·  BRUSSELS SUMMIT DID NOT SET DATE FOR NEGOTIATING TURKEY'S MEMBERSHIP
On 27 October, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer stated that Turkey deserved to start
negotiations for membership of the European Union by next year and
criticised Brussels' refusal to set a date.

On 25 October, those taking part in the E.U. Summit in Brussels had
welcomed the democratic reforms ­that the Fifteen had demanded of it ­
adopted by Turkey, though mentioning the long road that remains before it
in matters of freedom of expression, of religion and of association. "The
results ( ) have not come up to our expectations" commented President Sezer
to journalists, before leaving for Copenhagen to argue in favour of
Turkey's application for membership with the Danish Prime Minister Anders
Fogh Rasmussen. While "encouraging" Ankara to "pursue the reform process
already begun, the summit meeting of the Fifteen in fact avoided giving
Turkey what it was demanding : a date for the start of negotiations for
membership. At once the Turkish Foreign Minister, Sukru Sina Gurel,
announced on the same day that his country would "re-evaluate" its
relations with the European Union if a date was not set in the course of
the coming year. "If the European Union does not take a decision for
starting negotiations with Turkey in 2003, Turkish-European relations will
greatly suffer and Turkey will be obliged to re-evaluate all aspects of its
relations with the E.U." he declared.

For his part, the Turkish President declared that "Our aim is full
membership of the European Union ( ) I would stress that we have
established a sufficient basis ( ) for discussions in 2003".For his part,
the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country at present
holds the rotating Presidency of the E.U. explained that "the final
decision regarding Turkey will take place in December" at the Copenhagen Summit.

In August 2002, the Turkish Parliament abolished capital punishment in
times of peace, and granted some cultural rights to the Kurdish minority
with a view to qualifying for membership of the European Union. However,
these reforms have not, so far, been applied in any effective way. The
members of parliament hoped thus to meet the criteria that Brussels had
long demanded before the December Summit at which the member states were
due to decide on the enlargement of the E.U.
 

· NECHIRVAN BARZANI ON AN OFFICIAL VISIT TO TURKEY.
An official Iraqi Kurdish delegation visited Ankara to reassure Turkey that the Iraqi Kurds
were not seeking independence but a federal status within Iraq. At the end
of a meeting with officials of the Turkish Foreign Office, Nechirvan
Barzani, Prime Minister of the Erbil based Kurdistan regional government
declared, on 24 October : " Our objective is not to set up an independent
government or entity. We wish to resolve this problem in the framework of a
united and democratic Iraq". The visit was aimed at dispel the tension that
characterised relations between the two parties, examine the future of
Iraq, the federal option for Iraq desired by the Kurds and economic
exchanges.

Ankara and the KDP, which have controlled Iraqi Kurdistan since the end of
the Gulf War in 1991, jointly with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK),
have recently had sharply  critical exchanges following an orchestrated
press campaign claiming that the KDP was aiming at independence. Since the
reconciliation between the KDP and the PUK early in October, and the
effective resumption of the Kurdish "unified parliament" in Erbil, the KDP
and PUK have been striving to reassure their Turkish neighbour that they
had no intention of proclaiming an independent Kurdish state in the event
of American action in Iraq. The two Kurdish parties had, nevertheless,
published a proposed constitution in which the capital of the Kurdish
federal region would be in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, at present
under the control of Baghdad. This provoked the ire of Ankara, which
considered this to be a step towards independence. Mr. Barzani explained
that this was just "a  project proposal" which  had  yet to be discussed
with the other Iraqi opposition groups. He nevertheless stressed that "from
a geographical point of view, Kirkuk well know to be part of Iraqi
Kurdistan". The Kurdish Prime Minister stressed that during their
discussions with the Turkish diplomats, the two parties had managed to
"clarify a number of questions" provoked by "confusions" and
"misunderstandings" and welcomed the mutual will to "put bilateral links
back on the right road". At the same time, moreover, a PUK delegation made
a similar visit to Damascus.

