Report: Turkey Needs Plan B

[Parsi]

Schoolmaster - and everybody else here...

RESPECT Kurds...

You don't even have RESPECT for Kurds... WHY are you calling OUR lands for "North Iraq"??? It's Southern KURDISTAN...

And Cazyun - are you Turkish?

I didn't

[cazyun]

hahahah look who plays innicent parsist parsi

[schoolmaster1954]

I don't think unification is what the Kurds have in mind

ESPECIALLY with Turkey...

If I remember correct, at ozal times, They wanted this unification. Anyway, Times are changing. It is better they stay with iraq.

They would be a good power against, totally shia iraq.

Ex-prime minister and Presedent Özal was a great reformist. He would solve the ethnicity problem in Turkey. He was a Kurdish origin Presedent. Unfortunately, imperialists hands poisoned him. His death was an unfortunate event for both Turks and Kurds in Turkey. He was for brotherhood with Kurds and Turks in Turkey.

[Diri]

I don't think unification is what the Kurds have in mind

ESPECIALLY with Turkey...

If I remember correct, at ozal times, They wanted this unification. Anyway, Times are changing. It is better they stay with iraq.

They would be a good power against, totally shia iraq.

Ex-prime minister and Presedent Özal was a great reformist. He would solve the ethnicity problem in Turkey. He was a Kurdish origin Presedent. Unfortunately, imperialists hands poisoned him. His death was an unfortunate event for both Turks and Kurds in Turkey. He was for brotherhood with Kurds and Turks in Turkey.

You are happy as long as it's "Turkey"...

Turks are compared to Persians, much more oppressive and discrimanating towards Kurds...

Arabs are as barbaric as Turks...

Note: I do not speak of ALL Turks or Arabs or Persians - I speak of those who have a problem with Kurds...

[Vladimir]

Turgut Ozal didn't want unification. He believed in the Turkish islamic synthesis. That would also mean assimilation for Kurds. We will never know, what he really would have done, since he is dead.

[schoolmaster1954]

I don't think unification is what the Kurds have in mind

ESPECIALLY with Turkey...

If I remember correct, at ozal times, They wanted this unification. Anyway, Times are changing. It is better they stay with iraq.

They would be a good power against, totally shia iraq.

Ex-prime minister and Presedent Özal was a great reformist. He would solve the ethnicity problem in Turkey. He was a Kurdish origin Presedent. Unfortunately, imperialists hands poisoned him. His death was an unfortunate event for both Turks and Kurds in Turkey. He was for brotherhood with Kurds and Turks in Turkey.

You are happy as long as it's "Turkey"...

Turks are compared to Persians, much more oppressive and discrimanating towards Kurds...

Arabs are as barbaric as Turks...

Note: I do not speak of ALL Turks or Arabs or Persians - I speak of those who have a problem with Kurds...

Believe or not, there are many Kurdish friends amongst Turks. Muslim religious Turks are all Kurdish friends. Said-i Nursi (Said from Nurs -Village or Town-) was a religious Kurdish and he was a great Turkish friend. We always read his Risalahs (Islamic booklets). He was a Madrasah professor. We like Him very much. You have grown very great Islamic scholars. He wanted to establish an Islamic Sciences University (a modern madrasah) in Van (a city in the South-East of Turkey) but he didn't manage it. It would be a good friendship bridge between Turkish and Kurdish muslims.

[Vladimir]

But a lot of Turks say that Said Nursi was a Turk.

[zurderer]

You don't even have RESPECT for Kurds... WHY are you calling OUR lands for "North Iraq"??? It's Southern KURDISTAN...

my friend, It is both north iraq and so Southern KURDISTAN. Respect iraqians.

[schoolmaster1954]

But a lot of Turks say that Said Nursi was a Turk.

No, he's throughly a Kurdish scholar. First he was called Said-i Kurdî but later, he was called Said-î Nursî with the afraid of racism.

[schoolmaster1954]

Turgut Ozal didn't want unification. He believed in the Turkish islamic synthesis. That would also mean assimilation for Kurds. We will never know, what he really would have done, since he is dead.

http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/lostkurd.html


HOW WE LOST THE KURDISH GAME



By Katherine A. Wilkens







Sunday, September 15 1996; Page C01
The Washington Post





SADDAM HUSSEIN'S military incursion into the Kurdish city of Irbil finally exposed a
fundamental truth about the five-year U.S. involvement in northern Iraq: Despite lofty
rhetoric from both the Bush and Clinton administrations, the United States never had the
will or inclination to act decisively in support of the Iraqi Kurds. Only now is the Clinton
administration coming to terms with the consequences of this hollow policy.
The United States has never believed that its strategic interests were at stake in northern
Iraq, home to about 3.5 million Kurds. Since the Gulf War in 1991, America's primary
goals have been to contain Iraq within its borders and maintain Iraq's territorial integrity.
But weeks after the war's end, when Saddam turned his tanks north on rebelling Kurds,
U.S. policymakers faced an unanticipated crisis: More than 2 million Iraqi Kurdish
refugees began to flee the advancing Iraqi forces and amass along Turkey's southeastern
border, presenting Turkish President Turgut Ozal with a serious dilemma.
Turkey, a country fighting its own war against internal Kurdish opponents since 1985,
feared that admitting these refugees would create an explosive situation and undermine its
efforts to control the 10 million to 15 million Kurds who live in Turkey. As the refugee
flow continued, however, a massive humanitarian crisis was in the making and
international outrage at Turkey was growing. Ozal sought help from his friend George
Bush. The result was Operation Provide Comfort -- a U.S.-led effort to create a "security
zone" inside northern Iraq where the Kurdish refugees would feel safe to leave Turkey and
resettle. This security zone was less a way to ease the suffering of the Kurds than a U.S.
effort to assist Turkey -- a NATO member and an important partner in the international
sanctions effort against Saddam.
Provide Comfort was a short-term humanitarian success story. The U.S. military secured a
small area, including Dahuk, one of three major Kurdish urban centers in Iraq. The Bush
administration declared that Iraqi ground forces would be prevented from crossing into this
area. The United States -- along with Britain, France and Turkey -- established a "no fly"
zone over all Iraqi territory north of the 36th parallel -- including the major Kurdish city of
Irbil. The refugees returned. Kurdish hopes soared, and so did goodwill toward the United
States and its coalition partners. Elections were held in May 1992 and a fledgling Kurdish
parliament was put in place. The situation was far from perfect, but given the history of the
war-torn region and the long struggle of the Kurdish people, the accomplishments were
dramatic.
But the seeds of the recent crisis were already in place. Turkey, having achieved its goal of
solving the refugee problem, grew suspicious of the successes of the Iraqi Kurds. A brief
period of cooperation in 1992 ended abruptly with the fading political power (and later
death) of Turgut Ozal -- the one figure willing to contemplate a new relationship between
the Turkish government and the Iraqi Kurds. Turkey's new leaders soon initiated a series
of high-level meetings with Iran and Syria to coordinate opposition to increasing Kurdish
autonomy. Turkey feared the creation of an independent Kurdish state because they
believed it would inflame the nationalist aspirations of their own Kurds -- about 20 percent
of the Turkish population. The result was a persistent effort by Turkey to insure that the
Kurds stayed weak, poor and divided.
International aid was channeled almost entirely through Turkey, providing Turkish leaders
with control over the Iraqi Kurds' links to the rest of the world -- an arrangement the Turks
could now exploit. Turkey repeatedly closed vital border closings, delaying essential
supply trucks for weeks at a time. Sometimes humanitarian workers were refused entry.
And the exit of Kurdish officials was closely regulated. For the last five years, Turkish
leaders in Ankara -- not the United Nations or Washington -- had the final word on who
would be permitted to enter or leave northern Iraq.
The situation deteriorated in 1993 and 1994. Despite the international efforts on their
behalf, the Kurds suffered the effects of a "double embargo" -- the one imposed by the
United Nations on Iraq (including Kurdish-controlled areas) and Iraq's efforts to prevent
assistance and aid workers from flowing north to the Kurds. Saddam controlled access to
critical energy sources, such as electricity and oil. As a result, the Kurds were left
dependent on the good will of the international community and their neighbors -- Iraq, Iran,
Syria and Turkey.
Kurdish attempts to gain some relief were rebuffed by the U.N. sanctions committee,
which included representatives from Turkey and the United States. When the British
indicated some support for a Kurdish request to bring in a mobile oil refinery, the United
States refused to consider it. The Clinton administration's position against any partial
easing of the sanctions remained firm in the most trivial cases. A project to establish a
democracy education center at Irbil University took nearly two years to gain State
Department approval. Washington had decided it was okay to protect and feed the Kurds,
but it would not facilitate any effort to rebuild their war-torn economy or create institutions
of civil society and self-government.
From the start, U.S. policy was crippled by deep contradictions -- on the one hand, our
commitment to support the Kurds, and on the other, our desire to resist any infringement
on Iraq's territorial integrity and to assuage Turkish fears of growing Kurdish autonomy.
Unable to reconcile these opposing forces, the Clinton administration did as little as it could
when it came to the Kurds.
During the administration's first two years, U.S. assistance to the Kurds was cut nearly in
half. The bulk of those funds were provided by Congress at its own initiative. The
administration's later requests fell considerably short of earlier funding levels. With the
exception of a small direct food program, U.S. aid was dispersed through private voluntary
organizations. U.S. policy dictated that none of the assistance be provided directly to the
Kurdish authorities.
The strained situation was furthered complicated by Turkey's escalating war in 1993 and
1994 against the Kurdish Workers Party -- the PKK -- a militant organization seeking
increased autonomy or independence for the Turkish Kurds. Turkey's military took
advantage of the United States need to use Turkish air bases as a staging area for the
Provide Comfort operation to gain American silence in response to its increasingly violent
campaign to "solve" the Kurdish problem in Turkey. Among other things, this effort
included frequent and massive Turkish military incursions into northern Iraq (including the
so-called "security zone" area) to destroy PKK hamlets there. Inside Turkey, the army
implemented a massive village depopulation program, destroying an estimated 2000
Kurdish villages since 1993. Provide Comfort slowly became "Provide Cover."
Meanwhile, as the political and economic situation worsened in northern Iraq, so did
cooperation between the two major Kurdish factions there -- Massoud Barzani's Kurdish
Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union for Kurdistan (PUK). Access
to limited financial resources became a major point of KDP-PUK contention. Barzani,
largely in control of the areas bordering Turkey in the northwest, reaped the primary benefit
of Ankara's illicit trade with Iraq through "tariffs" on the Turkish truck traffic. Open KDP-
PUK fighting broke out in May 1994.
Since then, U.S. efforts to facilitate a cease-fire between the two major Iraqi Kurdish
factions is, again, largely a record of lukewarm engagement. The difficult task of brokering
a cease-fire was not given high U.S. priority until Saddam's forces were driving toward
Irbil last month. The United States acquiesced in the Turkish desire to limit international
involvement in this effort -- including Turkey's refusal to include British officials in
important early meetings with the parties inside Iraq.
Despite our history of providing financial carrots to parties we are coaxing toward peace
-- in the Middle East, in Cyprus, even in Northern Ireland -- Washington brought
astonishingly few resources to the table with it in this Kurdish mediation effort. Finally,
U.S. leverage was undermined by the growing sense in the region that Washington could
live with the Kurdish infighting and did not see it as a major threat to its overall policy
toward Iraq.
The recent announcement that Ankara will create a 10-mile Turkish "security zone" in
northern Iraq brings the situation full circle. Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller has
stated that this zone will enable Turkey to keep the PKK off its borders and act as a buffer
against any large Kurdish refugee inflow into Turkey -- the primary accomplishments of
Operation Provide Comfort. The rest of northern Iraq is now left to the whims of those in
power in Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus. The only U.S. ground presence in the region,
the Military Coordinating Committee, withdrew from northern Iraq last week. Operation
Provide Comfort will soon be overflying largely Turkish and Iraqi/KDP controlled
territory. There is no longer any doubt that the "no fly" zone provides no protection against
Iraqi ground incursions. Foreign aid workers are fleeing Iraq -- as are Kurdish refugees,
once again.
The Kurdish parties themselves deserve ultimate blame for their factional fighting and the
misfortune it has once again brought to the Kurdish people. If the Kurds had been able to
maintain a united front, the recent crisis might have been avoided. But this does not absolve
the United States of its role in this crisis. The United States put its credibility behind a
pledge to protect the Iraqi Kurdish people and then helped perpetuate a situation in which
economic and political stability was impossible.
U.S. involvement in northern Iraq was intended to be a short-term, stop-gap policy largely
to help Turkey and embarrass Saddam. When it became clear that Saddam would be around
for some time -- and so would the need for Operation Provide Comfort -- the U.S.
government failed to address the serious shortcomings and contradictions of its policy.
Instead, the United States permitted its involvement in northern Iraq to be guided by
Turkey, a country that believes the division of the Kurdish factions is in its interests. The
Clinton administration never fully appreciated the threat presented by the growing power
vacuum in northern Iraq and the danger that the region might once again become an area of
conflict for the Kurds' neighbors -- Iran, Syria and Turkey. Over the last six months, they
ignored repeated warnings from Kurdish leaders of increased Iranian involvement. As a
result, KDP leader Barzani concluded that the future of northern Iraq lay with Saddam, not
with the United States, and he moved to establish the alliance with Baghdad that sparked
the present crisis.
The cost of this latest Kurdish tragedy was first and foremost humanitarian. An opportunity
to improve the lot of these ill-fated people was lost. At the same time, the international
community missed an opportunity to prove to the people of Iraq that those that stand up
against Saddam Hussein are able to achieve a brighter future. This, more than anything
else, might have helped bring about the internal Iraqi revolt against Saddam that U.S.
policymakers have long desired. Short-sighted, cautious, status quo policy won out. The
victims were U.S. prestige, U.S. policy toward Iraq and the hopes of the Kurdish
people.
Katherine A. Wilkens, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow at the Center for International
and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, is former staff director of the
subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)
2623 Connecicut Avenue NW #1
Washington, DC 20008-1522
Tel: (202) 483-6444
Fax: (202) 483-6476

