· SHARP RISE IN TENSION BETWEEN ANKARA AND KDP.
On 29 August, Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of
the two Kurdish organisations that govern Iraqi Kurdistan, through the head
of its International relations Department, Hoshyar Zebari, expressed its
determination to ease the recent tension that has arisen with Turkey. For
several weeks, Ankara and the KDP have been exchanging critical remarks
after the Turkish press has accused the KDP of working for the creation of
a Kurdish State in Iraq.

On 21 August the KDP accused Ankara of indulging in a "language of threats"
against the Kurds of Iraq, in reaction to remarks of the Minister of
Defence, Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, of the neo-fascist National Action Party
(MHP) claiming that Turkey had a "historic right of supervision over the
North of Iraq". Mr. Cakmakoglu was reacting to questions about allegations
that the two Kurdish regional governments were planning, in the event of
military operations against Iraq, to extend their control over two oil rich
towns, Kirkouk and Mossoul, at present controlled by the Iraqi central
government. Moreover, the MHP Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Murat
Sokmenoglu, had called for regional autonomy for the Iraqi Turkomen, an
ethnic minority of a few tens of thousands living in and around Kirkouk.

 Following a discussion with the Director of the Near Eastern Department of
the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Turkekul Kurttekin, Mr. Zebari told
journalists that he had given the Turkish authorities a message from Mr.
Barzani indicating that his party did not want tension with Turkey. Turkey
and the KDP "have agreed to take the necessary measures to restore
relations on the basis of mutual respect as was the case in the past" Mr.
Zebari indicated on behalf of the KDP's international Relations Department.
He also stressed that the two parties were going the right way about
overcoming the tension that, he said, arose from an "erosion of
confidence". Ankara and the KDP will exchange visits to ease the tension.

A KDP spokesman, on 6 September, said that a Turkish delegation was due to
visit Iraqi Kurdistan shortly, and that this visit would be followed by a
visit to Ankara of a member of the top leadership of the KDP, to try and
clear up the tension between the two parties. According to this spokesman,
who asked to be nameless, the Turkish delegation was expected "in the next
few days". For his part, Nechirvan Barzani, Prime Minister of the new
Kurdish regional government at Erbil, is due to go to Ankara "at the end or
the month" so as to "clear up relations between the two parties".
 

· LEYLA ZANA WELCOMES THE REFORMS IN TURKEY. Leyla Zana, the
former Member of parliament of the Party for Democracy (DEP ­ banned) who is serving
a 15 year prison sentence imposed by the Turkish courts, welcomed the democratic
reforms recently passed by the Turkish Parliament and called on the
European Union to set a date before the end of 2002 for stating
negotiations with Ankara for Turkey's membership.

Membership of the Union. In a letter written from prison, authentified by
her lawyer Yusuf Alatas and dated 29 August, Mrs. Zana considered that,
despite its shortcomings, "the reforms assume a historic importance on the
way towards the brotherhood of Turks and Kurds". The letter is addressed
specifically to the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose
country currently occupies the rotating Chair of the European Union.

Mrs. Zana considers that, if the date of negotiations for membership
remains vague, the situation would strengthen the opponents of Turkey
joining the Union. "Announcing a date for starting negotiations at the
European summit in December would open Turkey's the way forward for good"
stressed the winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for freedom
of expression, in this letter she drafted in prison, adding that otherwise
the actual application of the reforms would be delayed.

Mrs. Zana and three other DEP members of Parliament were sentenced to 15
years imprisonment in 1994. The European Human Rights Court has ruled that
their trial was an inequitable one and the Council of Europe demanded, in
January 2002, that Ankara reconsider their case but, to date, the Turkish
government has done nothing about it.

Ankara has been insistently demanding the setting of a date for
negotiations but the European Commission, on 5 September, announced that it
was waiting for "the practical putting into effect" of the reforms.
 

· DEATH OF TWO MORE HUNGER STRIKERS.  Two Turkish detainees have died as a
consequence of their hunger strike, bringing to 56 the number of victims of
this movement of protest against detention in isolated, high security cells.

