Untitled Document

9 May 2007

1. "Iraqi Kurd leader tells Turkey dialogue should replace threats", Iraqi Kurd leader Massud Barzani on Monday denied that he threatened to intervene in Turkey over the Kurdish minority question, while warning Ankara he would not tolerate any threats from them.

2. "Turkish army takes its place in race", reforms have reduced the military's authority in state affairs, but as general elections near, its presence is palpable.

3. "THE TURKISH PARADOX: A Muslim Steps Aside, and the West Isn't Happy", the rules of post-9/11 politics are reversed in Turkey, as a flareup over the prospect of an Islamic president shows. Western leaders are more worried about the Turkish military's intrusion into politics than about the ruling party's Islamic agenda.

4. "Everybody Knows Who Not to Vote For", as Turkey heads for early general elections in late July, the voters seem to know what they oppose to but have a hard time identifying a concrete choise for their ambitions. We interwieved random people on Istanbul streets and tried to contemplate.

5. "Turkey's military sent 20,000 Soldiers to Sirnak in Northern Kurdistan", Turkey's military sent 20,000 soldiers to the country's southeastern province of Sirnak in an operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, CNN Turk said.

6. "Turkish-Kurdish Dispute Tests U.S. Strategic Alliances", while President Bush's new strategy in Iraq focuses on stopping the violence in Baghdad, trouble threatens to boil over in Iraq's Kurdish region to the north, which the administration frequently holds up as an island of stability and a model for the future.

1. - AFP - "Iraqi Kurd leader tells Turkey dialogue should replace threats":

BRUSSELS / 8 May 2007

Iraqi Kurd leader Massud Barzani on Monday denied that he threatened to intervene in Turkey over the Kurdish minority question, while warning Ankara he would not tolerate any threats from them.

Barzani, questioned in Brussels by Euro MPs, said threats are no longer a "valid" approach.

"Do we feel threatened by Turkey? The language of threat is no longer valid today, dialogue is more constructive. We are not threatening anybody but we will not accept threats from anybody either," he said.

Last month Turkey's army chief called for a military incursion into neighbouring northern Iraq to hunt down Turkish Kurd rebels based there, despite US objections.

Army chief Yasar Buyukanit became the first such high-ranking military official to publicly argue for a cross-border operation to crack down on bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.

Turkey charges that several thousand PKK rebels have found refuge in northern Iraq in their 22-year struggle for self-rule in southeastern Turkey.

The Turkish media has quoted Barzani, head of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, as saying that they would meddle in Turkey's already restive, predominantly-Kurdish southeast if Ankara continued to oppose Iraqi Kurdish ambitions to attach Kirkuk to their region.

Barzani reportedly said that if Turkey "interferes in Kirkuk over just a few thousand Turkmens, then we will take action regarding the 30 million Kurds in Turkey."

In Brussels the Kurdish leader urged Ankara to seek a political solution to the Kurdish question, adding that Turkey often used the PKK as a "pretext" for its actions.

Turkey is upset by Barzani's plan to hold a referendum in the oil-rich northern Iraq city of Kirkuk.

Kirkuk, which Iraqi Kurds want to make part of their autonomous region, has a large population of Sunni and Shiite Arabs, as well as Turkmen, making for a fragile ethnic mix.

Turkey sees itself as the traditional protector of the Turkmen people who, together with the Arabs, complain of being bullied by the Kurds who make up half the population of the city and control the security services.

Barzani stressed, in his discussions in the European parliament, his refusal to postpone the referendum which he said would be carried out before the end of the year.

"Any intervention from outside would add to the complexities and create more problems in the future," he added.

However he stressed his support for "a democratic, federal and multi-party system in Iraq".

"At the same time there has to be segregation of religion from state," he told the assembled MEPs.

An International Crisis Group report last month said that a new approach is urgently needed to settle the status of Kirkuk.

"A referendum conducted against the wishes of the other communities in 2007 could cause the civil war to spread to the Kurdish region, until now Iraq's only quiet area."