E-mail: mailto:akin@kurdish.org
Home Page: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~akin



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The American-Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)
provides a public service to foster Kurdish-American understanding and friendship

[schoolmaster1954]

Turgut Ozal didn't want unification. He believed in the Turkish islamic synthesis. That would also mean assimilation for Kurds. We will never know, what he really would have done, since he is dead.

http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/lostkurd.html


HOW WE LOST THE KURDISH GAME



By Katherine A. Wilkens







Sunday, September 15 1996; Page C01
The Washington Post





SADDAM HUSSEIN'S military incursion into the Kurdish city of Irbil finally exposed a
fundamental truth about the five-year U.S. involvement in northern Iraq: Despite lofty
rhetoric from both the Bush and Clinton administrations, the United States never had the
will or inclination to act decisively in support of the Iraqi Kurds. Only now is the Clinton
administration coming to terms with the consequences of this hollow policy.
The United States has never believed that its strategic interests were at stake in northern
Iraq, home to about 3.5 million Kurds. Since the Gulf War in 1991, America's primary
goals have been to contain Iraq within its borders and maintain Iraq's territorial integrity.
But weeks after the war's end, when Saddam turned his tanks north on rebelling Kurds,
U.S. policymakers faced an unanticipated crisis: More than 2 million Iraqi Kurdish
refugees began to flee the advancing Iraqi forces and amass along Turkey's southeastern
border, presenting Turkish President Turgut Ozal with a serious dilemma.
Turkey, a country fighting its own war against internal Kurdish opponents since 1985,
feared that admitting these refugees would create an explosive situation and undermine its
efforts to control the 10 million to 15 million Kurds who live in Turkey. As the refugee
flow continued, however, a massive humanitarian crisis was in the making and
international outrage at Turkey was growing. Ozal sought help from his friend George
Bush. The result was Operation Provide Comfort -- a U.S.-led effort to create a "security
zone" inside northern Iraq where the Kurdish refugees would feel safe to leave Turkey and
resettle. This security zone was less a way to ease the suffering of the Kurds than a U.S.
effort to assist Turkey -- a NATO member and an important partner in the international
sanctions effort against Saddam.
Provide Comfort was a short-term humanitarian success story. The U.S. military secured a
small area, including Dahuk, one of three major Kurdish urban centers in Iraq. The Bush
administration declared that Iraqi ground forces would be prevented from crossing into this
area. The United States -- along with Britain, France and Turkey -- established a "no fly"
zone over all Iraqi territory north of the 36th parallel -- including the major Kurdish city of
Irbil. The refugees returned. Kurdish hopes soared, and so did goodwill toward the United
States and its coalition partners. Elections were held in May 1992 and a fledgling Kurdish
parliament was put in place. The situation was far from perfect, but given the history of the
war-torn region and the long struggle of the Kurdish people, the accomplishments were
dramatic.
But the seeds of the recent crisis were already in place. Turkey, having achieved its goal of
solving the refugee problem, grew suspicious of the successes of the Iraqi Kurds. A brief
period of cooperation in 1992 ended abruptly with the fading political power (and later
death) of Turgut Ozal -- the one figure willing to contemplate a new relationship between
the Turkish government and the Iraqi Kurds. Turkey's new leaders soon initiated a series
of high-level meetings with Iran and Syria to coordinate opposition to increasing Kurdish
autonomy. Turkey feared the creation of an independent Kurdish state because they
believed it would inflame the nationalist aspirations of their own Kurds -- about 20 percent
of the Turkish population. The result was a persistent effort by Turkey to insure that the
Kurds stayed weak, poor and divided.
International aid was channeled almost entirely through Turkey, providing Turkish leaders
with control over the Iraqi Kurds' links to the rest of the world -- an arrangement the Turks
could now exploit. Turkey repeatedly closed vital border closings, delaying essential
supply trucks for weeks at a time. Sometimes humanitarian workers were refused entry.
And the exit of Kurdish officials was closely regulated. For the last five years, Turkish
leaders in Ankara -- not the United Nations or Washington -- had the final word on who
would be permitted to enter or leave northern Iraq.
The situation deteriorated in 1993 and 1994. Despite the international efforts on their
behalf, the Kurds suffered the effects of a "double embargo" -- the one imposed by the
United Nations on Iraq (including Kurdish-controlled areas) and Iraq's efforts to prevent
assistance and aid workers from flowing north to the Kurds. Saddam controlled access to
critical energy sources, such as electricity and oil. As a result, the Kurds were left
dependent on the good will of the international community and their neighbors -- Iraq, Iran,
Syria and Turkey.
Kurdish attempts to gain some relief were rebuffed by the U.N. sanctions committee,
which included representatives from Turkey and the United States. When the British
indicated some support for a Kurdish request to bring in a mobile oil refinery, the United
States refused to consider it. The Clinton administration's position against any partial
easing of the sanctions remained firm in the most trivial cases. A project to establish a
democracy education center at Irbil University took nearly two years to gain State
Department approval. Washington had decided it was okay to protect and feed the Kurds,
but it would not facilitate any effort to rebuild their war-torn economy or create institutions
of civil society and self-government.
From the start, U.S. policy was crippled by deep contradictions -- on the one hand, our
commitment to support the Kurds, and on the other, our desire to resist any infringement
on Iraq's territorial integrity and to assuage Turkish fears of growing Kurdish autonomy.
Unable to reconcile these opposing forces, the Clinton administration did as little as it could
when it came to the Kurds.
During the administration's first two years, U.S. assistance to the Kurds was cut nearly in
half. The bulk of those funds were provided by Congress at its own initiative. The
administration's later requests fell considerably short of earlier funding levels. With the
exception of a small direct food program, U.S. aid was dispersed through private voluntary
organizations. U.S. policy dictated that none of the assistance be provided directly to the
Kurdish authorities.
The strained situation was furthered complicated by Turkey's escalating war in 1993 and
1994 against the Kurdish Workers Party -- the PKK -- a militant organization seeking
increased autonomy or independence for the Turkish Kurds. Turkey's military took
advantage of the United States need to use Turkish air bases as a staging area for the
Provide Comfort operation to gain American silence in response to its increasingly violent
campaign to "solve" the Kurdish problem in Turkey. Among other things, this effort
included frequent and massive Turkish military incursions into northern Iraq (including the
so-called "security zone" area) to destroy PKK hamlets there. Inside Turkey, the army
implemented a massive village depopulation program, destroying an estimated 2000
Kurdish villages since 1993. Provide Comfort slowly became "Provide Cover."
Meanwhile, as the political and economic situation worsened in northern Iraq, so did
cooperation between the two major Kurdish factions there -- Massoud Barzani's Kurdish
Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union for Kurdistan (PUK). Access
to limited financial resources became a major point of KDP-PUK contention. Barzani,
largely in control of the areas bordering Turkey in the northwest, reaped the primary benefit
of Ankara's illicit trade with Iraq through "tariffs" on the Turkish truck traffic. Open KDP-
PUK fighting broke out in May 1994.
Since then, U.S. efforts to facilitate a cease-fire between the two major Iraqi Kurdish
factions is, again, largely a record of lukewarm engagement. The difficult task of brokering
a cease-fire was not given high U.S. priority until Saddam's forces were driving toward
Irbil last month. The United States acquiesced in the Turkish desire to limit international
involvement in this effort -- including Turkey's refusal to include British officials in
important early meetings with the parties inside Iraq.
Despite our history of providing financial carrots to parties we are coaxing toward peace
-- in the Middle East, in Cyprus, even in Northern Ireland -- Washington brought
astonishingly few resources to the table with it in this Kurdish mediation effort. Finally,
U.S. leverage was undermined by the growing sense in the region that Washington could
live with the Kurdish infighting and did not see it as a major threat to its overall policy
toward Iraq.
The recent announcement that Ankara will create a 10-mile Turkish "security zone" in
northern Iraq brings the situation full circle. Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller has
stated that this zone will enable Turkey to keep the PKK off its borders and act as a buffer
against any large Kurdish refugee inflow into Turkey -- the primary accomplishments of
Operation Provide Comfort. The rest of northern Iraq is now left to the whims of those in
power in Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus. The only U.S. ground presence in the region,
the Military Coordinating Committee, withdrew from northern Iraq last week. Operation
Provide Comfort will soon be overflying largely Turkish and Iraqi/KDP controlled
territory. There is no longer any doubt that the "no fly" zone provides no protection against
Iraqi ground incursions. Foreign aid workers are fleeing Iraq -- as are Kurdish refugees,
once again.
The Kurdish parties themselves deserve ultimate blame for their factional fighting and the
misfortune it has once again brought to the Kurdish people. If the Kurds had been able to
maintain a united front, the recent crisis might have been avoided. But this does not absolve
the United States of its role in this crisis. The United States put its credibility behind a
pledge to protect the Iraqi Kurdish people and then helped perpetuate a situation in which
economic and political stability was impossible.
U.S. involvement in northern Iraq was intended to be a short-term, stop-gap policy largely
to help Turkey and embarrass Saddam. When it became clear that Saddam would be around
for some time -- and so would the need for Operation Provide Comfort -- the U.S.
government failed to address the serious shortcomings and contradictions of its policy.
Instead, the United States permitted its involvement in northern Iraq to be guided by
Turkey, a country that believes the division of the Kurdish factions is in its interests. The
Clinton administration never fully appreciated the threat presented by the growing power
vacuum in northern Iraq and the danger that the region might once again become an area of
conflict for the Kurds' neighbors -- Iran, Syria and Turkey. Over the last six months, they
ignored repeated warnings from Kurdish leaders of increased Iranian involvement. As a
result, KDP leader Barzani concluded that the future of northern Iraq lay with Saddam, not
with the United States, and he moved to establish the alliance with Baghdad that sparked
the present crisis.
The cost of this latest Kurdish tragedy was first and foremost humanitarian. An opportunity
to improve the lot of these ill-fated people was lost. At the same time, the international
community missed an opportunity to prove to the people of Iraq that those that stand up
against Saddam Hussein are able to achieve a brighter future. This, more than anything
else, might have helped bring about the internal Iraqi revolt against Saddam that U.S.
policymakers have long desired. Short-sighted, cautious, status quo policy won out. The
victims were U.S. prestige, U.S. policy toward Iraq and the hopes of the Kurdish
people.
Katherine A. Wilkens, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow at the Center for International
and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, is former staff director of the
subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)
2623 Connecicut Avenue NW #1
Washington, DC 20008-1522
Tel: (202) 483-6444
Fax: (202) 483-6476

E-mail: mailto:akin@kurdish.org
Home Page: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~akin



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The American-Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)
provides a public service to foster Kurdish-American understanding and friendship

[schoolmaster1954]

Turgut Ozal didn't want unification. He believed in the Turkish islamic synthesis. That would also mean assimilation for Kurds. We will never know, what he really would have done, since he is dead.

