· BANNING HADEP "WILL BE A SERIOUS SETBACK FOR RELATIONS
BETWEEN  E.U. AND  TURKEY" WARNS  E.U. DELEGATION. A delegation of
seven members of the E.U., led by Joost Lagendijk of Holland, visited
Turkey on 9 May for three days to examine the situation of the People's
Democratic Party (HADEP).  At a Press Conference on 10 May, Joost Lagendijk
stated "If  HADEP were closed down, it would be a serious setback to
relations between the E.U. and Turkey".

HADEP is threatened with a banning order for "organic links" with the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) recently added to the European Union's list
of terrorist organisations. Mr. Lagendijk stressed that the Turkish
authorities have not been able to supply the delegation with any "concrete
evidence" of any link between that party and the PKK. "Our conclusion is
that HADEP is an independent political party that defends the interests and
rights of the Kurds by non-violent means" he declared.

The Dutch M.P. pressed the Turkish Authorities to abstain from all and any
action against legal Kurdish groups following the E.U.'s acceptance of the
PKK as a terrorist organisation. "We are insisting to the Turkish
authorities that they avoid taking advantage of our inclusion of the PKK on
the list of terrorist organisation to repress legal organisations and
parties of Kurdish origin" he stressed.
 

·  PARLIAMENT ENACTS  LAW THAT VIOLATES EU STANDARDS,
IGNORES KURDS AND OUTLAWS  "ATTACKS ON NATION'S MORALE".
On 15 May, the Turkish Parliament adopted a very controversial
Bill introducing penalties for propagating false information over the
Internet and increasing the penalties for breaches of the existing
legislation covering radio and television. Widely opposed in Turkey,
particularly by the Turkish President, by half of Parliament, the
journalists' professional organisations as well as the local media and
ONGs, who denounce the law's encouragement of monopoly and its serious
violations of freedom of the press, the Bill was adopted after a ten hour
long stormy debate in the course of which government and opposition M.P.s
almost came to blows. If the 292 M.P.s present (out of 550), 202 voted in
favour, 87 against and 4 abstained.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer had vetoed this law in June 2001, on the
grounds that it was contrary to the democratic standards that Turkey had
undertaken to observe, as part of its application to join the European
Union, and also that it opened the way to political interference and to the
formation of monopolies and cartels.

The new Act stipulates that spreading false information over the Internet
will henceforth be punishable by fines that could go up to 100 billion
Turkish lire (about $72,000 US). The authorities will no longer be able to
suspend radio and TV networks or channels, hitherto a frequent practice,
and the media supervisory body, RTUK, will only ask them to apologise. But
RTUK will be able to cancel the licences of networks that criticise "the
unity of Turkey" and spread "subversive and separatist propaganda".

Moreover, the new law represses the spreading of any information that would
provoke "despair or demoralisation" ­ a vague concept that would certainly
hit the local press that is already hard pressed. Especially as the
authority charged with defining "the strategic framework" of audio-visual
broadcasting (which also includes Internet) will be a High Council for
Information, led by the Prime Minister and a Secretary of State to be
appointed by the latter and consisting not only of the Ministers of the
Interior and of Communications but also of the General Secretary of the
notorious National Security Council (MGK) and the Director of Electronic
Communications of the Turkish Armed Forces' General Staff.

The new Act also states that broadcasting can be "in Turkish but also in
all the universal languages" (by implication the UNO official languages?) ­
a formula that eliminates Kurdish, which does not exist in the eyes of the
Turkish authorities (or else is regarded as just a number of local
dialects), although it is spoken by over 30 million Kurds and is used in
the media, the schools and the Universities of Iraqi Kurdistan as well as
Iranian radio and television.

Jean-Christophe Flori, spokesman for Gunter Verheugen, the European
Commissioner for enlargement, stated, on the same day, that this law "was
not in conformity with the Copenhagen criteria" and that "the Turkish
Parliament should immediately revise it".