2. - Los Angeles Times - "Turkish army takes its place in race":

Reforms have reduced the military's authority in state affairs, but as general elections near, its presence is palpable.

ISTANBUL / 8 May 2007 / by Laura King

The warnings were veiled but unmistakable. With rhetoric that grew more intense each day, Turkey's senior generals accused the government of pursuing a fundamentalist Muslim agenda. Tanks rolled through the streets in a show of force. Markets tumbled. Political rallies took a violent turn.

That was 10 years ago, when the first elected government in Turkey to embrace Islamist principles was driven from power by the army. That event still colors the world's image of this vibrant but struggling secular democracy, whose political model is unique in the Muslim world.

With the 1997 military intervention still fresh in memories here, many in Turkey are asking whether the military has once again stage-managed something akin to a coup.

There is little question that the army was a driving force behind last week's dramatic decision by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party has its roots in political Islam, to set his government on a course for early dissolution, moving up the general elections to select a new parliament by nearly four months.

On Sunday, the party's presidential candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, abandoned his bid until after those elections have taken place in July. The president is elected by parliament in Turkey.

But there are key differences between the tumultuous events of a decade ago and the present political drama. Reforms put in place over the last several years as Turkey has campaigned to join the European Union have diminished the army's authority in affairs of state, though by no means ended it.

"We are in a kind of no man's land, where the military is not as powerful as it was in mounting open coups, but has not yet been transformed into a position where it accepts political decisions that grow out of the democratic system," said Bulent Aliriza, a former diplomat who directs the Turkey Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

'Defenders of secularism'

Erdogan's decision to call early elections came after massive anti-government demonstrations and a court decision that blocked the election of his party's candidate for president. Many analysts believe, however, that the opposition parties and their followers were emboldened, even guided, by statements from the military's powerful general staff suggesting that the army would step in if an Islamist became president.

"It must be remembered that the Turkish armed forces are … the absolute defenders of secularism," the army chieftains said in a sharply worded statement issued late April 27, hours after the first of what were to have been four rounds of voting for president. "When necessary, they will display their attitudes and actions very clearly — no one should doubt that."

When that statement was posted on the main military website, some commentators dubbed it an "Internet coup."

Erdogan's government angrily protested it as an effort to pressure the constitutional court to halt the presidential election. At anti-government protests, however, demonstrators praised the military's warnings as a needed defense of the secular way of life.

"The army will be the ones to make sure we don't have to wear Islamic head scarves," said protester Aysegul Kansak, who marched with nearly three-quarters of a million people in Istanbul on April 29.

Ultimately, though, military pressure could backfire. Though bowing for the moment to the wishes of the army and judicial establishment, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party could well emerge even stronger, many analysts say. Polls suggest that the party could once again capture a parliamentary majority in the July 22 vote.

The party, also known by its Turkish initials AKP, will spend the coming weeks trying to push through constitutional changes that could strengthen its hand, including lowering the minimum age of candidates from 30 to 25 to reflect the party's burgeoning support among the young.

The ruling party is also expected to reap benefits at the ballot box from an economic boom over the last five years, which has enriched and empowered a large swath of religiously conservative voters. The AKP's constituency, once largely rural and poor, is now increasingly urban and middle-class.

Army's central role

One of the striking aspects of the current political turmoil is the disconnect between how military muscle-flexing is regarded by the outside world and by a domestic Turkish audience.

Most Western governments view military coups, or threats of one, as the hallmark of a country whose democratic institutions are shaky at best. But here in Turkey, the notion of the army stepping in to oust a government, as it has done four times in the last 50 years, is broadly viewed as an integral part of the democratic system of checks and balances rather than a contradiction to it.

That is in part because the 1-million-member Turkish military, the second-largest standing army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after that of the United States, occupies a central role in the national psyche. The republic's founding father, Kemal Ataturk, was a war hero who used the army as an instrument of nation-building, forging a modern state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

From childhood on, Turks are taught to regard the armed forces as the principal defenders of the secular system devised by Ataturk, who changed the Turkish alphabet to a Roman one, gave women the right to vote and restricted Muslim dress in public settings. Public opinion polls consistently rank the military as among the most trusted national institutions.