Turkey's Kurdish Policy in the Nineties

by Eric Avebury Parliamentary Human Rights Group Chairman

This paper was presented at the Middle East Studies Association in Washington, DC

December 1995


When the Ottoman Empire finally disintegrated, following the allied victory in the war of 1914-18, and the birth of Armenian and Kurdish states appeared at first to be inevitable, Ataturk's response was to create a nation state based on the unity of the Turkish-speaking Muslim peoples and to leave unresolved the question of non-Turkish minorities such as the Kurds, Chechens, Laz and Abkhazians1. The territories not under the occupation of enemy forces when the Armistice of Mudros was concluded on October 30, 1918, and which were inhabited by 'an Ottoman Moslem majority, united in religion, in race and in aim', were said to form a whole which did not admit of division for any reason, though in the case of the three Kurdish Sandjaks 'which united themselves by a general vote to the mother country', there was a vague suggestion of a plebiscite in the National Pact's reference to a free popular vote 'if necessary'2.

Britain's adherence to the Wilsonian principle of self-determination, always half-hearted, evaporated altogether when friendly relations with Turkey became a prime object of policy. London was prepared to keep lines of communication open with Kurdish revolutionaries in Anatolia, and a proposal to supply them with arms was considered and rejected in November 1921. But these were thought of purely as means of securing the Vilayet of Mosul for Britain's new puppet Iraq in the dispute with Turkey over the boundary with Iraq, which dragged on until the Treaty of Baghdad in June 19263.

The references to minorities in the Treaty of Lausanne were entirely concerned with non-Moslems, although Article 39 appeared to give all linguistic minorities, including the Moslem ones, the right to use their own language in commerce, religion, the press and publications, and at public meetings4. The suppression of these rights, and the rabidly centralist nationalism which has distinguished the Kemalist ideology of the Turkish state for the 70 years of its existence, gave rise to the 'Kurdish problem' of today.

It has been observed that 1990 was a watershed in the relations between the Turkish state and the Kurdish population of the southeast. The armed struggle between the state and the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK) had been launched in 1984 and had already resulted in a death toll, according to the official figures, of between 1,500 and 2,000, though some put the number at more than 2,0005. In 1990 there was a further increase in the intensity of the conflict and there was a simultaneous rise in the numbers of non-combatants prepared to take to the streets and protest about the government's policies6. For the first time in the history of successive Kurdish risings since the Kemalist state was founded in 1923, the guerrillas could rely on the physical and moral support of a very large but loose mass movement.

After the election as President in November 1989 of Turgut Ozal and his appointment of Yildirim Akbulut as prime minister, on March 28, 1990 the National Security Council decided to launch a ...major military and psychological crackdown on Kurdish separatists. "We have decided to answer guns with guns," Akbulut said after a seven hour meeting. Reinforcing the military operations, the NSC announced on April 13 that new restrictions would be placed on the reporting of the conflict in the southeast; that all news reports would have to be "coordinated" with the Interior Ministry, and publishers would be liable to fines of up to 100 million Turkish Lira (about US $40k) and immediate closure on conviction of printing any material considered to "pose a threat to the rule of law"; that the Southeast Governor would have the power to send any person living in the region into internal exile elsewhere in the country if his or her presence was deemed a threat to public order, and that local officials were to have power to ban strikes or shop closures.

The restrictions on publication, imposed by Decree 413 of April 9, 1990, introduced a new dimension to press control. The pro-Kurdish weekly magazine 2000'e Dogru (Towards 2000), which had previously suffered confiscation of 22 issues, was ordered to cease publication altogether, as was Halk Gercegi (Truth of the People). Both papers covered Kurdish themes. The editor of Gunes dissolved his Kurdish news section following the decree, saying that he did not want the paper to be closed7 . The editors of two other publications, Eylem and Teori, said they too were unable to continue because the police threatened their printers with prosecution and sealing of their presses8. The first shots had been fired in a new war against the Kurdish and socialist press, which was to escalate into a barrage of murders of journalists, arson, judicial persecution and confiscations.

The government of the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP) had been losing its grip, with severe losses in the local elections of March 1989, and the resignation of Mesut Yilmaz, the long-serving Foreign Minister, on February 20, a move widely interpreted as distancing himself from an unpopular administration. ANAP had decided to adopt an even tougher policy in the southeast, in spite of the manifest failure of the military option over the previous six years. They were looking for the support of the country's armed forces, and appealing to the nationalist elements of the electorate. The impact of the decisions was seen almost immediately in the region with even more indiscriminate security operations leading to immense human rights violations everywhere.

In the spring of 1990 also, the Peoples Labour Party (Halkin Emek Partisi, HEP) was formed as the vehicle for pursuing Kurdish aspirations through constitutional means, thus setting the pattern which was to be followed over the next five years, of legitimate political activity and armed opposition, having similar goals, being pursued in parallel.

In May 1990 the European Parliament passed a resolution which condemned terrorism in Turkey, but called on the government to recognise the political, cultural and social rights of the Kurds. The Turkish government was successful in portraying the PKK as a terrorist organisation, and this has remained the perception in the minds of western governments and Parliaments to this day. Historians do not label Sheikh Said, leader of the 1925 insurrection, as a terrorist, although he and his followers were at times no more scrupulous about causing harm to non-combatants than the PKK9.

At the same time, Ankara had to deal with increasing concern in the west about the treatment of its Kurdish minority. The Conference on the Human Dimension of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), meeting in June, produced the Copenhagen Declaration10 which begins by recognising that 'the questions relating to national minorities can only be satisfactorily resolved in a democratic political framework based on the rule of law.....' and continues to enumerate specific rights not enjoyed by the Kurds. Turkey, as a participating state of the CSCE (now renamed the Organisation...., or OSCE), has to face criticism at the regular Human Dimension Review meetings, and the pretence that the Kurds are not a national minority has become increasingly difficult for them to maintain.

In the summer of 1990, the Social Democratic Populist Party (Sosyaldemokrat Halkci Parti, SHP) published a report on the Kurdish problem, condemning the prohibition on the use of the Kurdish language. The SHP has been the mainstream party most sympathetic towards Kurdish aims, and it was to be the vehicle for the election of 22 Kurdish MPs at the general election of October 20, 1991, when the HEP was unable to satisfy the conditions for registration in time.

On December 4, 1990, the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) passed a law establishing a 'Human Rights Inquiry Committee' (TBMM Insan Haklari Inceleme Komisyonu), which was supposed, inter alia, 'to determine the changes which have to be made in order to ensure the conformity of the Turkish Constitution, other national legislation and practices with the international conventions on human rights to which Turkey is a party and to propose legislative amendments to this effect'11. This Committee was not able to make any progress with the task, and the matter is still on the agenda yet no further advanced five years later, with Turkey's need to satisfy the European Parliament of its human rights credentials, as a condition of entry to the European customs union.

Finally, among the events of 1990 which had a significant impact on Turkey's Kurdish policy, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2 led to the insurrection of the Kurds in the north of Iraq, and to the influx of 100,000 Iraqi Kurdish refugees into Turkey after the allies' defeat of Saddam in the spring of the following year, to add to those already present who fled from the 'Anfal', the violent clearance of hundreds of villages in Iraqi Kurdistan at the end of the Gulf War. The support Turkey gave to US policies further undermined the standing of the ANAP government because of the economic penalties arising from sanctions and particularly the closure of the oil pipeline from Mosul to the Mediterranean. Turkey's losses in the first three months of the crisis were said to amount to $2 billion, and to have reached $9 billion early in 199112.

On April 12, 1991, The TGNA approved legislation tabled by President Ozal legalising the use of Kurdish in private conversation and songs, but retaining the offence of publishing in the language or using it as the medium of teaching. The new Anti-Terror Law, which repealed some of the more controversial articles of the penal code, including those outlawing communist and Islamic parties, also widened the definition of terrorism and made it virtually impossible to prosecute torturers13.

The repressive implications of the new legislation were hardly noticed abroad at the time. Ozal had been urging a whole package of reforms against the wishes of his ANAP deputies, including an amnesty for certain political prisoners including Mehdi Zana, former mayor of Diyarbakir. It was claimed that a month after the new law had been passed, 19,630 prisoners had been released, 17,435 of whom were ordinary criminals, 1,048 persons under charges of 'terrorism', and one person who had been convicted under the language law, No 293214. The dangers of the Anti-Terror Law were obscured by the undeserved euphoria over very limited reforms, and Ozal's subsequent hints that more was to come. The package was hailed as an important breakthrough, even by the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan. It was at this time that Ocalan first proposed negotiations to settle the Kurdish problem, and declared that he was not seeking total independence for the Kurds. (In spite of several reiterations of the point since then15, Turkish spokesmen always describe the PKK as 'separatists', and refuse point blank to negotiate with 'terrorists').

Almost at once, however, the optimism disappeared as the real meaning of the Anti-Terror Law, and the intentions of the government, became clear. Clashes between police and security forces on the one hand, and Kurdish militants and demonstrators on the other, continued throughout the spring. Hatip Dicle, chairman of the Human Rights Association of Diyarbakir, gave a number of examples including the massacre of 27 women and children in the village of Gere, near Sirnak, on June 10, on a visit to London16. Dicle pointed out that he was liable to prosecution under the new Anti-Terror Law for mentioning these crimes.

Tension was seriously heightened when Vedat Aydin, Diyarbakir chairman of the HEP, was tortured to death after being taken from his home by plain clothes men suspected by his wife of being police officers on July 5. When 40,000 people attended his funeral on July 10, police opened fire on the mourners, killing 6 people and wounding 11917. Among the injured were Fehmi Isiklar, leader of the HEP, and three HEP Parliamentarians, who were beaten up by the security forces and had to be treated in hospital, according to the newspaper Cumhuriyet18.

Then on August 1, 1991, Ismail Besikci, the renowned Turkish sociologist, was arrested under the new Anti-Terror Law and charged with the crime of writing The Forced Resettlement of the Kurds, a crime for which he had already served a prison sentence imposed in 1978 under the 'infamous Article 142 of the Turkish Penal Code'19. Besikci had already spent nearly 11 years of his life behind bars, at the age of 52, for writing about the colonialism inflicted on the Kurdish people: "...the ability to participate in diplomatic, political and cultural life in Turkey has been made conditional upon being Turkified", he wrote in another of his 'criminal' works20. Besikci has continued to be a target for judicial persecution, and is now sentenced to a total of 67 years one month imprisonment, of which 23 years 3 months have been ratified. Most of the sentences have been accompanied by heavy fines, and 27 of his 31 books have been seized21.

Ozal's perceived sympathy with the Kurds had very little foundation in reality. In a speech to the TGNA on October 4, 1991, dealing with human rights, he made no direct reference to the Kurdish problem, observing darkly that 'intervention into internal affairs of other countries for the sole purpose of promoting human rights and liberties may lead to unpredictable disturbances...'22. The situation had deteriorated further since the spring package, but the victory of the coalition of the True Path party (Dogru Yol Partisi, DYP) under Suleyman Demirel, and Erdal Inonu's SHP in the general election of October 1991 was seen to be a firmer promise of reform. The known policies of the SHP and the presence of the 22 Kurdish deputies in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) indicated that political developments might be expected, though hopes were soon dashed.