Created in 1994, the High Audiovisual Council (RTUK) has suspended hundreds
of radio and TV networks, both national and local. Since the end of the
State monopoly in 1990, radio and TV stations have multiplied in Turkey,
where, today, there are 13 national and 200 local TV stations and about
2,500 radio stations. Reporters sans Frontières recalls, moreover, that
RTUK maintains a strict control over the audiovisual media. Though the
majority of the RTUK's radio and TV network suspensions have not been for
political reasons, the length of the suspensions are particularly long in
the more political cases. They can be as long as a year's suspension for
broadcasting Kurdish music or for "calling into question the Constitutional
order". These latter cases, indeed, are often referred to the RTUK by the
military authorities
 

· TURKISH ARMY LAUNCHES VAST MILITARY OPERATION AT DERSIM. 
In a communiqué dated 14 May, the Turkish authorities announced that the Turkish
Army had launched an operation with air support in the Kurdish region of
Dersim (Tunceli) to "destroy the caches of the Kurdish rebels of the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)". The operation is taking place in the
mountainous Alibogazi region, about 55 Km West of the city of Tunceli, the
Provincial Governor's Office stated.

"During the operations, mortars and helicopter gunshots will be used, if
necessary, to strengthen the firepower of the land forces" the communiqué
added, without giving any details of dates or of the number of troops
engaged. Civilians have been forbidden access to the region for fear "of
the presence of unexploded munitions and mines laid by the PKK terrorists"
or that they might be taken as targets by the Army, in error, the
communiqué continued.

The PKK, that recently changed its name to call itself Congress for Freedom
and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK) stopped fighting in 1999, at the call of
its chief Abdullah Ocalan, sentenced to death in Turkey for "treason and
separatism". But the Turkish Army rejected their unilateral cease-fire and
promised to hunt them down to the last man.
 

· PARIS:  RSF POSTER OBJECT OF VIOLENT ATTACKS FOMENTED BY ANKARA.
A poster by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) put up at St. Lazare Railway Station in Paris on
the occasion of the International Press Freedom Day (3 May last) has provoke diplomatic tension
between Paris and Ankara. The poster took the form of a map, showing where
in the world the press was being restricted, with portraits of 38
"predators of press freedom", including, especially, the Chief of Staff of
the Turkish Armed Forces, General Huseyin Kivrikoglu.

The Turkish Minister of Defence threatened to freeze the military
agreements with France. He added that the French military attaché had been
summoned, on 7 May, to the Army Head Quarters to demand the withdrawal of
the poster. "He was informed ( ) that the insulting attitude towards
General (Huseyin) Kivrikoglu had to stop" declared an official. In
addition, the French Ambassador to Ankara was summoned to the Foreign
Ministry a little later and was given to understand that the scandal of the
portrait was an attack on Turkey's image. The Turkish Head of State, Ahmet
Necdet Sezer, "condemned with regret" the incident, considering that it
showed that RSF did not understand Turkey.

Finally, in a communiqué published on 10 May, RSF announced that "the
repeated actions of violent little factions have compelled those
responsible for safety at Paris's St. Lazare Station to withdraw ( ) the
portraits of the 38 "predators of Press freedom"  The violence of the
reactions to the REF exhibition is evidence of what we have been denouncing
for months ­ any attempt to criticise the Turkish Army provokes a brutal
reaction from the authorities. The Turkish journalists who take such a risk
are immediately taken to court and one of them, Fikret Baskaya, has, to
date, been in prison for over a year for an article critical of the Army"
declared Robert Ménard, General Secretary of RSF. "Turkey is supposed to be
conforming to the democratic standards of the European Union, rather than
exporting its rejection of free expression and criticism to the very
capitals of the European Union" added Mr. Ménard.

Reporters sans Frontières noted that, on 9 May 2002, about thirty people
had daubed red paint over the RSF's exhibition world map after the Turkish
authorities had demanded that the French government "punish" RSF.
Travellers visiting the exhibition were pushed about and attacked with tear
gas by the demonstrators. The latter, who were accompanied by a dozen
Turkish journalists, again sprayed paint over the portraits of the 38
leaders denounced by RSF, and especially that of the Chief of Staff of the
Turkish Armed Forces, Huseyin Kivrikoglu. RSF restored the exhibition as it
was and filed a complaint for "deliberate damage to private property". Some
demonstrators again attacked travellers visiting the exhibition in the
morning of Friday 10 May, which obliged the Station's security service to
dismantle the exhibition.

