• LEYLA ZANA AND COLLEAGUES DENOUNCE GOVT. ATTITUDE ON EU REFORMS. An article splashed across the whole front page of the 22 October issue of the Turkish daily Hurriyet, under the bye-line of Zeynel Lule, the paper’s Brussels correspondent, announces that Turkey is in negotiation with the European Union to have the PKK’s new name, KADEK, included in the E.U’s list of terrorist organisations. The article in question indicates that the Turks are offering, in exchange, to ensure a favourable outcome to the retrial of the former DEP Members of Parliament — thus clearly showing that this trial is in no way a legal matter but, essentially, a political ploy, and the latter remain Turkey’s hostages in its negotiations with European institutions. In a Press communiqué dated 23 October and signed by Leyla Zana, Orhan Dogan, Hatip Dicle and Selim Sadak, the ex-M.P.s denounced their trial and the attitude of the Turkish government. Here are extensive extracts from this communiqué:

“We have now been incarcerated for nearly ten years. Of course Turkey is no longer in the same situation as when we left. We note, with strong feelings, the hopeful developments but we also feel anxiety and fear over other developments. Over the last ten years we have adopted, as a general principle, the stand of refusing to enter into controversies and of remaining silent in the face of news items and comments formulated by the media about ourselves. However, our responsibilities, imposed on us by History, force us to break our silence in the face of certain news items. Thus the daily paper Hurriyet on 22 October which headlined “Zana against KADEK” forces us to break our silence…

After an iniquitous trial, we were sentenced to 15 years in prison …  and finally, in conformity with the ruling of the European Human Rights Court, a new trial has begun for us. During the hearings, that have spread over 9 months, disregarding the European Court's demand of an impartial trial, we are, in complete disregard of the law, going through a fresh trial that is no better than our hearing of 1994. We have, whenever we had the opportunity, denounced the State Security Courts (DGM), before which we are being retried today. Thus we have shown that, from their origins, their objectives their reason and the laws that regulate them, and the fact that they are the product of a political tradition going right back to the State Courts of the Stage of Siege and independence [Editor's Note: which, in the 20s, sent dozens of Kurdish patriots to the gallows] they are not, and cannot be, an impartial and independent jurisdiction, but that they were a tool of the governments …  and were, from time to time used in the context of the internal policies, and  also external ones, …  of the country.

In the news published by Hurriyet, we can once again understand that the DGMs are not legal institutions but political instruments … They are the first fortresses defending the status quo. And, despite our efforts to bring the trial of the DEP onto the legal field, it remains a political case, and in no way a legal one … The most serious point in this relationship between the legal authority, the DGM and politics, brought to light in this trial of the DEP — but also in the article in question— is the fact that the Minister of Justice, Cemil Çiçek, recognises, in a television broadcast, that he has a right of say and of decision over the judicial authority and that, if need be, he could intervene there. May we remind Mr. Çiçek that he seems to have forgotten that he was a man of the law above all (…).

We call on the government to renounce an attitude that cannot be reconciled with political ethics, to take steps for democratisation and internal peace, which remains Turkey’s real present-day need. We stress that dead-ends and blockages can only be overcome by a proposal for a just, lasting and honourable peace with the Kurds, and that internal peace is a guarantee for the territorial unity of Turkey, but also of the brotherhood of our populations (…).
 