Although the coalition statement of policy contained broad commitments to human rights, and to the CSCE's agreements, and some further small reforms on the language issue were conceded, there was no sign of any more general programme of reform by the new government, or even of entering into a dialogue with the elected representatives of the Kurdish region. The words 'Kurd' and 'Kurdish' were not to be found in the 'Principles of Democratization of the New Turkish Coalition Government'23. The document did contain references to the need to ensure compatibility of the emergency regime with the principle of the rule of law and the inviolability of fundamental rights and freedoms, as well as a promise to review the Anti- Terror Law, but neither commitment has been implemented to this day. Instead, there were only complaints about the reservations expressed by Leyla Zana MP and Hatip Dicle MP on being sworn in as Members of the TGNA, together with mass arrests of Kurdish activists, the emergence of the death squads, and a fresh surge in military activity.

In 1991, the ANAP government had allowed the celebration of Newroz, the Kurdish New Year festival at the end of March, for the first time in decades. It had been the occasion for manifestations of Kurdish identity, and in 1992, with the election of MPs specifically committed to constitutional reform, and the rising expectations of the people, bigger demonstrations were probable. The authorities decided to clamp down harshly on the use of Kurdish colours, songs and slogans, setting the scene for the confrontation by a propaganda campaign based on the allegation by the head of the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MIT), General Teoman Koman, that the PKK intended to stage a general uprising under cover of the festival24.

What Ocalan had actually called for was a 'great popular march', of a political rather than a military nature, though he added that 'the price may be much blood and loss of life'25. Considering that the PKK were estimated to have 3,000 men under arms in Turkey at the time, it would have been a foolhardy enterprise to engage in a confrontation with the vastly superior Turkish forces in the region. But the Regional Governor, Unal Erkan, threatened that 'security forces would take all measures against possible clashes with the terrorists during Newroz', and there was a massive presence of the military in the region on March 21, the date of the festival.

In Turkey, it is always difficult to establish whether events in the southeast are the result of political decisions by the government, or whether they are the product of local decisions by the military. In this case, it appears that the confrontation had been ordained by President Ozal himself. In late January 1992 he had declared that "the Armed Forces with super power will go to the region next term. This will be an extraordinary power. These forces will not let the bandits live there....".

In Cizre, the security forces opened fire on unarmed revellers singing and dancing in the streets, killing an estimated 12 people and injuring many more. In Sirnak also, the military fired on civilian crowds and individuals, killing 22 and again injuring dozens more. The governor of Sirnak, Mustafa Malay, told a visiting delegation on April 19, 1992, that it was said that between 500 and 1,500 armed guerrillas had entered the town on March 21, but he conceded that 'the security forces did not establish their targets properly and caused great damage to civilian houses'26. The delegation, of which the author was a member, concluded that 'violence was used by the armed forces and the police against unarmed demonstrators in Sirnak and Cizre on March 21, 1992, resulting in many deaths and serious injuries.... In Sirnak, the armed forces and police went on the rampage over a period of some 22 hours from March 21 to 22, bombarding houses, shops and offices, and causing civilian casualties'.27

The Newroz festivities left at least 91 people dead in three towns of the southeast, Cizre, Sirnak and Nusaybin, and 9 others elsewhere in the region28, and according to Helsinki Watch, 'all or nearly all of the casualties resulted from unprovoked, unnecessary and unjustified attacks by Turkish security forces against peaceful Kurdish civilian demonstrators'.29 The author can extend that conclusion to Sirnak as well, except that some of the seriously injured victims there had been hit in their own homes, and one, 16 year old Ms Biseng Anik, was murdered in custody.

The ugly phenomenon of widespread attacks on journalists working for left wing and pro-Kurdish newspapers started in 1992. These assaults and murders, which have continued and escalated since then, must be seen in the light of the state's tight control on the expression of unorthodox views, and particularly of any material which is seen as 'subversive'. The Decree with the Provision of Law (DPL) No 413 of April 10, 1990, amended to DPL No 424 and 425 of May 10, 1990, allowed the Minister of the Interior to fine the publishers of books, magazines, newspapers, records, cassettes, films and posters, and to close down the plants where any of this material was being produced.

Article 8 of the new Anti-Terror Law of April 12, 1991 also gave a heavy weapon for the state against the pro-Kurdish press. This catch-all provision says that: No written or verbal propaganda, meeting, demonstration and march, which targets the indivisible unity of the people and country of the Turkish Republic, for whatever thought or aim, are allowed.

Article 8 can be used, and is used, against any manifestation of the Kurdish identity, notwithstanding Turkey's commitment to the CSCE's Copenhagen Declaration and its affirmation that 'participating states will protect the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of national minorities on their territory and create conditions for the promotion of that identity...'30. The contrast between the regular professions of loyalty to the CSCE process by the government, and its actual treatment of the Kurds on the ground, is illustrated most starkly by the experience of the pro-Kurdish press.

Up to the end of 1992, 48 confiscation orders or lawsuits were filed by State Security Court prosecutors in respect of 48 out of 114 issues of the weekly newspaper Yeni Ulke, which had first appeared in October 1990. One of its journalists, Cengiz Altun, 25, was gunned down by two terrorists on February 24, 1992, and on 42 occasions its correspondents were arrested during the same period.

The monthly magazine Ozgur Halk started publication in November 1990 and lasted for 27 issues. During that period 15 issues were confiscated and lawsuits were filed against 22 issues. Eight employees of the paper were arrested and tortured; the Diyarbakir office was bombed; the Diyarbakir representative Huseyin Ebem was given a 26 month prison sentence and a 45 million TL fine for 'making propaganda against the indivisible integrity of the state', and two of the paper's representatives were murdered: Cetin Ababay at 19.30 on July 29, 1992 in Batman, and Orhan Karaagar on January 19, 1993 in Van.

Most of all in this phase of the state's operations against the press, the daily paper Ozgur Gundem paid a heavy penalty for the right to publish. Between May 31, 1992, when it was launched, and January 15, 1993, when it was forced to stop publication, confiscation orders were issued against 39 issues; fines amounting to billions of TL were imposed on the management; seven correspondents and distributors of the paper were murdered; 55 correspondents were arrested, and three of them were severely tortured; employees' homes and the paper's offices were repeatedly raided by the police, and property used by the paper was subjected to regular arson attacks31.

The attacks on journalists are frequently ascribed to a shadowy organisation known as 'Hezbollah'. The suggestion is that while the arrests, tortures, judicial harassment, police raids and fines are all undoubtedly the work of the state, the violent attacks and murders are perpetrated by some other body which has no connection with the authorities. But common sense indicates that only the state has the motive and the opportunity not only to commit these crimes, but to enjoy absolute impunity. Nobody has ever been charged, let alone convicted, of any of the murders of journalists, though recently a few alleged members of 'Hezbollah' have been arrested for other offences. The then Prime Minister, now President of Turkey, Suleyman Demirel, referring to the murdered writers of Ozgur Gundem, said: "These people are not real journalists. They are militants in the guise of journalists. They are killing each other"32.

The PKK were certainly guilty of attacks on non-combatants during 1992, as they had been in every year since 1984. But they selected their targets carefully, and no other observer has ever suggested that they murdered journalists. Helsinki Watch had unverified reports of the killing of village guards, informers, 'state supporters' and the relatives of such people, including women and children, as well as some murders where the reasons were unexplained33. The sources of these reports were not given, but some at least were from the authorities, who regularly portrayed atrocities committed by the security forces and village guards as having been committed by the PKK. A residue of the allegations was doubtless true, however, and the prohibition on 'violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture', prescribed by Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions for persons taking no active part in the hostilities, has been widely ignored by the PKK from time to time.

Turkey contends that the conflict in the southeast is not one to which Article 3 applies. It does not conform to the definition in the Article of an "armed conflict not of an international character", according to Ambassador Gunduz Aktan, Turkey's Permanent Representative in Geneva, nor is there any clear definition of this category of conflict in law. The UN General Assembly Resolutions on Terrorism, he says, do not make any reference to the size of the force committing the acts of terrorism, and guerrillas, insurgents or parties to a civil war could fall within the category of 'terrorist' if they consistently resort to terrorist acts, methods and practices. Thus, it is implied, if the General Assembly resolutions apply, Article 3 does not. In any case, Article 3 was aimed at countries whose domestic legislation was not sufficiently developed, Aktan observed, and it would not contribute in any meaningful way to the protection of persons already covered by Turkish law, but it could, on the other hand, 'eventually lead to unjust recognition of the conflict as an armed conflict and the terrorists as a party'.

Turkey's still repudiates her obligations under the Geneva Conventions, and has rejected periodic approaches by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with a view to offering their services in the region, as Ambassador Ozden Sanberk confirmed in a private conversation with the author on September 14, 1995. The Turkish government would like other states and NGOs to condemn the PKK unreservedly, on the basis of allegations made by their opponents in the armed conflict, without any independent verification. All 'indiscriminate and random acts of violence and terror', whether committed by the PKK or the state, are to be 'profoundly deplored'34, but unless these acts are independently monitored, the responsibility for them cannot be determined with confidence. It may be presumed that where the victims are village guards or suspected collaborators, the PKK were the killers, and in some cases they have admitted their reponsibility35.

Where investigations have been undertaken, it is clear that the great preponderance of terrorist acts against the civilian population have been perpetrated by the security forces themselves. These are no mere incidental breaches of discipline at lower echelons, but systematic military operations involving large forces, sanctioned at the highest levels of government. One such operation, the effects of which were seen by the author, was the destruction of the town of Sirnak in a 41-hour blitz from the evening of August 18, 1992, to midday on August 20.

According to Interior Minister Ismet Sezgin, the PKK had attacked Sirnak and bombed the city for two days, calling it the resistance of the people to state forces36. He said that 1,500 terrorists were reported to have been involved in the assault, the objective of which was to capture the town and hold it for a short time. In one foreign account of this incident, it was claimed that '700 militants.... held the town for around 40 hours..... This .....naturally attracted a full-scale counterattack by the army..'37 In reality, the bombardment was entirely unprovoked, as was shown by the fact that not a single dead terrorist was produced at the end of the 41 hours, nor were there any spent cartridge cases belonging to the militants. Minister Sezgin explained this by saying that the PKK carried their dead away, but it was not credible that evidence of their presence could have been totally erased by the survivors. The authorities claimed that three soldiers and a police officer were killed, all on the evening of August 18, and none during the two days of shooting and shelling that followed, in which 17 civilians were killed, and widespread damage was caused to private property, though not to government buildings38.

The effect of operations of this kind, and smaller scale assaults on hundreds of villages, has been to provoke a mass movement of the population, to the shanty towns of the regional capital, Diyarbakir, to the western parts of Turkey, and to foreign countries, particularly Germany. 25,000 people fled Sirnak, and this was not a mere unintended by-product of the attempt to defeat the PKK militarily, but part of a strategy, articulated by President Ozal just afterwards when he said: 'Many problems would be solved much more easily if 500,000 people left here and settled in the west'39.

Estimates of the number of people displaced vary, but in round figures 2,000 villages have been erased from the map, and two million Kurds have gone into exile in western Turkey40. The Regional Governor, Unal Erkan, says that 2,667 villages and hamlets have been depopulated and 311,229 people have been displaced since 1994 alone41, while the Human Rights Association (Insan Haklari Dernegi, IHD) reckons that 2,540 villages have been destroyed and 3 million people have been displaced since the conflict started in 198442. The exodus has been caused largely by the deliberate and systematic military campaign over the years, rather than by the behaviour of the PKK. Since the PKK need to have a network of support among civilians in the villages and towns of the southeast, it is not in their interest that the region should be partly depopulated, while conversely, for the state, the process deprives the fish of their water.