Turkish nationalist leaders had suggested that the Turkish Army should
seize Kirkuk and the neighbouring city of Mossoul before the Kurds could do
so. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Sukru Sina Gurel, had accused the United
States of wanting to push Turkey into military intervention in Iraq before
any American operations by reviving the Kurdish question. "In all our
meetings, the American leaders affirmed that they did not want an
independent Kurdish State in Northern Iraq, but events there show that such
a de facto state exists" the Minister is quoted as saying in the Turkish
daily Milliyet.  "We can well ask ourselves whether the United States are
not trying to provoke Ankara by encouraging such a situation. For example,
do they (the American leaders) want Turkey to invade Northern Iraq before
they intervene ? It may well be their aim" he added.  Mr. Gurel hastened to
make the point that Ankara would not intervene there because of "outside
provocations or encouragements" but only in the event of a threat to Turkey.
 

·  INDEPENDENT KURDISH CANDIDATE QUESTIONED FOR SPEAKING KURDISH,
WHILE  PARTY IS IN DANGER OF BEING BANNED.  A Kurdish candidate  for the
General Election to be held on 3 November was briefly pulled in for questioning by the police in the
Kurdish town of Lice for having spoken in Kurdish during an election
meeting. Abdulmelik Firat, President of the pro-Kurdish Rights and Freedom
Party (HAK-PAR) and independent election candidate was taken to the police
station and detained for five hours after making an election speech during
a meeting in a cafe in the town.

The Public Prosecutor demanded that he be arrested for having broken
election laws which ban the use of any other language than Turkish during
election campaigns, but the court before which he was taken rejected this
demand and freed him. The HAK-PAR Party's Vice-President, Fehmi Demir,
denounced the hostile campaign  being waged against them by the
authorities. "We will continue to speak in Kurdish during our campaign" he said.

Mr. Firat is the grandson of the leader of one of the greatest Kurdish
insurrections (1925) which followed the proclamation of the Republic in
1923.  Sheikh Said's movement was repressed with difficulty by the security
forces and its leaders, including their chief, were all hanged.
On 31 October, the Turkish Constitutional Court is due to hear the closing
speech of Public Prosecutor Sabih Kanadoglu, who accuses HAK-PAR of
"separatism" because its Constitution defines it as the party "of Kurds and
Turks" ­ which, he claims, is "an attack on the territorial integrity" of the country

In another, less serious incident, the local authorities started a police
enquiry into a Turkish folk singer who had sung a song in Spanish during an
election meeting of the social-democratic People's Republican Party (CHP)
in Trabzon (the ancient Trebizond, on the Black Sea coast of north-east
Turkey) according to a report in the press dated 23 October. "I do not know
a word of Spanish" remarked Volkan Konak to the popular daily Vatan,
stating that he had "improvised" the song, whose words had "no particular significance".
 

· CLASHES BETWEEN  TURKISH ARMED FORCES AND PKK FIGHTERS
 On 28 October, it was learnt, from local and official sources,
that the Turkish Security forces had killed a fighter of the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) and that five soldiers and one civilian had been
killed in two separate clashes in Turkish Kurdistan.
One fighter was killed in the course of a clash in Dersim Province and a
hunter, who had strayed into the area where the fighting took place, was
wounded, according to the provincial governor, Tuncel Erkal. Moreover,
according to local sources who prefer to remain anonymous, five Turkish
soldiers were also wounded in a clash with fighters near the town of
Nazmiye, in the same province of Dersim.

On 22 October, another clash between Turkish troops and Kurdish fighters
had resulted in three deaths ­ two fighters and one soldier, in a locality
called Yayladere, in Bingöl province. One soldier had also been wounded.
 