"There's this nearly universal belief, a belief that runs very deep, that if the military isn't involved, isn't always vigilant, that Turkey will fall under Islamic rule," said Lale Sariibrahimoglu, an analyst and journalist based in Ankara, the capital. "It's a big part of the education and upbringing here."

In addition, many Turks regard the current level of army involvement in politics as mild compared with armed coups of 1960, when three senior ministers were executed, and 1980, when some politicians were jailed.

Though a big win for the ruling party might rein in the military, some analysts warn that it could also set the stage for an even more serious confrontation down the road. That risk increases, they say, if the ruling party succeeds in pushing through constitutional reforms mandating that the president be elected by a popular vote rather than by the parliament. Lawmakers on Monday approved the first step in that process.

The presidency is a symbolically charged post in the eyes of the military, which is why the looming expiration of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer's seven-year term on May 16 proved to be a tripwire for confrontation.

Turkey's past presidents, always avowed secularists, are considered direct heirs to Ataturk. And the president is at least nominally the commander in chief of the military, has veto power and makes crucial judicial and other appointments.

"As far as the military's role goes, this looks more like a crisis deferred than a crisis resolved," analyst Aliriza said.

How the military conducts itself during the electoral campaign and afterward could prove a make-or-break factor in Turkey's push for membership in the European Union.

Disillusioned

The Bush administration has strongly supported Turkey's bid in the belief that it would bolster the country's role as a bridge between the West and the Muslim world. But Turks have become increasingly disillusioned by what they see as arrogant and unrealistic European demands.

Some observers see elements of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that Turkey's already-stumbling campaign for EU membership would be weakened by greater military intervention in politics, but the military may seek to reassert itself in coming months because of the belief that Turkey is already out of the running for EU admission.

Turks paid close attention when Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected Sunday as France's next president, said flatly last year that Turkey should not be given a place in the bloc.

Some analysts said they thought the military would reconcile itself to a new government led by the current ruling party only if it involved significant power-sharing.

"So much will depend on how events unfold, on whether the election brings about some form of coalition government," said Umit Cizre, a political science professor at Bilkent University in Ankara. "But if I had to make a prediction, this government will stick to its guns — and the army will do the same."

3. - Spiegel Online - "THE TURKISH PARADOX: A Muslim Steps Aside, and the West Isn't Happy":

ISTANBUL / 7 May 2007 / by Annette Grossbongardt and Bernhard Zand

The rules of post-9/11 politics are reversed in Turkey, as a flareup over the prospect of an Islamic president shows. Western leaders are more worried about the Turkish military's intrusion into politics than about the ruling party's Islamic agenda.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül stepped out of a hotly contested presidential race on Sunday, after street protests and a parliamentary deadlock. Gül is a devout Muslim with a good reputation in the West.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül withdrew from the country's presidential race on Sunday in disgust after secularists in parliament handed his Islamic-rooted party another humiliating defeat. Gül said the rift in Turkey between secularist and Islamic politicians has "damaged the parliament's honor" and may force a popular presidential vote.

Presidents in Turkey are elected by parliament, and Gül has now lost two rounds after boycotts by secular legislators, who deprived each session of a quorum. "There is no point in holding a new round," he told reporters. "The correct thing now is for the people to elect" a new president.

A defeat for Gül -- who belongs to Prime Minister Recept Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party, the AKP -- is, perhaps ironically, bad news for the West. The AKP has pushed more Western reforms in Ankara than many previous governments, and Gül is a popular diplomat in both Europe and the United States. "We have been friends for a long time," said the European Union's Foreign Policy Chief, Javier Solana, in April. "Turkey will be pleased to have him as president."