The territory within which the PKK has been able to operate extends beyond Turkey and into Iraq and Syria. The Syrians have allowed Abdullah Ocalan to base himself in their territory, and allegedly to train armed men there, while keeping a tight rein on their own one million Kurds. Traditionally there has been suspicion between Syria and Turkey ever since the boundaries between the two states were a matter of dispute in the post-1918 settlement, and recently an additional cause of friction has been the massive hydro-electric developments by Turkey on the Tigris and Euphrates, which the Syrians claim were a violation of agreements on the use of water. Damascus retaliated by aiding the PKK, and there was little that Turkey could do, apart from diplomatic attempts to secure a common front against Kurdish nationalism in Syria, Turkey and Iran at a series of meetings between Foreign Ministers, the most recent of which took place in Tehran on September 7, 1995.

One positive outcome of these meetings, from the Turkish point of view, was an agreement with Iran to arrest and deport each other's asylum seekers. When Turkey signed the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees on March 30, 1962, she recognised only persons from Europe as refugees. The legal protection regime, and in particular, protection against non- refoulement, is precarious for non-European refugees, who may be treated as illegal immigrants under Turkish law43. Another useful result has been that common support for Iraq's territorial integrity is reiterated, and each state could demonstrate that it has no intention of profiting from Kurdish unrest in any of the others.

In the case of Iraq, however, the creation of a partial political vacuum in the area north of the 36th parallel by the withdrawal of Iraqi forces has given the Turks carte blanche to send troops across the border whenever they see it as being operationally desirable. In the 80s they had frequently attacked targets in northern Iraq by air with the agreement of Saddam Hussain, but now, on October 24, 1992, Turkish troops crossed the frontier in force, with air and artillery support, and mounted an offensive, in cooperation with Massoud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) against the PKK bases in the area44. They occupied a substantial area of Iraqi territory, without attracting any criticism from the international community for this violation of Iraq's territorial integrity. This was a useful exercise from Ankara's point of view, not so much for the immediate military results actually achieved, but for the green light it gave them for any future incursions. The KDP were enlisted as auxiliaries in the war, an idea which would be taken further. With the double embargo of the UN and Saddam, the economic dependence of the Iraqi Kurds on Turkey had been firmly established, and this could be used to deny the use of their territory either as bases, or as channels of communication with Syria.

Turkey's direct intervention in the affairs of northern Iraq culminated in the largest deployment of the country's armed forces outside its own borders since the invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974, when 35,000 troops invaded the territory on March 20, 1995. Prime Minister Ciller told the TGNA that Turkish forces would intervene 'again and again' if required45, and the Turkish 'observers' at the Drogheda talks sponsored by the State Department between the rival Kurdish parties of Northern Iraq in September made it clear that they wanted the parties to collaborate with them in countering the PKK. At the Turks' insistence, the draft agreement presented for discussion included a section headed 'Legitimate Security Concerns of Turkey', which stated: 'The participants recognize that the threat posed by terrorist elements based in and operating from northern Iraq against Turkey has been a major cause for instability in the area, constituting therefore a legitimate security concern for Turkey which shall be taken into account in the implementation of this agreement'46.

The Turkish attempt to divert the meeting from its task of framing a political settlement of the dispute between the warring Kurdish factions, towards Turkey's own security concerns, was partly responsible for the failure of the meeting. It also had the effect of ringing alarm bells in Damascus and Tehran, where the prominent role played by Washington was already a matter for concern. The cooperation between Turkey and the US in designing a solution for the Kurdish enclave may be seen as leading towards joint measures to influence the character of post-Saddam Iraq as a whole.

In parallel with the larger military operations of 1992, the level of individual human rights violations increased during that year. Although Prime Minister Demirel had undertaken during the October 1991 election that police stations would have 'walls of glass', 16 deaths were reported in detention during the year 199247, and there were more than 100 assassinations on the street or in other public places in the southeast in the first 8 months of the year alone48. From February to November, the death toll included eleven journalists and one newspaper distributor. Among the dead was Musa Anter, 74, a well-known writer and journalist, and chairman of the Mesopotamian Cultural Center in Istanbul49. These killings were dismissed by the Interior Minister as largely the work of the PKK and Hezbullah, but only five arrests of suspects had been made since the wave of killings began. Two were captured by local people and handed over to the police; two narrowly escaped being lynched and were rescued by the security forces, and one was shot by the victim's father and handed over, slightly wounded, to the security forces50.

At the end of the year, the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture issued a report which found that 'the practice of torture and other forms of severe ill-treatment remains widespread in Turkey, and such methods are applied to both ordinary criminals and persons held under anti- terrorism law'51. This was said to be the most critical report the Council of Europe had ever published on a member state's violations of human rights52.

The response by the government to the worsening human rights situation was to appoint a Minister of Human Rights, Mehmet Kahraman; to establish a Parliamentary Commission for Human Rights; to pass a new law in November 1992 forbidding torture, limiting the period in custody without a court appearance, and giving detainees the right to consult a lawyer at every stage of the legal process. However, those accused of 'terrorist' offences had none of the rights granted by this Criminal Trials Procedure law (CMUK). The position of suspects appearing before the State Security Courts (DGM) remained unchanged, and it was of course those prisoners who were and are most at risk of being tortured or killed in custody. One commentator observed that the government had introduced this law 'not to decide on reforms and prevent all acts of torture in Turkey but to decide on who could be tortured and who could not'53.

At the end of 1992, political freedoms had taken one step forward and three steps back since the new government had come into office. The TGNA had passed a Bill allowing parties closed down by the military after the 1980 coup to reopen, and the Republican People's Party (CHP) under Deniz Baykal resumed operations. But the Socialist Party was banned following a leaflet it published on 'Solution of the Kurdish Problem' and statements by its President, Dogu Perincek, said to constitute separatist propaganda. The United Communist Party was also shut down on the grounds that it 'aimed to establish the domination of one social class over another and to destroy the integrity of the country and its political system'. The People's Labour Party (HEP), which had been articulating the Kurdish identity as far as it could without running into trouble with the vaguely worded Anti-Terror Law, was itself threatened with closure at the behest of State Security Court Chief Prosecutor Nusret Demiral, for making 'separatist propaganda'54.

The year 1993 began with the closure of the newspaper Ozgur Gundem on January 15, driven out of business by harassment, confiscations, raids, arrests, and violence. On April 26, it was back at work, after merging with another paper that had also been relentlessly persecuted, Yeni Ulke. But not for long. Throughout the following 7 months, the paper suffered a crescendo of attacks, both physical and legal. By July, the publishers and editors had been fined a total of 8.6 billion TL ($736,500) and sentenced to prison terms totalling from 155 to 493 years. By the end of November, there were 170 further cases outstanding against the paper, including an action to close the paper on the grounds that 'the chief editor Davut Karadag did not communicate his new address to the Istanbul Governorate'55.

The main charges against the paper, in respect of an article published in September 1992 were of 'making separatist propaganda' and 'praising the PKK' contrary to Articles 7 and 8 of the Anti-Terror Law. These were due to be heard before the State Security Tribunal, a special court designated under Article 143 of the Turkish Constitution to hear 'offences against the indivisible integrity of the state...', on September 21, 1993. On that date, however, the proprietor Yasar Kaya was unable to appear, because he was in custody on another charge, relating to a speech he had made in Iraq. The hearing was adjourned twice more, and was still outstanding at the end of the year56. By then, Yasar Kaya faced between 300 and 990 years imprisonment, and fines totalling 16 trillion TL.

By the end of 1993, six of the paper's journalists and 14 other staff members had been killed, one journalist, Burhan Karadeniz had been shot by unidentified gunmen and paralysed for life, and one journalist had disappeared57. The author interviewed the father of one of the victims, Ferhat Tepe, and a witness who shared a cell with Ferhat in an interrogation centre at Diyarbakir. Ferhat had been kidnapped in Bitlis by four armed men, one of whom used a walkie-talkie, at 19.00 on July 28, 1993. His mutilated body was found in a lake at Sivrice in Elazig province on August 4, 1993. 58

On December 10, 1993, International Human Rights Day, 200 police raided the Ozgur Gundem offices in Istanbul, arresting 100 employees and seizing equipment. In simultaneous raids on all the other offices of the paper except Ankara, another 50 were taken into custody59.

Lois Whitman, Deputy Director of Helsinki Watch, calculated that 30 journalists and distributors were murdered from February 1992 to the end of 1993. Nobody had been convicted for any of these killings, and with few exceptions, they had not even been investigated. Helsinki Watch felt deeply disturbed about what appeared to be 'a systematic campaign to silence the press about events in southeast Turkey60.

There were moments in 1993, however, when peace seemed possible. In March, the PKK had declared a unilateral cease fire, and for the time being there were some hopes that it would become permanent. 'A breakthrough in the conflict with Kurdish separatists seems now to be in sight', according to one observer, though President Ozal had died suddenly on April 17, the Prime Minister, and Suleyman Demirel, who was to succeed him in office, always made it plain that he would not negotiate with the PKK in any circumstances61. During the cease fire by the PKK, the Turkish attacks on civilians in the southeast continued unabated. The pattern was for a village to be surrounded by the military in armoured vehicles, with helicopters overhead; for the inhabitants to be driven out of their houses into the central square, and there to be attacked and beaten, particularly by the Special Units, known to the people as 'Rambos'. Some people would be killed, and many taken into custody where they would be routinely tortured62.

Not surprisingly, since there had been no response from the military or the politicians after two months, the ceasefire came to a bloody end when the PKK murdered 33 unarmed off duty soldiers travelling in a bus from Bingol to Elazig on May 24. Ocalan said on June 8 he had not given authority for this attack, but added that the war would now spread to the whole of Turkey. He called for attacks on tourism and 'economic targets which finance the war against the Kurds'63, and these did occur, not only in the west of Turkey, but also in various parts of western Europe, particularly Germany.64 This was a tactical mistake, not only risking 'a reaction against the rebels from tolerant European countries'65, but reinforcing the image of the PKK as a purely terrorist organisation.

Following the election of Mrs Tansu Ciller as leader of the DYP on June 13, in succession to Mr Demirel, it looked once again for a moment as though progress would be made towards genuine democracy and the recognition of Kurdish rights. The new 'Coalition Protocol' between the DYP and the SHP, supposedly the basis for the government's programme, while reiterating that the 'fight against terrorism' would continue, gave a firm undertaking that the state of emergency would be abolished, and promised that the village guard system would be eliminated, though without a timetable. The government would remove 'the legal and other obstacles that hinder the free expression of our people's ethnic, cultural and language rights', and would permit the free development of 'various ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups'66. Mrs Ciller repeated these promises in a speech to the TGNA a few days later, adding the removal of 'barriers and rules that stand in the way of the democratisation process'; unlimited freedom of belief, thought and expression, the complete lifting of press censorship and reform of the prison system67.

Nothing came of any of these fine words. Two weeks after Mrs Ciller's speech, the pro-Kurdish HEP was banned by a decree of the Constitutional Court in Ankara on July 14, 1993, on the grounds that the party had violated the Constitution, and the Law on Political Parties. Article 3 of the Constitution declares that the Turkish state, its territory and nation, is an indivisible entity, and its language is Turkish68. The Law on Political Parties says, inter alia, that Political parties are prohibited from stating that on the territory of the Republic of Turkey there exist minorities of differing nationality, religion, culture or confession, race or language. They are not permitted to have the aim of destroying national unity by creating minorities by means of the protection, development or dissemination of languages or cultures other than the Turkish language and culture, and they are not permitted to develop any activities whatsoever of this sort.

On the face of it, this would be one of the 'legal ..... obstacles that hinder the free expression of our people's ..... language rights', and it is clearly incompatible with Turkey's OSCE commitments, including the reaffirmation of their commitment to advance the protection of national minorities in the Budapest Summit Declaration of December 199469. To put it another way, 'to an outside world, acknowledgement of the ethnic identity of one fifth of the country's 60 million population seems common sense'70. But more than three years later, the Constitution remains unamended in any material way and the Law on Political parties is still on the statute book.