·  TURKISH COURTS START PROCEEDINGS AGAINST FIVE GERMAN FOUNDATIONS
WITH  BRANCHES IN TURKEY.  On 25 October, the Turkish Press announced
that the Ankara State Security Court had decided to start proceedings
against five German foundations with branches in Turkey, accused of
conducting "clandestine activities aimed at undermining the Turkish State"
and of "spying" at the very moment when the Turkish Foreign Minister was
visiting his opposite number in Berlin and when the European Union was
holding a  summit on its enlargement in Brussels. The German ambassador in
Ankara described the accusation  as "nonsensical, improper and unfounded"
while the Public Prosecutor Nuh Mete Yuksel maintained that the foundations
had made "a secret alliance" with ethnic and religious groups aimed at
dividing the country and demanded 15 years imprisonment for the accused.

The foundations accused are the Konrad Adenauer, Heinrich Boell, Friedrich
Ebert and the Friedrich Naumann Foundations and the Oriental Institute ­
which enjoy considerable prestige in Germany.
 

· HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH DENOUNCES TURKISH POLICY TOWARDS  DISPLACED,
FORCIBLY EXPELLED PEOPLE SEEKING  RETURN. On 30 October the
human rights defence organisation, Human Rights Watch, called on Turkey to
help families expelled from their villages during the years of intense
fighting to return home. "There has been very little fighting since the
PKK's unilateral cease fire declaration in 1999" writes Human Rights Watch
(HRW) in its published report "but only a thin trickle of villages has been
able to return" home.

The organisation recalls that, according to official statistics, 380,000
people were forces to leave their homes. According to various
non-governmental organisations, this figure is really to "at least" one and
a half million people. These expulsions, accompanied by violence, wanton
destruction and even "disappearances" were documented in 1995 by a Turkish
Parliamentary report which attributed th3e responsibility to the
gendarmerie, but its recommendations were ignored, according to HRW. The
European Human Rights Court has several times condemned this policy of
Turkey's, but the plaintiffs have, although paid damages, have never been
allowed to return home, stresses HRW. As for the Turkish government's
"Rehabilitation and Return to the Village Project", it was limited to a
"feasibility study" without any written report or budget and is based on
figures "of doubtful credibility" HRW says accusingly.

The international organisation thus calls on the Turkish government to
reveal the real statistics on actual returns, to announce precise targets
for this programme and to put an end to the system of "village guardians" ­
a militia paid and armed by the government to control the villages. Human
Rights Watch also calls on all international organisations specialised in
the problems of refugees to intervene and offer their expertise, and calls
on the World Bank, the European Union and the U.S. Government to put
pressure on Turkey to find a solution to this displacement of "hundreds of
thousands of people".
 
 

· IN DIYARBEKIR, SIGNS OF ELECTORAL FRAUD.
According to the Turkish daily Hurriyet of 30 October, the Kurdish province of
Diyarbekir is facing major complications and incidents of all kinds, just a
few days before the 3 November elections. Thus a large number of voters
cards have not been delivered either because of incorrect addressing or
lack of postmen. Abdulkadir Aydinlar, mayor of the Kooperatifler quarter,
which has 27,000  electors, states "We have only four postmen to deliver
the cards   when there find an incorrect address they just leave the card
with any building janitor, who returns the undelivered cards to us or to
the provincial election supervisory committee". The mayor of Baglar's 5
nisan quarter, Zulkuf Kurt, states, for his part, that almost 100,000
electors will be unable to vote in Diyarbekir on 3 November, and stresses,
suspiciously, that the only electoral registers to be rechecked by Ankara
are those for Diyarbekir and Bingol. "The electoral registers arrived at
Diyarbekir just a week before polling day   In our quarter there are 32,000
electors, but on the new list 2,500 have been deleted, allegedly because
they are doubles. Whereas, in fact, this is not so. The voting cards are
full of mistakes ­ absence of addresses, names mixed up, first names
altered. Most of them will be unusable on polling day ­ they won't be
accepted. It is a great injustice" Mr. Kurt declared.

The daily published a reproduction of a typical voters card received by an
elector at Diyarbekir, containing a number of obvious errors in the surname
and first name ­ but also in the date of birth, which is shown as
"00-00-1900", and  the place of birth which is shown as "Europe" !

In this context, of fraud and manipulation aimed at reducing as far as
possible the score of the pro-Kurdish candidates, the honesty of the coming
poll already seems seriously compromised.