But the recent unrest seems to mock Solana's words of praise. Feelings between Turkey's Islamic politicians and its secularists run high throughout the country, and in Istanbul alone more than a million Turks have flooded the streets to protest Gül's candidacy. The Constitutional Court declared the first round of the presidential election null and void last week, and prior to that the army -- which sees itself as the protector of secular Turkish traditions -- stepped in to oppose an Islamic president. A sharp memorandum from Yasar Büyükanit's general staff, which many interpreted as a threat to overthrow the government, warned against "undermining the republic, and especially secularism."

The roles in this drama are reversed: The West, deeply mistrustful of anything remotely suggesting Islamism in the wake of September 11, has praised Gül as a "great reformer" and "reliable partner." But Turkey's secular elites are vehemently opposed to Gül, who they claim will take the country back to a darker age. "Turkey will not be another Iran, we don't want Sharia," protesters called out nationwide. "Turkey is secular and it will remain that way."

Could Europe be so wrong about Gül? Have pro-Turkey EU politicians allowed themselves to be carried off their feet by his charm and nonstop smiles? Turkey -- a longtime candidate for EU membership -- is once again embroiled in a serious crisis that has politicians in Brussels, Paris, London and Berlin deeply concerned. "This is a test of Turkey's readiness for democracy," says Graham Watson, the leader of the European Parliament's Liberal Democratic group.

European politicians are now more concerned about the Turkish military, which looks unwilling to keep its fingers out of politics, than any Islamic agenda. Is it possible that Turkey still hasn't transcended its violent past, typified in previous decades by coups and rolling tanks? "The role of the military will determine whether or not Turkey becomes a true democracy," predicts Hasan Cemal in the liberal daily newspaper Milliyet.

An open conflict between AKP supporters and the military would be fatal for the country, which -- according to sociologist Dogu Ergil -- has been a "shining example of the reconciliation between a majority Muslim population and a secular, democratic state."

The roots of the conflict

The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk, all but forced secularism and democratic reforms on the nation in the 1920s. Atatürk was a general, but in many respects he was ahead of some leaders in the democratic West. Women won the right to vote in Turkey in 1934, for example, well before female suffrage came to France (1944) or Italy (1946).

Atatürk's posture toward Islam was a function of his personal dislike of the religion, but it was also pragmatic. He wasn't shy about flying the green banner of the Prophet Muhammad when it could lift the spirits of devout Muslims in Turkey's war of liberation against the Italians and Greeks. But almost as soon as he took power he started to clean up the symbols of Turkey's old order. He eliminated the caliphate, and made Sunday the country's official day of rest (instead of Friday, the Muslim day of prayer). He introduced Latin writing instead of Arabic and replaced Sharia with a code composed of Swiss and Italian law. "Progress means taking part in this civilization," Atatürk preached to his people, "the Turks have constantly moved in one direction -- we have always gone from East to West."

But Kemalists, as the secularists are called, have barely budged from Atatürk's positions in 1938, when he died. Meanwhile Turkish political Islam has distanced itself from the radical positions of its founders. "Those who were once backward are the progressives today," says Zülfü Livaneli, a writer and songwriter in Istanbul, "and the progressives of the past are now the backward ones." Cemal Karakas, a political scientist, criticizes the Kemalist concept of secularism, calling it "authoritarian and undemocratic" and maintaining that it should be reformed.

Only one of four coups staged by the Turkish army was aimed directly at the Islamists: the "cold coup" against Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan in 1997. Current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a protegé of Ekbakan's, and like Ekbakan he's deeply hated within the military's higher ranks. The army only reluctantly accepted his accession in 2003.

Of course, it was easy for the military to force the fundamentalist Erbakan out of office. He presided over a shaky coalition cabinet burdened by corruption scandals and some questionable projects abroad, including energy agreements with the mullah-run government in Tehran and efforts to cozy up to Libya's revolutionary leader, Moammar Gadhafi (who was still an international pariah at the time). The coup against Erbakan was popular, despite alarms sounded by democratic activists.