RSF recalls that, in Turkey, over fifty representative of the Press, of all
political trends, were brought before the courts because of their writings
in 2001. All journalists who, in any way criticised the army were
systematically harassed. In the course of the first five months of 2002,
new proceedings have been brought against journalists. One of them, Erol
Ozkoray, Editor in Chief of the quarterly review of political science and
international relations, Idea Politika, is facing at least three trials, in
particular because of one issue of his review in which the Army had been
accused of trying to put a brake on the Turkey's coming closer to the
European Union. This legal harassment has finally obliged Mr. Ozkoray to
stop publishing his review  Another journalist, Fikret Baskaya, has been
incarcerated since 29 June 2001 after having been sentenced to one year and
four months jail for a single article, published on 1 June 1999,
criticising the management of the Kurdish problem by the civil and military
authorities.
 

·  MEDIA LYNCHING OF KAREN FOGG, E.U. REPRESENTATIVE
 No one knows what the European Union intends to do to defend
the honour of its representative in Ankara against vicious attacks. A real
lynching campaign has been launched against the E.U. representative for
some months past in Turkey. After one campaign of abuse following the
publication, in the Turkish press, of her (intercepted!) e-mail, now some
editorial writers close to the Army are openly threatening the European
diplomat, who has, nevertheless, been very discrete ­ not to say indulgent
­ towards Ankara, on "sensitive" subjects like the Kurdish question. This
time it is the President of the Turkish Committee of Journalist, the thick
skinned Editorialist in Chief of the mass circulation Turkish daily
Hurriyet who lines up the heavy artillery against the woman who has become
the permanent Aunt Sally of the Turkish nationalist media and politicians.
Here are some extracts from the vitriolic editorial published on the front
page of Hurriyet on 8 May:

"The strongest remark one can make about an ambassador is to tell him to
"clear off"!"

"Mrs. Fogg has displayed such a dirty and rude performance during her
period as representative (in Turkey) that no diplomatic respect towards her
is now needed. She thus deserves a violent and intense reaction from
Turkish public opinion such as has never been shown to a diplomatic
representative"

The reason for this open attack is, this time, due to remarks Ms. Fogg is
said to have made in private conversation on the subject of Cyprus.
According to Hurriyet, she is said to have "called upon the Cyprus Turks to
revolt and free themselves from Turkish guardianship and from Rauf
Denktas".  (Editor's Note: Since the 1974 Turkish invasion, one half of the
original Turkish Cypriot population of 120,000 has emigrated or sought
asylum in Europe ­ largely in UK ­ and been replaced by "colonies" of
mainland Turks. The largest Turkish Cypriot party is the Republican Party ­
in opposition!)

The other complaint about her is her wish to see a civilian take as General
Secretary of the National Security Council (MGK) (Editor's Note: In fact a
demand of the E.U. itself). "She meddles with everything!" rages the
editorial writer who states that she should be "grabbed by the ear and
thrown out" and that "she had better look out   She could well be the
loser" he concluded.
 

· IN THE PRESS: HOW TURKS TAKE REVENGE ON EUROPEAN
ENEMIES.  Bekir Coskun, a journalist on the staff of the daily Hurriyet,
denounces with a caustic pen the preservation and encouragement of the
warlike spirit cultivated by the Turkish authorities who re-enact the war
of independence in nearly all the large towns, in which the very poorly
paid municipal employees are dressed up as the enemy and beaten up. Here
are extensive extracts from his article, published on 16 May:

"I am familiar with Independence Day celebrations. The municipal street
sweepers are dressed up as "enemy French soldiers" in a sort of very cheap
sky blue uniform looking like a cross between a boiler suit and a pair of
baggy trousers.

According to hearsay, it is the tailor who sewed them who deals the first
blows, then the hatter   the boot-maker etc.

Then the daily of celebration arrives.

The town's big wigs, dressed up as Turkish soldiers, line up with their
swords, riding boots, and binoculars and the municipal employees, dressed
up as enemies   begin to tremble. And war begins.

The enemy soldiers, in their cheap blue uniforms, appear, the commentator
cries out into the microphone "dirty enemy bastards" which is taken up in
chorus by the spectators on the grand stands   Then the Turkish soldiers
advance, firing in the air, and all those of the spectators who can,
approach the municipal street wipers and beat them with sticks and kicks.

At last the ANAP group has proposed a Bill to ban the beating up of the
"enemy soldiers" during the Independence Day celebrations

When the former occupation forces, French, Italian or British, come to
Turkey today, they try belly dancing. So why must we continue to beat up
our municipal workers dressed up as enemies? Why do you beat them up?  "