• HEADSCARF CONTROVERSY OVERSHADWOS 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF REPUBLIC. On 29 October, Turkey celebrated the 80th Anniversary of the foundation of the Republic, against the background of sharp controversies over the Islamic headscarf in a Moslem country with a secular regime governed by a party of Islamist origins. For the first time since the foundation of the Republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, in 1923 the majority of the Members of Parliament of the Party in office have boycotted a reception by the head of state, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, on the occasion of the National Holiday. The Members of Parliament of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, born of the Islamist movement, 368 seats out of 550) thus intended to protest against Mr. Sezer who had not invited their wives to the reception. This provoked sharp criticisms from their party and the liberal press that considered that this “crisis” at the summit of the State was unworthy of a country applying for membership of the European Union number of the wives of AK Party M.P.s, like Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s are veiled and cannot be present thus dressed at official receptions in Turkey. Never in the country’s history have so many wives of government members worn the veil. The Turkish Army, that proclaims itself the guardian of secularism, and the pro-secular hierarchy, consider wearing the headscarf — strictly forbidden in government service and in the Universities — to be an ostensible sign of support for political Islam. Mr. Erdogan, a former Islamist who rejects that label today stating he has “changed”, not wishing further to increase tension with the President, attended the event with his Ministers.

An unprecedented event — at least five AKP Members, including the President of the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, Mehmet Elkatmis, returned the President invitation to him, denouncing “discrimination” by Mr. Sezer, who they accuse of being “partial” Another M.P. implicitly called on the President to resign. In his traditional message on the occasion of the National Holiday, published the day before, Mr. Sezer, a former President of the Constitutional Court and fierce defender of secular principles, issued a solemn appeal for the preservation of “principles laid down in the Constitution” — i.e. secularism and democracy.

“The President is partial. He obviously defends secularism” headlined the kemalist daily Cumhuriyet. In the opinion of Zaman (moderately islamist) the invitations “with or without wives” sent to the members of parliament have degenerated into a “crisis”. The invitations sent to the M.P.s of principal opposition party, the pro-secular People’s Republican Party (CHP) did, in fact mention their wives. All the Members of the CHP attended the reception. Mr. Sezer also omitted to mention the wives (veiled) in the invitations sent to the Vice-President of the Constitutional Court and the President of the Court of Accounts.

Since the AKP’s electoral victory, at last year’s general elections, the battle between the pro-secular hierarchy and the AKP, that is sailing with the wind in behind it after improvements in the country’s economy, has mainly raged round the sensitive question of the Islamic veil. President Sezer’s symbolic gesture on the occasion of the National Day has further fuelled the recurrent controversy in the country since the rise of political Islam in the 70s after the inauguration of dozens of religious secondary schools, of which Mr. Erdogan and many of his closest associates are ex-graduates.
Mr. Erdogan is being closely watched by the Army, which already, in 1997, had forced the first Islamist government in the country’s history out of office. Mr. Erdogan, then Mayor of Istanbul, served a four months jail sentence in 1998 for “incitement of religious hatred”. Today he affirms that he defends a secularism that respects democracy and religious freedom.

• DUSTUP OVER ALLEGATIONS OF SPYING ON SWISS FM. According to the Swiss daily Le Matin of 26 October, the recent cancellation of the Ankara visit of the Swiss Foreign Minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, was due to the Turkish Secret Service (MIT) that had “spied upon” her and accused her of links with Kurdish opponents. The Turkish Secret Services are said to have denounced these links to the Swiss police in a note explaining that “if your Minister is not persona grata in Ankara, it is because she listens too attentively to Kurdish opponents”.

The relations between the two countries deteriorated at the end of September when a visit Mrs. Calmy-Rey was to have made to Turkey was cancelled at the last minute. Ankara was then said to have reacted to the recognition, a few days earlier, of the Armenian genocide by the Swiss canton of Vaud.  Le Matin, which relayed information published on 25 October in the Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger, states that Mrs. Calmy-Rey had, indeed, been under surveillance by a Turkish spy at the end of August who is said to have observed her, at a cocktail party, speaking privately for a bit more than a minute, to a Kurdish opponent. The note sent to the Swiss police by the Turkish Secret Services was then passed on to the President of the Swiss Confederation, Pascal Couchepin, who is then, according to the press, called for an emergency meeting of the Swiss government to lecture the Minister.
The Public Prosecutor described these as “stupefying” and indicated that, if the first investigations led to indications of espionage by Turkish Secret Services, criminal enquiries would be started for forbidden activities by foreign intelligence services on Swiss soil.