Many Turks agree that a similar overthrow would find no popular support today. Street protests aside, newspapers and civil organizations have criticized the military's recent intervention against Gül.

Prime Minister Erdogan's Islamic conservative AKP has ruled the country for the past four and a half years, and has been quite successful. Europeans are envious of Turkey's 6 percent economic growth, and the country's former epithet -- "sick man on the Bosporus" -- is a thing of the past. Foreign investment is booming and exports are at record levels. The AKP has pushed through hundreds of reforms and has led Turkey into negotiations for EU membership.

Pro-secular rallies in Istanbul were not just against Gül and the Erdogan government -- people also chanted "No to America, no to the EU."
Nevertheless, the AKP has failed to defuse a smoldering suspicion among secularists that the party has a hidden Islamist agenda. The choice of the devout Muslim Abdullah Gül, whose wife always wears a headscarf, has reinforced concerns over "where the AKP truly wants to take the country," says Sinan Ülgen, a economic advisor.

But may of Gül's opponents seem convinced that the AKP is not acting in the interest of the state. They are the ultra-secularists, whom columnist Mustafa Akyol calls "anti-liberal."

This is the Turkish paradox: The opponents of Islam are not necessarily forces of progress, and many are critical of or even antagonistic to the West. The protestors in Istanbul were not just chanting "Down with the government," but also "No to America, no to the EU."

"Intolerable"

Türkan Saylan, a retired dermatologist and professor, is one of the leaders of the protests against Gül. She is the president of an organization called the Foundation for Modern Life, one of dozens of groups that extol the principles of modern Turkey's founder, Atatürk. A 71-year-old who wears her short hair dyed bright red, Saylan calls herself a "Kemalist feminist." "We are Atatürk's soldiers," she says.

For Saylan, the idea of a couple like the Güls moving into the presidential palace is intolerable. "This office is so important. For us, it is almost as if Atatürk were still in charge there. A presidential couple must be absolutely secular and democratic, and must embody a modern lifestyle." Though opposed to coups and martial law, Saylan does not condemn the recent military intervention. If the army recognizes a threat to secularism, she believes, it is practically obligated to make the public aware of it.

But the evidence of a "fundamentalist threat" cited by opponents of Erdogan and Gül is slim. For example, Cumhuriyet, a leftist national paper founded under Atatürk, dredged up a quote from a 12-year-old article in the British Guardian, in which Gül allegedly said, "The republic is finished. We want to change the secular system." Gül vehemently denies having said this, and uses simple logic to defend his position. "If we had a hidden agenda," he frequently asks foreign journalists, "why should we commit ourselves to EU membership?"

Headscarves worn by AKP women are a central symbol of the secularists' uneasiness. Tempo, a liberal Turkish magazine, recently printed a cover story titled "The Headscarf Republic" and included photographs of the wives of leading AKP politicians wearing the headscarf: Emine Erdogan and Hayrünnisa Gül, as well as the wives of the finance minister, speaker of the parliament, and the ministers of economics and tourism.

Turkey's Chief of Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit (center) leaves the Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara with Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul (left) after attending a funeral prayer for an army officer killed in a car accident, Thursday, May 3.
Gül's wife Hayrünnisa even filed a complaint against Turkey in the European Court of Human Rights, because the country's ban on headscarves prevented her from attending university. But she decided to withdraw the complaint in order not to compromise her husband.

It did bother a slim majority of Turks -- according to opinion polls -- that a woman who wore a headscarf, Hayrünnisa Gül, was in line to move into the presidential palace. "This is not my culture," wrote Hürriyet columnist Yalçin Dogan, after being seated with women in headscarves at a government reception.

Many secular Turks think the AKP will open the door to a creeping Islamicization. Conservative Islamic clothing has come into fashion, including modest full-body bathing suits. Islamic publishing houses have allowed religious paragraphs to find their way into schoolbooks. The army has cited events where schoolgirls appeared on a national holiday wearing headscarves (in violation of official bans) and singing religious songs.

