by a killing ostensibly committed in the name of his community.

“Such penalties are unacceptable,” he said. “No Yezidi religious text prescribes such a punishment. People in the modern world will view the Yezidis as a racist and unforgiving people lacking in either intelligence or reason. Barbarism is no way to uphold a religion.”

This article was compiled from the reports of a number of IWPR contributors in Iraq.