Moreover, the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Swiss Federal Assembly and the Assembly delegates decided to enquire into the activities of MIT and its influence over Swiss politicians and to analyse the role of President Pascal Couchepin and of Minister of Justice, Ruth Metzler, in this incident.

The Turkish daily Hurriyet, on 27 October, specified that “the Turkish leaders draw attention to the fact that the Geneva canton resolution recognising the Armenian genocide bore the signature of Mrs. Calmy-Rey” and that “following the example of former Swedish Foreign Minister, Mrs. Anna Lindh, since assassinated, Mrs. Calmy, member of the Social Democratic Party, had expressed the wish to visit Diyarbekir … and sign a convention for a project of financing schools for teaching Kurdish”.

•  HAKKARI RESIDENTS BEATEN, DRAGGED THROUGH EXCREMENT. The Hakkari Section of the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) received a complaint on 20 October from some inhabitants of Cukurca district of Hakkari Province, accusing members of the Special Forces section of the gendarmerie of practicing torture. According to statements collected by IHD, the Special Forces launched a search at about 4 am of 18 October of the home of a “village protector” named Halil Çetin. Forbidden to dress, H. Çetin and his father were then dragged through a heap of dung. The Association also noted that Fatma Çetin, aged 60, fainted after receiving a blow on the shoulder from the butt of a rifle, and when transported to a dispensary refused, out of fear of the consequences, to take the medical report. Another victim, Sabri Ozer, for his part, was transported to the orthopaedic department of Hakkari State Hospital, who gave him a medical certificate for five-day incapacity for work. After their enquiry, IHD submitted their report to the Public Prosecutor, who was the very person who had ordered the search in the first place.

Turkey, that has already been found guilty by the European Human Rights Court in a previous case in which a villager had been forced to swallow excrement in the village of Yesilyurt (Cizre) 1989, does not seem deterred. Everything goes on as if the Turkish forces are following their own logic of repression and humiliation, with complete contempt for the law, leaving it to the civil authorities to justify their actions and, if necessary, pay derisory damages to the few victims who are bold enough to apply to the European Human Rights Court. Only a few months ago some children from the village of Hani, who had been placed in detention, accused the security forces of having covered their faces with excrement.

Over 70,000 people had been enrolled as “village protectors” in Turkey. Many of them had been forced to do so under pressure of threats from the security forces.

• KURDISH WOMAN TORTURED, DENIED TRIAL, AND SEPARATED FROM CHILD OVER LANGUAGE.  Mrs. Eren Keskin, Vice President of the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) and founder of the “Project for legal aid against sexual ill-treatment and torture during detention” denounced the situation of a young Kurdish woman, Mrs. Fatma Toprak, accused under Article 125 of the Penal Code of “links with the PKK”, kept in detention since 1996 and who has to face the stand of a Turkish judge who refuses to summon her to the sessions on the excuse that she “speaks in Kurdish”. In a letter sent to E. Keskin on 6 October, Fatma Toprak says that the judge told her “as from now I will not summon you again before the court …  You have been protesting against us for seven years by not speaking in Turkish, we will protest against you by no longer summoning you to trial”. Mrs. Keskin points out that Fatma Toprak has been accompanied by an interpreter since the start of her trial and that it is astonishing to see such a situation today, especially as Turkey claims to have abolished the obstacles to set up against the Kurdish language to ease its entry into the European Union.