But the AKP's political achievements have been obvious. "This party has brought Turkey closer to Western organizations and standards than every secular government in the recent past," says sociologist Ergil.

"So far the AKP has done nothing in violation of the secular constitution," says political scientist Binnaz Toprak, herself a secularist. It has failed with a number of highly controversial pieces of proposed legislation, such as a law that would criminalize adultery. "Turkish secularism is not in jeopardy," says Toprak, "it is firmly in place."

A Turkish version of Germany's Christian Democrats?

Both Gül and Erdogan started out in Necmettin Erbakan's Islamist Welfare Party, but later joined an uprising of reformers against him. In 2001 the pair founded the AKP, a reformed secular alternative for devout Muslims. Its party platform makes no mention of political Islam. Referring to his opponents, Erdogan said last week, "They say that Turkey is secular and will remain secular -- and we say exactly the same thing."

He defines his politics as "democratic conservatism" intended for a social group "that wants a concept of modernity, does not reject tradition and does not disregard the spiritual importance of life." The AKP is a pro-business party, which explains why it gets the vote of the generally liberal business community. Suat Kiniklioglu, who heads the German Marshall Fund's office in Ankara, even believes that the AKP could become something like the Turkish version of Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The AKP isn't blameless in the current crisis. Gül's failed presidential bid has polarized the nation, and AKP leaders could have compromised with a generally colorless candidate for president, Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül. But the AKP has popular support, which is why it's pushing (with some success) for constitutional amendments to allow a popular presidential vote later this year. Gül hasn't ruled out running in such an election, and he told the Financial Times last week that he believed a full 70 percent of the general public supported him.

The military now feels threatened. The president, as head of the National Security Council, has the power to mobilize troops. He also appoints the commander of the general staff. Unlike any previous government, the AKP has attempted to bring the military under political control -- which has brought enthusiastic praise from the EU. "We need a stable Turkey," said Javier Solana just last week, supporting Gül before his failed second-round presidential bid, "a Turkey that continues to provide assistance when it comes to cooperation with its neighbours Iraq and Iran, and with regard to a solution to the Middle East."

4. - Bianet - "Everybody Knows Who Not to Vote For":

As Turkey heads for early general elections in late July, the voters seem to know what they oppose to but have a hard time identifying a concrete choise for their ambitions. We interwieved random people on Istanbul streets and tried to contemplate.

ISTANBUL / 8 May 2007

As the government and the opposition agree on early general elections scheduled for July 22, we went to Istanbul streets and interviewed people on their vote.

It turns out that most people know who not to vote for but stay tremulous when asked which party their heart goes to. Here are some excerpts:

Murat (26, parking lot worker): I ask myself if is there anybody worthy of my vote than the current PM Erdogan. I attended to the recent "republican meetings" organized by those opposing to the government. If main opposition People's Republican Party (CHP) and Democratic Left Party (DSP) can join forces, I'll vote for them. If not, it's the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Aslan Kiliç (35, parking lot worker): I'll vote for the Nationalist Movement Party. In fact I think that the AKP has done well but as an attitude I lean to the MHP.

Ayla Yildiz (30, trade union worker): My vote will go to the Party of Labor (EMEP) but I guess the AKP will exit the poll victorious.

Sencay Karatay (24, unemployed): I'll vote for the Labor Party (IP) but I think the AKP would win.

Devrim Kartal (industrial engineer): If CHP and DSP join forces I'll vote for them. If not, whoever seems in front at the public surveys will get my vote.

Rasim Demirci (25, street vendor): I'll vote for the AKP. They blocked the way of the current Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah Gul. In fact, my heart goes to MHP. Before, people from eastern regions were treated as "second class", now we're.

Münir (29, street vendor): I won't go to the polls because who ever we vote everything stays the same. The rulers take ten times more than what they give to the public. Children are born in debt.

Ayten Özkan (21, student): I'm content with the current situation, I'll again vote AKP.

Esra (18, student): This is the first time I'll be voting. It's AKP.

