Mainstream News About Kurdistan And

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at locust.cic.net>
Subject: Mainstream News About Kurdistan And Turkey

Headline: Car crash scandal shakes Turkish state
Date: Sun, Nov 10, 1996

    By Jonathan Lyons

     ISTANBUL, Turkey (Reuter) - A car crash on a remote Turkish highway
has torn the veil from a cosy brotherhood of gangsters, warlords, and
nationalists apparently acting with impunity as part of the state's fight
against Kurdish and leftist dissent.
     Crushed to death last week inside their black Mercedes were a senior
police boss, a right-wing fugitive wanted for the murder of seven leftists
and an attempt on the Pope's life, and his girlfriend -- a former Miss
Cinema turned Mafia hitwoman.
     A fourth occupant, MP and Kurdish chieftain Sedat Bucak -- whose
militia has state blessing for its battle with separatist rebels of the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) -- was pulled clear and taken to hospital by
bodyguards travelling in a second car.
     Witnesses say the guards left the other passengers to die. Forged
registration plates, police and parliamentary ID cards, and handguns
equipped with silencers were found at the scene.
     On Friday the powerful interior minister and former chief of the
national police, Mehmet Agar, resigned. He admits staying at the same
resort as the victims a day before the crash but called it coincidence.
     Agar's patron, Deputy Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, has been thrown on
the defensive by demands for her resignation. At the weekend she
acknowledged the depth of the crisis: "Mafia rumors shake (public)
confidence in the law and the state."
     Parliament is to debate the scandal on Tuesday.
     "The Agar resignation is significant in that it stands as open proof
of the existence of a 'state within the state,"' political analyst Bilal
Cetin told Reuters.
     Cetin and other commentators say this secret force -- dubbed the
'contra-guerrillas' -- was out of control, using official sanction to
smuggle heroin, trade in arms, launder political contributions and pursue
Mafia and personal vendettas.
     "Although the deaths are unfortunate, this incident has done Turkey
good because it raised the rumours to a point where they can no longer be
denied," Cetin said.
     Amnesty International last month blamed the security forces and their
ultra-rightist allies for the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians suspected
of pro-PKK sympathies in what it called "an unprecedented wave of
extra-judicial killings."
     More than 100 people, mostly Kurdish villagers and leftists, have
"disappeared" in police custody since 1993, Amnesty said. The government
called the report "biased" but promised reforms.


Headline: Turkey gives mixed signals to Euro rights squeeze
Date: Fri, Nov 1, 1996

    By Jonathan Lyons

     ISTANBUL, Nov 1 (Reuter) - Faced with mounting Western pressure over
its human rights record, Turkey has responded with a mixture of public
conciliation and private defiance.
     But diplomats and rights activists say the tactics -- increasingly
seen in a number of European capitals as little more than foot-dragging --
are wearing thin.
     Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller, seeking to defuse the latest rights
crisis, publicly announced reforms in mid-October to cut short the initial
period of police detention, a time rights activists say suspects are most
at risk of torture.
     However, promised details of the changes are already overdue,
prompting rights campaigners to worry they may go nowhere.
     At the same time, the authorities have stepped up warnings to Turkish
journalists to limit coverage of alleged rights abuses for the sake of
national interests.
     Turkish journalists say they have been told by high-level officials to
tone down their moderate criticism of rights violations and give less
importance to European complaints of abuses.
     "The Turks just don't seem to get it," one European diplomat said on
Friday of fellow NATO-member Turkey.
     "There is little sign of substantive progress on human rights and
little sign of any real will to change," the diplomat said.
     Law professor Tekin Akillioglu said much of the blame lay with a lack
of consensus within society in support of rights reform. "The whole of
Turkey must takes these allegations and complaints of abuse seriously and
must resolve them."
     The strong-arm campaign against the media follows a devastating month
for Turkey's aspirations to be accepted as a full member of the European
club, where human rights is a powerful, emotive issue.
     On October 1, Amnesty International launched a global campaign to end
torture, extra-judicial killing and "disappearances" in Turkey -- most
involving leftists and those suspected of Kurdish separatist sympathies.
     Three weeks later, the European Parliament, angered by what it said
was Ankara's failure to keep promises to improve its rights performance,
voted to block $470 million in aid to realise a customs accord with the
European Union. Turkey shrugged off the rebuff.
     In the latest blow, the lawyer representing the Turkish government in
European rights courts announced his resignation after four years on the
front lines, saying Ankara's record had become indefensible.
     "Turkey always promises, but never fulfils...I thought, defending
Turkey is impossible in the current conditions, and resigned," attorney and
professor Bakir Caglar said on Thursday.
     Turkey faces 112 cases before the European human rights commission,
including 61 applications from southeastern Turkey, where rights activists
say abuses are rife in the fight between the army and the separatist
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
     According to Amnesty International's latest figures more than 1,000
civilians suspected of pro-PKK activities have been killed by security
forces or death squads in the last five years. It puts the number of
"disappeared" at around 135.
     Amnesty said the PKK had killed at least 400 prisoners and civilians
between 1993 and 1995. In recent weeks the separatists have launched a wave
of suicide bomb attacks against police.
     Overall, more than 21,000 people have died in the PKK's 12-year-old
fight for autonomy in the southeast.
     Meanwhile, Turkey faces the threat of mounting political and monetary
losses before the European Court of Human Rights.
     Already, the court has condemned Turkey in a case involving fighting
between the security forcs and PKK guerrillas, charging the army with
deliberately destroying a Kurdish village.
     Caglar, the former lawyer for Turkey, said more such cases would be
heard after a ruling that applicants from the southeast could file without
first exhausting domestic legal channels.
     "The commission believes that these people cannot apply to the local
courts because of the violence in the region and the lack of internal peace
in Turkey," Caglar said.
     "A trial is usually finished in four or five years, but for these
cases this period will be shorter and a series of verdicts will come out in
quick succession."


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