According to reports drawn up by the Turkish Doctors Union, the Istanbul Medical Council and the Human Rights Foundation, Fatma Toprak was arrested in 1996 for “political activities and membership of her husband’s PKK” and was placed in detention with her son, at that time two and a half years old, by the anti-terrorist section of the Istanbul Police Directorate. She was severely tortured; suspended after being undressed by the police who inflicted sexual ill-treatment such as being vaginally and anally violated with a truncheon. The police also gave electric shocks her son’s fingers, they also burnt him with cigarettes on the back and the hands forced him into sexual contact with his mother. According to Mrs. Toprak’s testimony, after 14 days detention the police removed the child, telling his mother that he was going to be executed. Fatma Toprak was then transferred to the Gebze prison and, despite all approaches to the prosecutor's office, they could get new news of the little Azat (Editor’s Note: “Free” in Kurdish) for 2.5 years. Azat was finally found at the abandoned children's Department in Bahçelievler, and returned to his mother in prison. Mrs. Keskin filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor of Fatih, who refused to pursue the matter then appealed to the Assize Court at Beyoglu, which confirmed the prosecutor's decision.
An appeal has been filed with the European Court for Human Rights on the grounds of violation of Article 3 of the European Convention, regarding torture.

Furthermore for the last six months the prison authorities refuse to let Azat visit his mother on the excuse that there are no identity papers proving their relationship, despite all the approaches to the civil registry services undertaken by Fatma Toprak’s family.
 

• AFTER 9 YEARS IN PRISON: 25 TOLD ALLEGED CRIMES NEVER HAPPENED.  On 28 October, the trial of 25 people, sentenced during an earlier trial in 1996 to between 2 years 6 month and life imprisonment, has just been reopened, after the Court of Appeals overturned the previous sentence. They had been accused on the basis of Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code of “attempts to divide Turkish territory on the pay of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)”. Nine years after the first hearings, two of the incidents with which they were charged were shown never to have existed. Accused of having set fire to buses belonging to the IETT (Editor’s Note: Turkish national urban transport network) and of having thrown Molotov cocktails at the Karatoprak primary school in the Gazi quarter of the Gaziosmanpasa district, the Istanbul N° 4 State Security Court declared that, on the basis of the Court of Appeals ruling and following an enquiry by the Police Directorate and by the IETT, the incidents complained of had never existed. The defence lawyer declared that the European Court for Human Rights had been informed on the basis of Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights regarding the right to equitable and impartial trial but also on the basis of Article 5/3 regarding the duration of their detention.

In 2000 the Court of Appeals had overturned the verdict by ruling that the file contained no information about six of the 18 incidents of which the accused were accused. Cuneyt Aydinlar, the first “officially” recorded person to “disappear” while in detention, had been detained with the others present before the Istanbul DGM. They have unceasingly accused the police of having executed C. Aydinlar.
 

• PROTESTS AGAINST BAN ON  LETTERS  “X, W AND Q”:  PETITIONS TO ALLOW KURDISH NAMES.  On 27 October, leaders and members of both pro-Kurdish parties simultaneously filed petitions before the Courts to secure the right to have Kurdish first names that include the letters X, W and Q, which do net exist in the Turkish alphabet.

The Turkish government recently lifted the ban on first and family names that had an “ethnic” sound — essentially Kurdish — so as to harmonise its laws with those of the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join. But a circular of the Ministry of the Interior then forbade the use of names that contained the letters X, W and Q, which exist in Kurdish but not in the Turkish alphabet. These letters, indeed, exist in Kurdish but not in Turkish. To protest against this circular, some leaders of the People’s Democratic Party (DEHAP) and of the Free Society party (Ozgur Toplum) have filed petitions before the Courts at Ankara, Istanbul and Adana  (Southern Turkey) to allow the use of new first or family names. “I want to adopt the name of Qualferat (wise)” specified Ferhat Yegin, Vice-President of Ozgur Toplum Partisi, who welcomed the government’s decision to authorise Kurdish names but opposes the restrictions imposed at the end of September by the new circular.

Furthermore, the Prefecture and Police Directorate of Van, petitioned on 22 October for permission to hold a concert by the Kurdish rock group Koma Rewsen, refused to give authorisation because the Kurdish word “Kom” (Note: “group” in Kurdish) and the letter w both appeared on the posters.

The European Commission is due to publish an evaluation report on Turkish progress towards conformity with the E.U. Ankara hopes to begin negotiations for membership at the end of 2004.