Mükerrem Çolakoglu (57, housewife): I haven't decided yet but I know I won't be voting AKP. In the last elections I gave my vote to Ismail Cem but now he's deceased.

Ihsan Basöz (35, self-employed): Not decided yet but surely it won't be AKP. Maybe CHP.

Ömer Alpdogan (25, waiter): I'll vote AKP, just for the sake of it. Last time I voted CHP.

Faik Edip Öztürk (54, hotel worker): I'll vote CHP. If the left unites, they would exceed the 25 percent mark. I guess the united right (True Path Party-DYP and Motherland Party-ANAP) would score around 12 percent.

Aziz (street donut seller): I don't know. I've voted for ANAP, DYP or AKP in the past.

Cüneyt (26, taxi driver): I'll vote AKP. It wasn't just that they blocked the presidency of Gul. The parliament elected the presidents up to now, why not this time?

Ece Ekinci (23, student): I'm undecided. I guess it will the CHP at the last moment.

Ayfer (student): I'll vote blank, they're all the same.

Yeliz (student): We'll be on vocation, I won't vote.

Ismail Hakki Köse (taxi driver): I'll vote for Cem Uzan. I like his humanity and manners. I think he will challenge the AKP.

5. - Kurdistan Observer - "Turkey's military sent 20,000 Soldiers to Sirnak in Northern Kurdistan":

8 May 2007

Turkey's military sent 20,000 soldiers to the country's southeastern province of Sirnak in an operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, CNN Turk said.

Turkish Army units, supported by local paramilitaries (Jash) and 20 attack helicopters, were searching mountains in the area for members of the armed group, the Istanbul-based television channel said, citing unidentified security officials.

Turkey has fought a two-decade war against the PKK at the cost of almost 40,000 lives, most of them Kurdish. The Turkish government says the U.S. and Iraq aren't doing enough to stop PKK fighters based in neighboring northern Iraq from crossing the border to mount attacks in Turkey.

The PKK seeks autonomy for Kurds in Turkey's southeast from the central government in Ankara.

6. - Washington Post - "Turkish-Kurdish Dispute Tests U.S. Strategic Alliances":

8 May 2007 / by Karen DeYoung

While President Bush's new strategy in Iraq focuses on stopping the violence in Baghdad, trouble threatens to boil over in Iraq's Kurdish region to the north, which the administration frequently holds up as an island of stability and a model for the future.

The long dispute between Turkey and Iraq over renegade Kurdish fighters camped on the Iraqi side of their shared border reached new heights last month. When the head of Iraq's Kurdish regional government threatened to provoke an uprising among Turkish Kurds, Turkey responded with warnings of direct military action and an angry complaint to Washington.

Ankara has massed thousands of soldiers on its side of the border and has warned it will dismantle the camps in Iraq if the U.S. military will not use some of its nearly 150,000 troops in Iraq to do it.

In an effort to placate the Turks, the Bush administration recently sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's senior aide on Iraq to meet with Turkey's top diplomatic and military leaders. In a television interview there, Iraq coordinator David M. Satterfield blamed Iraqi Kurdish leaders and promised that the administration will lean on them. "The Kurdish leadership must do more to address this problem of terror and terrorists," Satterfield said.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, traveled to the Kurdish region to the north on his first trip outside Baghdad to prod the regional government to take firmer steps against armed camps of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and by the European Union.

The administration also promised to step up efforts by retired Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, appointed by Bush to avert a clash between Turkey -- a NATO ally -- and Iraq.

The conflict's roots are buried in history. Tens of millions of ethnic Kurds, living in a territory straddling modern Turkey and Iraq, have struggled for centuries to escape domination from distant capitals. The difficulties now are compounded by debates between an unusual alignment of Pentagon and State Department forces.

"Turkey belongs to Eucom, and Iraq belongs to Centcom," said one senior administration official, referring to two of the six U.S. regional commands that divide the world along what the military calls "seams." Similarly, Turkey falls under the State Department's Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, and Iraq belongs to the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. "Where you sit is where you stand" in terms of assigning blame and finding solutions to the conflict, the official said.