Up to the date of the ban on the HEP, 48 of the party's officials had been murdered by death squads71. The Democracy Party (DEP), formed to replace the HEP, immediately became the target of attacks, and on September 4, 1993, Mehmet Sincar MP was killed by gunmen as he walked along a crowded street in broad daylight in Batman. Metin Ozdemir, chairman of Batman DEP, was also murdered, and four other people were wounded in the attack, including Nizamettin Toguc MP.

At the same time, the legal onslaught on the Kurdish MPs started on August 15, with the call by Nusret Demiral, Chief Public Prosecutor of the Ankara State Security Court, for Orhan Dogan MP to be tried for separatism, an offence which carries the death penalty under Article 125 of the Penal Code72. The judicial persecution of the Kurdish deputies proceeded in parallel with the extrajudicial violence against the MPs and officials of the party, leaving no room for doubt that both offensives were planned and executed by the same authority.

On September 10, there was a bomb attack on the house of Mr Sincar's father in Kiziltepe. The intended victim was probably Leyla Zana MP, who had come to offer her condolences. She escaped unharmed, but six others were wounded73. The Inter-Parliamentary Union, in an unusually blunt resolution, doubted 'the efficacy with which the Turkish state ensures, in keeping with its duty, the security of the members of the Grand National Assembly and particularly that of the parliamentarians of the south-eastern region of Turkey'74.

In the same month, Yashar Kaya, leader of the DEP, was arrested by anti-terror police in Ankara and remanded in custody by the State Security Court for a speech he had made at the Kurdish Democratic Party conference in Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan75.

In October, trials opened in Istanbul and Diyarbakir of the Human Rights Association and three of its members. The individuals were charged under Article 8 of the Anti-Terror law, under which they could be sentenced to five years in prison for discussing the exploitation of the Kurds, while the Association was threatened with closure under the Law of Association. This case was one of a series aimed at human rights activists and lawyers. The Law Society of the UK found 'strong evidence that lawyers in Turkey involved in defending people in political trials or in human rights work, are themselves being subjected to threats, intimidation and harassment, at least some of which comes openly from the Turkish authorities and security forces'. The Law Society found that Article 8 was in clear breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which deals with freedom of expression76.

In December 1993, the Ankara State Security Court Prosecutor, Nusret Demiral, launched the proceedings against the Democracy Party which were to lead to its closure. The Prosecutor argued that, by referring to the CSCE process and the Paris Charter, the party's declaration implicitly referred to the principle of self-determination and to minority rights. This aimed at dividing the nation, since the right to self-determination applies only to peoples under colonial domination, and minority rights do not apply to the situation in Turkey where there is no ethnic discrimination77. The Prosecutor thus clearly delineated the boundaries to freedom of expression. The use of the terms in question was defined as an attack on the indivisible integrity of the state, and thus constituted a criminal offence. By extension, virtually any remark or statement emphasising the distinctive Kurdish identity would become criminal. One of the allegations against the MPs was that when asked to say what foreign languages they spoke, they replied 'Turkish'.

On December 22, 1993, President Demirel said that 'persons with links to the PKK cannot contest elections, and the state will take the necessary measures'78. Some of these persons could be prosecuted under the Anti- Terror Law, and many potential candidates were, on the flimsiest of grounds. Investigations had been launched on October 13, for instance, against 16 Mayors under Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Law, because of a statement they had issued. But after the President gave the signal, the arrests and harassment intensified, with a crescendo in early February. On February 9, for instance, Mahmut Tozbey, candidate for Dogubeyazit, his wife and children and 60 others were taken into custody, while on February 11, 140 people including the candidate for Igdir were arrested.

But other DEP candidates, alleged to be 'separatists' and therefore according to the state's way of looking at it, linked to the PKK irrespective of whether they had been involved in any offences of violence, would be prevented from standing without recourse to the law, or by a combination of judicial and physical violence. Following Mr Demirel's statement, there was a wave of attacks on DEP premises all over the southeast and beyond79.

On January 10, 1994, the army attacked the DEP offices in Lice. A restaurant next to the building was also damaged, and 16 people were taken into custody for several hours80. The same day, security forces raided the village of Zubeyir Aydar MP, taking 26 people into custody and burning down 36 houses. On January 20 the DEP office in Yenisehir, Ankara was bombed, and the Mamak office on January 29. The office at Derik, in Mardin province, was hit on February 1. The General Secretary of the party, Murat Bozlak, was seriously wounded in an attack by gunmen at his Ankara home on February 6, 198481. Finally, on February 18, the party's main Ankara office was bombed, killing an off-duty prison officer and injuring 16 people, three of them seriously.

When this latest atrocity was debated in the TGNA the following day, Sirri Sakik MP said the real target of the attack was the Kurdish MPs. He had left the building 15 minutes before the explosion. Hatip Dicle MP said "I believe these attacks are the result of decisions taken by the National Security Council, to stop the DEP taking part in the local elections. I am not sure how long our candidates will be able to continue". To this, the Minister of the Interior Mentese responded by saying that the DEP had bombed its own building. When Dicle asked how Mentese could lower himself as a Minister to say such a thing, the Minister shouted "You are a traitor! What can you expect from a traitor!"82

Despite the fact that President Demirel sent a message to Dicle condemning the attack and expressing condolences, three days later the Prime Minister repeated the Interior Minister's verbal mugging. At a group meeting of the True Path Party she said that the PKK was being sheltered in Parliament, and when her mention of Hatip Dicle as Leader of the DEP was greeted by cries of "No, traitor, traitor!" she joined in with "Yes, exactly"!83

Finally, Hatip Dicle announced the withdrawal of the DEP from the local elections on February 2584. The state had driven the constitutional pro- Kurdish movement from the electoral field, leaving it clear for the Islamist Refah Party. Seen now as the main anti-establishment force in the southeast, Refah won dozens of mayoralties in the region including that of Diyarbakir, the capital85, on very low turnouts. The state had achieved a Pyrrhic victory, eliminating the Democracy Party but helping to boost the growth of the Islamists, who now constitute a formidable challenge to the secularist foundation of the Kemalist state.

That the government itself was the author of all the acts of violence against DEP activists and property cannot be seriously doubted. Looking at the pattern of events as a whole, it is inconceivable that some private organisation perpetrated unsolved crimes of violence, while the state and its agents were responsible for all the remaining acts by the police, the prosecuting authorities and the security forces, which in many cases themselves involved the use of violence.

The state's readiness to use violence against unarmed opponents is confirmed by the prevalence of torture and disappearances. In November 1993 the UN Committee Against Torture published the results of an inquiry on Turkey under Article 20 of the Convention Against Torture86, the only time this procedure has ever been invoked. In their conclusion, the Committee said they remained 'concerned at the number and substance of the allegations of torture received,which confirm the existence and systematic character of the practice of torture in [Turkey]'. They remarked that 'torturers should not feel that they are in a position of virtual immunity from the law'.

Unfortunately, this unprecedented criticism has produced no discernible improvement. According to the US State Department, 'there was no indication of either the amelioration of treatment of those charged under the Anti-Terror Law or an overall decrease in the incidence of torture in 1994'87. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Dr Nigel Rodley, devoted 80 paragraphs to Turkey in his most recent report, by far the most extensive entry of any country in the world. He concluded that torture 'continues to be systematic, the perpetrators acting with virtual impunity'. He added that most of the governmenmt's replies 'contain unsubstantiated flat denials...... which patently lack credibility', and he warned that such replies risked 'being taken as a signal by those reponsible for the torture, of the Government's willingness to protect them and have them continue the practice'88.

The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, M Bacre Waly Ndiaye, told the same story. '... [M]embers of the political opposition, journalists and human rights activisits continued to be targets of acts of violence. The security forces and paramilitary groups co-operating with them, particularly the "village guards"...., were said to be responsible for violations of the right to life'. M Ndiaye said that for more than two years he had been receiving numerous allegations from a variety of credible sources, and had repeatedly said that an on-site visit would be the only way of evaluating these allegations and the government's denials. The government had assured him that a visit would be approved in principle, but the fact that it had not materialised, raised the question of whether the government was genuinely willing to invite him 89.

According to the UN Working Group on Disappearances, Turkey was again at the head of the world league table in the number of new cases reported in 1994. The Group expressed particular concern at the increase in 1994 90.

The findings of the UN human rights experts are abundantly confirmed by the work of many NGOs. Amnesty International has highlighted the growth of disappearances, extrajudicial killings (in which they see 'the fingerprint of the state') and torture91, and has documented literally hundreds of individual cases. AI has also drawn attention to the government's systematic attempts to conceal the scale of human rights violations. This has taken the form of prosecuting human rights defenders, closing down branches of the Turkish Human Rights Association, and severely limiting access to the emergency region by foreign human rights investigators 92.

In the whole of 1994, according to the Human Rights Association of Turkey, 14,473 detentions were recorded, and 328 of those detained subsequently disappeared. They identified 298 extrajudicial executions, and another 192 'suspicious murders'. In actions against civilians 458 were killed and 574 wounded 93.

These trends have continued in 1995. In a report by the Human Rights Association, it was stated that in the month of July alone, there were 14 extrajudicial executions, 13 'suspicious murders' and 19 people disappeared while in custody. The number killed in armed conflict was 392. During the month, 1,572 people were arrested, of whom 62 were journalists 94.

The Kurdistan Human Rights Project (KHRP), a UK-based NGO founded only three years ago to help individuals to lodge complaints with the European Commission of Human Rights, has assisted more than 250 people so far, in a range of cases involving summary and arbitrary executions, indiscriminate killings, destruction and evacuation of villages, torture, rape, disappearances, denials of freedom of expression, and the persecution of lawyers and MPs. In 250 cases dealt with so far, all involving the targetting of Kurds, the Project says that lack of accountability for the crimes committed by agents of the state is a common factor. The inadequacy of domestic remedies is another feature observed. So far, 41 of the cases presented with the help of the KHRP have been declared admissible by the Commission 95.

Picking up the threads of the Ozgur Gundem story, on April 14, 1994 the paper was shut down temporarily, in the first of 200 such cases to come to the Supreme Court. On April 27, the owners of the paper decided to cease operations, and a new title, Ozgur Ulke, was launched. But on June 14, 1994, the editor, deputy editor and 11 journalists from the defunct title were put on trial in Istanbul. The editor, Ms Gurbetelli Ersoz and four others were charged with membership of an illegal organisation, the remainder with 'separatist propaganda'96. Amnesty International, in the same month, reported that 'Turkey is once again imprisoning people for the expression of their non- violent political opinions, in contravention of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights 97.

Ozgur Ulke fared no better than its predecessor. After endless arrests of its staff and harassment, the signal was given for the final blow in a secret letter from Prime Minister Ciller to the Justice Minister, calling for 'methods to effectively combat this kind of publication'. On December 3, the paper's offices in Istanbul and Ankara were bombed, killing one person, Ersin Yildiz and injuring 20 others in an enormous blast at their main offices in the Kadirga district of Istanbul98. Finally on February 3, 1995, the paper was closed down altogether when a court ruled that it was subject to the same ban as Ozgur Gundem99. When yet another paper representing a Kurdish viewpoint, Yeni Politika, was planned, its premises were raided before even the first issue appeared in April, six of its journalists were detained, and the inaugural issue was confiscated for containing 'separatist propaganda'100.

Even foreign journalists have come under fire. On October 12 Aliza Marcus, a US citizen, was to come before the State Security Court in Istanbul, charged with 'stirring up racial hatred, an offence which carries a maximum of three years imprisonment, for an article she wrote in Ozgur Ulke of November 27, 1994, mentioning the forced evacuation and burning of Kurdish villages101.