Gulnihal Yilmaz, 37 years of age and Fatma Kose-Tokay, 35, held in
detention since 1993 because of their membership of the People's Liberation
Revolutionary Party (DHKP-C ­ a banned Marxist-Leninist party) died
respectively on 25 and 31 August after a hunger strike of over 400 days.
This movement of extreme left prisoners and their families was launched in
October 2000 to protest against their transfer to isolation cells where
they would be at the mercy of the prison wardens. The prison authorities
consider that detention in large dormitories where hundreds of prisoners
live side by side, are uncontrollable and act as ideological training camps.
 

· TWO MEMBERS OF HADEP SENTENCED TO 45 MONTHS JAIL.
On 4 September, a State Security Court sentenced two members of the People's Democratic Party
(pro-Kurdish) to 45 months imprisonment for helping Abdullah Ocalan. Those
sentenced are two senior officers of the Istanbul HADEP branch ­ the party
itself being threatened with banning for "supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)".

Necla Yildirim and Abdelvahap Onder were charged last autumn when the
police surrounded the HADEP premises in the Küçükçekmece quarter (a suburb
on the European shore of Istanbul) and allegedly found pictures of Ocalan
on the walls and banned publications. The judge considered that the
suspects were spreading propaganda in support of the PKK and sentenced them
for "helping a terrorist organisation".

HADEP is threatened with banning for "organic links" with the PKK. It has,
nevertheless been admitted as one of the organisations allowed to present
candidates at the early General Election on 3 November coming. HADEP is
regularly harassed by the authorities

The authorities who jail or pull in for questioning its members under
charges of "separatism". Last May, a European Union delegation to Turkey
had warned "if HADEP were banned, it would cause a serious setback to
relations between the European Union and Turkey" at a time when Turkey is a
candidate for membership of the Union. This delegation had considered that
the Turkish authorities had not provided "concrete proof" of any link
between this party and the PKK.

· LEADING TURKISH SINGER AROUSES  IRE OF ARMY AND
ULTRA-NATIONALISTS SINGING IN KURDISH.  However much Turkey adopts
"democratic reforms" in favour of its minorities so as to conform to
European standards, singing folk songs in Kurdish, Armenian, or Greek still
provokes the ire of the country's ultra-nationalists. Sezen Aksu, one of
Turkey's most famous pop singers hit the headlines after a concert on 30
August at which she performed songs in Kurdish, Armenian, Greek and Hebrew
in the ancient amphitheatres of Ephesus and Aspendos ­ two concerts that
drew thousands of enthusiastic fans to attend.

But the first of these concerts, acclaimed by the majority of the press
critics, was shunned by one outstanding guest ­ General Hursit Tolon,
Military commander of the Western region of Turkey. He justified his
absence by the fact that the event coincided with "Victory Day" that
celebrates the decisive offensive of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's troops against
the Greek forces on 30 August 1922, during the Turkish war of independence.

Just four months before the European Union's decision on Turkey's
application to join the European Union, the Turkish Parliament adopted some
reforms, in particular granting cultural rights it its Kurdish minority,
including those of teaching and broadcasting in the Kurdish language. The
government hasn't yet put these reforms into effect ­ it limited itself to
criticising the date of the concert, while avoiding mention of its content

However, the National Action Party (MHP) one of the government coalition
partners, did not mince any words. "Let Sezen Aksu go and sing her songs in
Armenia and Greece" thundered one of its members of Parliament, Mehmet Gul,
accusing the singer of "separatist propaganda". The Minister of Culture,
Suat Caglayan described the M.P.s statements as "racist remarks" while
indicated that he understood "the sensitivity" of the army officers, in
this country where they play such an important role in political life.
 

· TURKISH GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN. The way is now open for Tayyip
Erdogan, head of the moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party (AK).
He had been charged with "incitement of hatred on religious criteria" for a
speech made in1997 and risked a sentence of 10 months jail under the
Anti-Terrorist Act which had already earned him four months jail in 1998  ­
but the recent amendment of this law enabled him, this time to have the
case dismissed. The High Electoral Council (YSK) has still to confirm, on
11 September, his participation, along with the rest of the candidates for
the 550 seats. The daily Milliyet of 7 September remarks in this connection
that an appeal against this would sent the case before the Court of Appeals
which would have to decide by 26 September ­ a ruling that could still
cancel the YSK's decision to accept Mr. Erdogan as a candidate.