In Turkey's view, its border with Iraq is already a war zone. Kurdish rebel attacks have left more than 30,000 Turks dead over the last two decades -- 600 last year. Although Saddam Hussein allowed the Turkish military to cross the border, Turkey charges that Iraq's Kurdish regional government permits the PKK -- which appeals to separatist longings within Turkey's long-suffering Kurdish minority -- to operate with relative impunity.

Turkey's patrons in the State Department and Pentagon share its ire. "The number one priority is to keep a NATO ally in the fold," said an administration official on that side of the debate. "We've got a policy -- a terrorist is a terrorist. If they're attacking our NATO ally, we're obligated" to defend it or let it defend itself.

Other officials noted that Turkey, the only NATO country with a majority-Muslim population, is in the midst of a national election campaign that the secular elite, with military backing, is concerned will lead to the progressive Islamization of the country.

The PKK, believed to have 3,500 to 4,000 fighters, has figured prominently in election rhetoric. The threat posed by the PKK and a growing dislike of the United States are among the few issues on which secular and Islamic Turkey agree. In a shift over the past several years, only about 12 percent of the population views the United States favorably, according to recent opinion polls. "The real question here," another administration official said, "is how to keep 70 million Turks allied to the West."

Helping a NATO ally address a terrorist threat seems to many Turks the least the administration can do. Yet when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the White House in 2004 and last year, Bush rejected his requests for U.S. military assistance on the border because U.S. "assets" in Iraq were busy elsewhere.

To Centcom -- the U.S. Central Command -- and State's Near East bureau, the PKK problem is a distraction from the fight against Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias farther south. They argue that Iraqi government troops in the north -- many of them Kurds -- will not fight the PKK. Kurdish regional officials, said an administration official, "understand the PKK as operating in a manner contrary to their interests . . . but also representing positions that a lot of their constituents are sympathetic to."

Even if it did have U.S. troops to spare, Centcom maintains, American attacks on Kurds would exacerbate separatist inclinations among Iraqi Kurds. There is reluctance to upset what is seen as the only stable and functioning part of Iraq or to antagonize Kurdish officials who are seen as the strongest U.S. allies in Iraq's Shiite-dominated central government. Some senior officials believe that a Turkish invasion of Iraq would provoke a similar incursion from Iran, which has its own Kurdish problem.

On the Iraq side of the seam, there is wide concern that the administration has already given Turkey a green light to act in northern Iraq, one State Department official said, although others insist that Washington has urged restraint.

Looming over the conflict is the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. The postwar Iraqi constitution calls for a referendum in December to determine if the population wants to become part of the Kurdish region. Turkey has made clear it would view that as a direct threat to the rights of Kirkuk's large minority of ethnic Turkmen.

Turkey believes that "if the Kurds get Kirkuk, it will mean an independent Kurdish state," said Qubad Talibani, the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talibani and the Kurdish regional government's spokesman in Washington. "We've seen Turkish groups lobbying quite actively" against the referendum.

Alleged Turkish interference over Kirkuk sparked a flare-up last month when Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, threatened retaliation if Turkey continued "interfering" in Iraqi affairs. It would be easy, he warned, for Iraqi Kurds to stir up their 30 million ethnic brethren in southeastern Turkey.

Turkey's military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, responded with a warning of a cross-border attack, and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul demanded that the United States restrain Barzani. Ankara sent sharply worded notes to Baghdad and Washington, and Erdogan said publicly that Barzani would be "crushed under his words."

The White House took Turkey's side with stronger rhetoric and the dispatching of Satterfield and Crocker. For the moment, the Turks seem mollified.

"They're saying hold off," said Tuluy Tanc, minister counselor for the Turkish Embassy in Washington. But "we would like something done . . . by somebody" about the PKK camps. "If the northern Iraqis can't do it, if the U.S. can't do it, we would like to do it."