Still more bizarre, a distinguished Turkish academic, Professor Dogu Ergil, is under intense fire on account of a survey of opinion in the southeast, which found that over 75% of the people wanted federalism, autonomy or an independent state. The idea of asking Kurds for their opinion on these matters is anathema to the Kemalist establishment, but Professor Ergil's conclusion that 'the PKK is not the cause of the problem..... [it is] the illegitimate child of the system' is the worst kind of heresy102.

The government counters all criticism of human rights violations by attempts to deflect attention towards the attacks on non-combatants perpetrated by the PKK, which must be condemned, and by falsely and maliciously ascribing massacres committed by the security forces to the PKK. There is a residue of circumstantial evidence against the PKK in the case of some atrocities, notably against the families of village guards, informers, and in one case, of six teachers, but for most of this information, researchers have had to rely on the indirect testimony of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, because the Emergency Rule Governor would not allow meetings with witnesses103.

It should be noted that in March 1994, the PKK Leader Abdullah Ocalan said he would stop all armed activity if a basis was established for a political solution, based on dialogue within a democratic framework. He suggested a cease-fire under international supervision, and discussion of various alternatives, including federation104. (He has given even more prominence to the concept of federation in subsequent pronouncements)105. At the same time, he accepted the obligation to protect the lives, security and integrity on non-combatants in accordance with common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It is not easy to say whether this has led to any reduction in the attacks on civilians by the PKK, and it has to be recognised that for the whole of the period of the conflict, the PKK have followed the maxim that 'Violence is the only way of securing a hearing for moderation'106.


There was certainly no question of the Turkish authorities responding to this PKK initiative, any more than they had to the cease fire of the previous year. They were in the middle of a big offensive, decided by the Emergency State Coordination Committee (Olaganustu Hal Koordinasyon Kurulu), using 150,000 troops and the Second Tactical Airforce, reinforced with an additional 30 planes from other commands107. Ankara would not agree to discussions with the terrorists, as they saw them, but at the same time they were setting the scene for the elimination of the constitutional Kurdish opposition. By doing so, they were deliberately abandoning political solutions and relying exclusively on the military option.

At the beginnning of March 1994, the TGNA withdrew the immunity of the Kurdish MPs. The then Turkish Ambassador in London, Mr Candemir Onhon, explained that this had been done on the request of the State Security Courts, based on Article 125 of the Penal Code. That provision, which dealt with action against the indivisibility of the State and Nation, was based on Article 14 of the Constitution, which stipulates the conditions under which basic rights and freedoms may be restricted. Mr Onhon observed that the penal codes of many other states prescribe heavy penalties for crimes involving separatism and division of the country, and he argued that there was no incompatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights, which allows for some departures from absolute freedom of expression108. Mr Onhon omitted to mention that Article 125 carries the death penalty.

Six MPs, Hatip Dicle, Leyla Zana, Orhan Dogan, Sirri Sakik, Ahmet Turk and Mahmut Alinak, were arrested on the withdrawal of their immunity.

When the DEP was dissolved by the Constitutional Court on June 16, 1994, (because of its "Peace Now Declaration", and statements made by the former chairman of the Party, Yasar Kaya, in which he referred to the leaders of Kurdish rebellions against the Turkish state, and to the Republic of Mahabad), two further MPs, Sedat Yurtdas and Selim Sadak, were automatically unseated and were then also arrested under Article 125 on July 1. On December 8, 1994, Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Ahmet Turk, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak were found guilty under Article 168 para 2 of the Turkish Penal Code of membership of an illegal armed organisation, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Sedat Yurtdas was found guilty under Article 169 of having provided support to an armed organisation and given 7 years six months imprisonment. Mahmut Alinak and Sirri Sakik were found guilty under Article 8 para 1 of the Anti-Terror Law of having engaged in separatist propaganda and were sentenced to 3 years six months, plus a fine of 70 million TL, but released on bail pending appeal.

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly had called for the release of the Kurdish MPs109, as had the CSCE Parliamentary Assembly110.The Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians of the

[schoolmaster1954]

Turgut Ozal didn't want unification. He believed in the Turkish islamic synthesis. That would also mean assimilation for Kurds. We will never know, what he really would have done, since he is dead.

Perhaps Ozal was confident in the strength of cultural tolerance due to his own background. Ozal was of partial Kurdish decent. Not only did he display great courage when announcing this to the public, he also displayed immeasurable confidence in the Turkish people and their progressiveness.
Ozal also possessed the pragmatism to explore non-military solutions to the Kurdish issue. He advocated greater cultural liberty for the Kurdish people. By repealing laws that forbade non-Turkish languages, he continued to build upon the openness that characterized his leadership. Ozal realized that often times creative solutions are needed to resolve controversial challenges.