Mr. Erdogan's problems with the law are thus not yet ended since on 1
August a Public Prosecutor file a case against the AK party, using this
same speech by Mr. Erdogan as proof that this party is only a resurgent
form of the banned Virtue Party ­ banned for its anti-secular activity
aiming at setting up a radical Islamic regime in Turkey.

The elections have been set for 3 November, 18 months earlier that would
normally have been the case, since Bülent Ecevit was no longer capable of
maintaining the coalition's unity. The opinion polls put the moderate
Islamic Justice and Development party in the lead, with some 20% of the
voting intentions, in the absence of unity between the other parties of
either Right or "Left", some of which, like Prime Minister Ecevit's are
likely to disappear through failure to secure the 10% of the national vote needed.

Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, who saw more than half his M.P.s leave him,
Called, on 28 August, for all "Left nationalists" to join his "Democratic
Left" party (DSP).  Nationalism and the Left make good partners, the Prime
Minister considered, adding that "one should not be ashamed of being a
nationalist ( ) of safeguarding the interests and unity of one's country".

The "Left" (Turkish style) will present three parties at the elections: the
DSWP, the New Turkey (YTP) party formed by the former Foreign Minister
Ismail Cem (who has recruited about sixty of the 70-odd who walked out on
Mr. Ecevit) and Deniz Baykal's Republican People's Party (CHP) which has
been joined by former Economics Minister, Kemal Dervis (made popular
through his programme of reforms aimed at getting the country out of its
economic crisis).
 

· MESUT YILMAZ SUPPORTS ARMY'S INTERFERENCE IN POLITICAL LIFE.
On 28 August, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister, Mesut Yilmaz, responsible for
relations with the European Union, suggested that the E.U. should
understand the position of the Turkish Army, which hasn't ever hesitated in
weighing in on political life, whether against political Islam or Kurdish separatist.

"We explain to our European co-respondents that the Army officers are
sensitive to two questions: the secular character of the regime and the
indivisibility of the country" Mr. Yilmaz said at a meeting with the Press.
He considered that, when the Turkish political parties will have ceased to
use these subjects for electoral ends and "to advance to a more mature
attitude, the Army will no longer have any reason to prove so sensitive".
"But so long as these two subjects continue to be exploited, the
continuation of this situation is inevitable" he stated.
Mr. Yilmaz, a declared supporter of his country's membership of the
European Union, had, in the past, nevertheless been the subject of the
anger of officers who accused him of opposing reforms needed to begin
negotiations for membership of the E.U.

Mr. Yilmaz called upon the Fifteen to evaluate Turkey from this singular
perspective. "No country can remain indifferent to threats to its
territorial integrity nor fail to see if a party uses democracy to destroy
democracy" he added.
 

· CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF CHANGES,  DISCOURSE REMAINS SAME.
On 27 August, the Turkish Army warned that it would not show any
toleration of Islamis or of Kurdish separationism and declared that Turkey,
a Moslem but secular country, should continue to fight them both. This
warning took place as Turkey was preparing for early elections in November
­ which could see a party with Islamist roots taking office and the
strengthening of the pro-Kurdish HADEP Party, which so far has not been
able to secure Parliamentary representation.

"Every one must know that the Turkish Armed Forces will not tolerate the
possibility that democracy be used by enemies of the system to dynamite the
fundamental principles of the State" declared General Huseyin Kivrikoglu
during the ceremony of handing over of powers by the Chief of Staff of the
all-powerful Turkish Armed forces. "Although these has been some progress
in this field, the threat of separatism and reaction are still potentially
present. All measures must be taken against this danger, even if it assumes
the mask of political activity" the General continued.

General Kivrikoglu, who retired on 30 August, nevertheless avoided
mentioning any specific party or making any direct reference to the
elections. His successor, Hilmi Ozkok, went further: "The Turkish Armed
Forces will always prove their determination in eradicating the threats of
separatism and reaction".

The Army, fiercely hostile to both the Islamist trend and to Kurdish
aspirations, have a determining influence in the country's political
direction, through their presence in a body that enjoys very extensive
powers ­ the National Security Council. Since 1960 the Army has directly
intervened to overthrow the government in office (1960, 1970 and 1980) and
it played a determining role in forcing the Islamist Prime Minister of
Turkey to resign in 1997.