Three Legacies: Ataturk, Inonu, and Ozal, and the Making of the U.S.-Turkish Relationship
Eric Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Speech at the Washington Institute
Eighth Annual Turgut Ozal Lecture
June 19, 2006
Sayin Arkadashlar Merhaba. [Hello, my good friends.] It is an honor to be here today to deliver this year’s Turgut Ozal lecture. I would like to thank the Washington Institute, Rob Satloff, Soner Cagaptay, and in particular, Mark Parris (one of my distinguished predecessors as Ambassador to Turkey) for inviting me. This institution’s excellent work in promoting U.S.-Turkish relations does not go unnoticed and I am proud to be a part of it. In fact, I would argue that the Institute’s work on Turkey is more important now than it has ever been. I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the important efforts of my successor, Ambassador Ross Wilson, who with great dedication and skill works everyday at maintaining our strong relations.
From my own experience in Ankara, I can tell you that the U.S. values Turkey as a great ally and friend. Ours is a friendship that shares a long history. For half a century Turkey has served as NATO’s southern anchor. From Korea to Kosovo to Kabul, the U.S. and Turkey have stood together in defense of peace and prosperity. As important as our cooperation has been in the past, it is even more important in addressing today’s challenges. Turkey has been a strong ally in support of freedom and democracy and is, today, working with the United States in the global war on terror. The United States truly values Turkey’s assistance and friendship in defense of the values we share.
It is no secret that the U.S.-Turkish relationship has been through a bit of a turbulent period. The impact of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the U.S. response (Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom) have created perturbations in the relationship that are still working themselves out. In that context it seems a worthwhile exercise to go back and revisit the fundamentals of the relationship. In particular, it is worth reviewing the special characteristics of Turkey, the shared values, as well as the common geopolitical interests that have underpinned the desire of the United States to have a strong partner and ally in Turkey. It is, after all, those things which have been the basis of U.S. support for Turkey over the past fifty years. It has also been those fundamentals that served as the core of Washington’s consistent and determined support for Turkey’s European aspirations and vocation.
Because this annual speech is dedicated to Turgut Ozal, I thought it appropriate to take a closer look at this great man and discuss how his courageous leadership and progressive policies helped shaped the kind of Turkey which we have sought as a valued partner. Building on the work of others, Ozal was:
• a visionary, who was proud of Turkey and confident in Turkey a visionary, who was proud of Turkey and confident in Turkey’
• a devout Muslim, who was comfortable in separating his private piety from his secular governance;
• a democrat, who restored multi-party politics and understood the importance of accountability of government;
• a realist, who was not afraid to open Turkey up to the world;
• a creative thinker, who immediately grasped the significance of Central Asia’s liberation from Soviet domination;
• a perceptive leader, who valued the legacies of his predecessors and was able to apply them to modern times;
• and a true friend to the United States.
Ozal’s strong leadership was a product of the hard work of past leaders. It goes without saying that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s remarkable leadership provided the base for a modern, democratic Turkey. He was a forward-looking leader with faith in the concept of a Turkish Republic. He led Turkey on a path toward modernization, with a series of innovative reforms, all geared towards setting Turkey on a Western course. Among his many lasting accomplishments, he made Turkey a secular democracy.
Ataturk was committed to the preservation of the independence and integrity of the Turkish Republic. He realized the nation would not be a success unless the people were proud of it. He demonstrated his dedication to the Turkish people by investing in the country’s infrastructure, by granting political rights to women, and investing in literacy and education. When Ataturk began reinventing the Turkish language, he personally led the public education campaign that followed. He himself went into the park in Ankara on Sundays to teach the Latin alphabet as part of the language reform.
He understood the advocacy and intellectual role leaders must play in the modern world. In today’s parlance he understood strategic communications.
The fundamental governing principals set by Ataturk continue to guide Turkey today. Ataturk clearly saw that Turkey’s future was in the West. His social, political, and linguistic reforms guided Turkey in that direction and required great ingenuity, strength, and perseverance. Ataturk condemned dictatorships and his legacy lies in the fact that he left the nation with a structure that enabled democracy to take root. Lord Kinross in his laudatory biography of Ataturk acknowledged that the great man had achieved “swift, liberal ends pursued often by illiberal means.” In some sense Ataturk’s successors have spent the past 70 years bringing means and ends back into balance. For that reason the work of both the Ecevit and AK Party governments over the past years has been both breathtaking and important.
Their pursuit of a broad economic and political reform agenda is not only positive in its own right but has brought the prospect of Turkey’s entry into Europe closer than it has ever been. Obviously that work must continue to be deepened and broadened.
Following Ataturk’s death, Mustafa Ismet Inonu’s presidency led Turkey to successfully fulfill Ataturk’s reforms and to consolidate a secular, democratic order. One of his key accomplishments was the introduction of democratic elections and opening Turkish politics to a multi-party system. Inonu recognized that a loyal and constructive opposition is important for the democratic functioning of a nation. It is the crucial mechanism for ensuring accountability of government to the governed.
During World War II, Inonu initially viewed neutrality as a way to preserve Turkey’s sovereignty. However, by the end of the war he realized it was more important for the Turkish nation to join the Allies in defense of their shared values. The Turkish Straits crisis of 1946 symbolized the shifting reality. The transport of the late Turkish Ambassador Ertegun’s remains to Istanbul aboard the U.S.S. Missouri provided a powerful signal of U.S. determination to stand with Turkey against intimidation by a powerful neighbor. In a way, the incident came to stand for more than that. It came to symbolize the cultural and people-to-people ties between our countries. Ambassador Ertegun’s son, Ahmet, remained in the U.S. where he went on to become a successful businessman whose important role in American popular culture has been beautifully captured in the Oscar winning movie Ray.
Inonu recognized that the world had changed after World War II. He saw the value of collective security and strong global alliances. Under his leadership, Turkey became one of the original members of the United Nations, joined the IMF, and expressed immediate interest in joining NATO. The 1947 Truman Doctrine showed that Turkey’s position had changed from one of neutrality to that of a staunch ally and a key member of what we came to know as “the West.” Inonu’s pivotal role and Turkey’s eventual entry into NATO taught an important lesson: serious leaders and nations do not stand by in crisis situations.
Crises require choices and those choices frequently require leaders (both in government and opposition) to educate and to shape the perceptions of their countrymen about the real alternatives confronting the nation.
Inonu went on to reform the political system to reflect the emerging world order of capitalism and democracy. In May 1950 the first free elections were held in Turkey. When Inonu lost the election, the military offered to step in and secure his presidency. However, Inonu declined. Instead, he chose to follow the democratic principles he instilled and became an opposition leader. In doing so, he also showed great courage and confidence in the decisions made by the citizens of Turkey. As renowned historian Bernard Lewis once stated, “[Turkey] has passed the more searching test, of a second change of rulers by democratic procedures—of a government willing to submit to the will of its people and leave by the self-same route by which it came.” Turkey’s democratic success can be attributed to Inonu’s commitment to the principles of democracy and free choice.
The West indeed viewed this democratic change in power as a sign of Turkey’s maturity and as a reflection of the solid foundations laid by Ataturk. It remains an important and lasting achievement despite the many vicissitudes of Turkish politics over the years.
The next few decades were somewhat troubled for Turkey. While Turkey did not fully stray from Ataturk’s founding principles, the nation was missing a strong leader needed to further carry out these reforms. When the military intervened in Turkish politics in 1980, Turgut Ozal was the only cabinet member who remained in power due to his highly-regarded economic reforms.
However, Ozal realized that to have a greater impact, he had to extend his leadership beyond his military ties. In 1982 he founded the Motherland Party and was elected Prime Minister. It was then that Ozal successfully became leader of Turkey as a whole, not simply representative of a small group. He rose beyond his original constituency to become a true national figure.
One of the Motherland party’s primary objectives was to continue on the path of economic restructuring. The Party, under Ozal’s leadership, renounced the introverted attitude that dominated Turkish economics. Through his reforms, the Turkish economy opened to competitive world markets. He also improved Turkey’s infrastructure and raised living standards. Through his encouragement, the Turkish people became empowered to secure the continued growth of their country. Opening Turkey’s economy to the world was a huge achievement but sowed seeds of difficulty as well. With greater openness came greater opportunities for corruption, among other things. Although he did not, unfortunately, live long enough to see the completion of his vision, I think it is fair to say that he understood that Turkey’s internal process of change needed a broader international context. He believed that long-term economic stability could only be based in cooperation with the West. He was confident that this was the direction for Turkey and renewed the quest for Turkish membership in the European Economic Community.
In his view, Turkey’s geographic location made it a natural partner for Europe. The fact that Europe was a Christian community did not discourage him. Ozal believed that the values which tie Europe and Turkey are based on secularism not religion. He was confident that faith–no matter which one–was a private matter and ought not impact on democratic governance. Accepting Turkey as a member would globalize the European Community, strengthening its values of tolerance and peace.
Perhaps Ozal was confident in the strength of cultural tolerance due to his own background. Ozal was of partial Kurdish decent. Not only did he display great courage when announcing this to the public, he also displayed immeasurable confidence in the Turkish people and their progressiveness.
Ozal also possessed the pragmatism to explore non-military solutions to the Kurdish issue. He advocated greater cultural liberty for the Kurdish people. By repealing laws that forbade non-Turkish languages, he continued to build upon the openness that characterized his leadership. Ozal realized that often times creative solutions are needed to resolve controversial challenges.
Ozal was able to take the principles of Ataturk’s modernizing reforms and apply them to his contemporary situation. He saw that it was important to recognize Turkey’s multicultural background, to encourage dignity and confidence among the people, while pursuing a more open approach to foreign policy. Ozal traveled abroad more frequently than his predecessors, and frequently appeared on network television in foreign countries. In 1985 his official visit to the United States was the first of any Turkish leader in over a decade. Ozal had made the revitalization of U.S.-Turkish relations an integral part of his leadership.
As a new world order emerged with the collapse of Communism, Ozal saw the opportunity for Turkey to redefine its role in global politics and position itself as a strategic ally. He was president for less than a year when Iraq invaded Kuwait. This was a pivotal moment in defining Turkey’s global stature. While some advised that he should proceed with caution, Ozal acted resolutely and courageously. Despite the domestic, economic, and political risks, he stood firm in his support of Turkey’s historic Allies. He granted Allied use of Incirlik air base and overflight rights and participated in the Iraqi oil embargo. These measures were widely criticized in Turkey. However Ozal saw the importance of standing by friends and Allies. Today’s contributions by the Turkish Government to assist Coalition efforts to stabilize Iraq (by allowing the use of Incirlik as a cargo hub and reaching out to bring Sunni Arab political leaders into the political process) descend directly from the line pioneered by Ozal. By supporting the United States and Europe, and recognizing the dangers the Iraqi regime posed to Turkish national interests, Ozal remained committed and true to the vision of a modern, secular democracy.
Some of Ozal’s decisions were controversial–that is a burden that any great leader must bear.
But leadership requires the courage to carry out difficult decisions, the ability to look beyond the partisan disputes of the moment and the willingness to make sacrifices in defense of the nation’s basic values and long-term goals. In describing his security policy, Ozal once said: “The only thing not to do in a crisis situation is to remain in the status quo. Up to the present every crisis has ultimately served as a springboard for progress. We believe that the same will still be true in the future.” These are words that could only come from a courageous, shrewd, and visionary leader.
Today, the global community of democracies faces numerous challenges; and Turkey’s role in addressing these challenges remains critical. As in the past, the U.S. continues to count on Turkey as a leader and friend in defending the values we share; and we vow to continue our support to Turkey in pursuit of our common goals. The work of my U.S. and Turkish colleagues in drafting a document memorializing our common strategic vision (which is nearing completion) will go a long way to advance that mutual agenda.
We are committed to continuing our backing of Turkey’s accession to the European Union. The recent successful conclusion of the first round of talks is a positive first step. As Turkey makes its way toward the EU, there will undoubtedly be some hurdles. However, we are confident in the ability and determination of our Turkish friends to accomplish what they set out to do. The U.S. will stand side by side with the Turkish people in support of their EU aspirations.
At the forefront of our common security agenda lies the future of Iraq. It has been over three years since a coalition of free nations chose to put an end to the brutality and oppression of the former Iraqi regime. This has been a difficult road, but the Iraqi people have never given up hope. The most recent example of their perseverance and determination lies in the newly elected, representative government. The Iraqis should be proud of all that they have accomplished after having endured so much.
I am not trying to sugar coat the security situation. There is much more work to be done. Iraq is at critical point and cannot achieve full success without the help of other free nations.
International support for the nascent democracy is more necessary now than ever before. And I cannot stress the critical importance of support from democratic allies–allies like Turkey–to ensure the Iraqi people a secure, peaceful home, free of terrorism and tyranny. We owe that to the Iraq people and to the citizens of our nations as well. Former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson summed this up quite well in his recent Washington Post op-ed:
It’s time that European leaders recognized that what is playing out in Iraq today is their future, too. It’s difficult, complex and, at the moment, bloody. But that did not stop us 60 years ago, or 10 years ago in Bosnia, or even seven years ago in Kosovo. We knew what we had to do, and we did it then to save our people and preserve their security. In Baghdad today they are fixing, or breaking, our future, too. It is no time to look away.
No nation knows the security implications of an unstable Iraq better than Turkey.
For years northern Iraq has served as a safe haven for the PKK. Just in the past weekend these brutal and bloody terrorists appear to have struck again. Our hearts go out to the many Turkish families who have suffered great loss at the hands of this terrorist group. In our ongoing battle against terror, the international community cannot overlook the PKK. The United States stands side by side with Turkey in this struggle. In fact, our information sharing has never been closer on this subject. We remain committed to working with Turkey and Iraq, as well as our European friends to put an end to this hateful terrorist organization. As we work toward securing Iraq from terrorist activity, we should also keep in mind that there are various ways–beyond the use of conventional force– to tackle terrorist networks. Regional development in the southeast is also a critical imperative.
Afghanistan is another vital battleground in the global war on terror. It is also a place with many linkages to Turkey and where the Government of Turkey and the Turkish military have played a very helpful role. Turkey has twice taken the command of ISAF and has assumed special responsibilities, along with France, for improving the security situation in Kabul. The Turkish private sector is also on the cutting edge in Afghanistan by taking a leading role in the country’s reconstruction.
Let me turn my attention to another one of Turkey’s neighbors: Iran. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear enrichment capabilities is extremely troublesome to say the least. A nuclear Iran would pose a great threat to the peaceful nations of the world, particularly those in geographic proximity to Iran–nations like Turkey and Israel and our other friends in the Middle East and the Gulf region. The U.S. is fully committed to resolving this issue diplomatically and has devoted time and attention in support of the EU-3 effort . As we work to find a solution to a potential highly destabilizing situation, we need allies like Turkey standing resolutely by our side, sending a firm message: Peaceful nations will join together with certainty to prevent a nuclear Iran.
We are grateful for Turkey’s firm position over the past few years in the IAEA Board of Governors holding the Iranian regime to account for its prevarications on the nuclear program and appreciate the continued support for the U.S. and EU-3 negotiations.
As we face today’s security challenges, the United States needs strong, decisive partners–partners like Ataturk, Inonu, and Ozal–who were not afraid to make controversial decisions for the progress of their great nation. In describing his policies, Ataturk once said, “I never cared to be loved. I only cared to create a strong, proud country.” It is leaders like him who make a lasting historical impact.
Today Turkey holds a strategic place in the world and with that important position come critical responsibility, numerous challenges, and sometimes difficult decisions. However, the nation’s strength remains in its strong founding principles, which still hold true decades later. Turkey can proudly look back on a great heritage for guidance in today’s world: Kemal Ataturk’s vision of a modernized Turkey anchored in the West, Ismet Inonu’s commitment to carrying out democratization. And Turgut Ozal, whose courageous leadership during critical times made decisions that restored multiparty democracy, opened the economy and positioned Turkey as a reliable ally, committed to working with partners and friends on a shared vision for a better future. May Turkey’s leaders and people look to the legacies left by each of these great men for inspiration as their nation continues its progressive advance through the 21st century.
Tesekkur Ederim. [Thank you.]
Mr. Eric Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
-- END --

[schoolmaster1954]

Turgut Ozal didn't want unification. He believed in the Turkish islamic synthesis. That would also mean assimilation for Kurds. We will never know, what he really would have done, since he is dead.

http://www.countrywatch.com/facts/facts_default.aspx?

The armed struggle by the PKK and international media attention toward the Iraqi Kurds also led to a reassessment of Kurdish policy among some members of the Turkish political elite. President Turgut Özal broke taboo by referring to the people of eastern Turkey specifically as Kurds (they had previously been referred to as “mountain Turks”). Afterwards, several Turkish newspapers for the first time began discussing the Kurds. In 1991, President Özal called for a more relaxed policy toward the Kurds, including repealing restrictions on the Kurdish language. After Özal’s death in 1993, however, Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled the HEP was an illegal organization. Anticipating this, members of the HEP disbanded and formed the People’s Democracy Party (HADEP). In 1994, Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish female member of the Turkish parliament, was arrested and tried for “treason” because of her open support for Kurdish rights. In 2001, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Zana’s trial was unfair. Zana was released from prison in 2004.

That same year, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a landmark speech in which he claimed that Turkey had mishandled the issue of its Kurdish minority. Erdogan argued that more democracy, rather than more repression, was the only method by which to resolve Kurdish grievances and ultimately defeat terrorism. Erdogan encouraged regional radio and television stations to allot more broadcast time for Kurdish language programming. Erdogan also acknowledged that efforts to stimulate the economy of Kurdish regions needed to be a priority. He called for the return of hundreds of thousands of Kurds expelled from their homes during the military campaign against the PKK. In 2003, the Turkish government passed a package of reforms that granted Kurds greater cultural rights. Television and radio broadcasts in Kurdish were legalized. Kurdish parents were also given the right to give their children Kurdish names. Previously, names deemed to be “un-Turkish” were not registered by local authorities. The reforms also allowed for Kurdish language instruction in private courses. Four Kurdish political activists were also freed from jail and given new trials. Emergency rule was also lifted in southeastern Turkey.

[schoolmaster1954]

Turgut Ozal didn't want unification. He believed in the Turkish islamic synthesis. That would also mean assimilation for Kurds. We will never know, what he really would have done, since he is dead.

http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/( ... 45vnpyp3e5)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,8,13;journal,24,31;linkingpublicationresults,1:108537,1


Middle Eastern Studies
Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
Issue: Volume 38, Number 4 / October 01, 2002
Pages: 123 - 142
URL: Linking Options

Özal Leadership and Restructuring of Turkish Ethnic Policy in the 1980s


M. Ataman

Abstract:



This article analyses Turkish ethnic policy during two different leadership periods, Kemalist leadership and Özal leadership. It argues that ethnic policy of the Kemalist regime was a hybrid of political nationalism and the Ottoman ethnic system (the millet system), which accepted every citizen of Turkey as 'Turks', denied the existence of all Muslim ethnic groups and ignored all 'outside Turks'. Özal leadership attempted to change this understanding. It accepted the existence of Muslim ethnic groups such as Kurds as well as that of non-Muslims. Based on liberalism and neo-Ottomanism, Ozalist leadership broke may taboos and offered political, social and economic solutions to the ethnic problem.