TIME TO GET SERIOUS

"Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda."
~ Hannah Arendt.

Okay, now it's time to get serious. The domestic battle between AKP and the Turkish military is now scraping the bottom line, threatening to wreak havoc on Turkey's economy, so Erdogan had to make an evening appeal to "unity," from the TimesOnline:

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, has appealed for national unity in a television address tonight. The speech was recorded on Saturday, a day after the army threatened to intervene in the presidential poll process.

The Turkish stock market plunged 8 per cent this morning and the Turkish lira lost 4 per cent of its value in response to the political tensions gripping the country.

[ . . . ]

In his televised address to the nation, Mr Erdogan said: “Unity, togetherness, solidarity, these are the things we need most. We can overcome many problems so long as we treat each other with love”. He made no direct reference to the political standoff, but said: “Turkey is growing and developing very fast ... We must protect this atmosphere of stability and tranquility,” . . .

A few points . . . First of all, to speak of "friends" or "friendship" in the context of politics is to display one's naivete because there are no "friends" or "friendship" in politics. Secondly, to speak of "love" in the context of politics is to show just what a genuine jackass you truly are.

Here's looking at you, Kerdogan.

Thirdly, what "atmosphere of stability and tranquility" could Erdogan possibly be refering to? In Turkey, both stability and tranquility resemble democracy in the fact that neither exist. I can't help but think that this hyper-emotional appeal on Erdogan's part is a sign of the level of desperation to which he's succumbed. After all, it's got to be pretty scary when the Turkish General Staff is able to muster hundreds of thousands of demonstrators against your candidate . . . and that's what this is really all about, isn't it? It has as much to do with democracy as a tapeworm has to do with democracy.

The NY Times wants to pin the blame for all this on the lifestyles of the poor and religious, which is interesting because the AKP does enjoy the support of most people in Anatolia. Remember the 2003 parliamentary decision which kept the US from entering Iraq along a northern front? That was probably the first time that anything resembling a democratic decision was ever made in Turkey, and the US administration, great democracy that it is, certainly didn't like that, did it?

Britain's The Independent has a pretty good rundown on the situation. The European Parliament is issuing yet another warning to Turkey in the face of the crisis. HO-HUM. This is all the EP is good for; why am I not surprised? Der Speigel is engaged in hand-wringing over the fact that Turkey may be blowing it's EU chance with the threat of another coup, and they give a rundown of the opinions of the major German papers. I don't quite get Der Speigel's angle, though; I mean stuff like this never bothered anyone in the past.

Funny, the US appears to be staying out of things for the moment.

Over at Xymphora, via Lukery's place there are a couple of posts related to the situation in Turkey. On today's post, I agree with Xymphora's statement that the recent demonstrations in Turkey are "purported" pro-democracy demonstrations. Remember, there is no democracy in Turkey. But it's correct, too, that these demonstrations are pro-Paşa and nothing more.

In fact, I would not be surprised if the Paşas encouraged these demonstrations, just as they encouraged the pro-democracy, pro-secular demonstrations in the wake of the Council of State attack last may. Does anyone remember Hilmi Ozkok calling for those demonstrations? It's ridiculous; I mean, here's the Turkish military which pretends to be the sole defender of the Turkish state, and they're calling on the people to defend them.

I guess that goes along with the fact that the current constitution is a legal fraud in which the state is protected from the people. It's also a legal fraud because the writing of said constitution was overseen by Paşas.

However, there is a murky area that Xymphora fails to realize here, as well as in the Saturday post, and that is the implied, simple, black-and-white implication that the Paşas are actually secularist. Who was it that brought about Turkish-Islamic Synthesis? That synthesis never would have come about without the permission of the military and, in fact, it didn't.

The Paşas have an attitude that's best expressed as follows: "If there will be Communism in Turkey, WE will bring the Communism." Same thing with Islamism. Same thing with anarchism. Same thing with Presbyterianism. It doesn't matter; it's all about internal political control of Turkey itself. And that is where it comes to the real point, protection of the ruling (military--always) elite.

It seems that Xymphora makes a contradiction between this post and Saturday's, by the fact that the Saturday post states: "The 1996 Susurluk car crash is ancient history," whereas in today's post there is the following statement:

". . . but the real point is to protect the establishment/military/"deep state"/Zionist/organized crime interests that have been running Turkey for so many years."

Okay, so for how many years exactly? Since 1996? Then how is Susurluk ancient history? Also, since Mehmet Agar is running as a DYP candidate and has been shooting off his mouth right and left for the last several months, AND since he was the Interior Minister (in charge of the national police at the time of Susurluk), AND since very few have spoken, or written, about the fact that his gû still stinks from Susurluk, how is Susurluk ancient history?

Since, after the Council of State attack last May, the head of the parliamentary commission that investigated Susurluk--Fikri Saglar--as well as former IHD head Akin Birdal both stated that the Susurluk scandal needed to be cleared up, brought out into the open and, basically, exorcised, if anyone ever hoped to see democracy in Turkey? See Bianet for more.

(Trivia: Akin Birdal (ethnic Turk) underwent a very serious assassination attempt by a member of the Susurluk clique, the notorious assassin "Yeşil" for his work with IHD. So when Birdal says stuff about the Susurluk clique, he knows what kind of danger he faces.)

Notice that the Bianet article references Veli Kucuk? Name ring a bell? He was named as making threats to Hrant Dink during one of Dink's trials and Dink's whole family knew what that meant. Then Kucuk was linked to Alparslan Arslan--the shooter at the Council of State--as well as to the handlers of Dink's murderer, Ogun Samast.

In other words, Susurluk is far from ancient history.

AKP itself is far from clean, and in the Kurdish context, it's not much better than the Turkish General Staff. AKP has it's own people in the ATC, the most interesting of which is Cuneyt Zapsu, someone very close to Erdogan. Erdogan got himself in a bit of trouble a number of years ago, for reciting an inflammatory Islamist poem in public, and he went to prison for it. Then he comes out of nowhere and becomes the prime minister? Interesting? Well, there's someone behind that too, someone with a worldwide network of his own--Fethullah Gulen.

It would appear that Gulen has his own moles in the Turkish general staff, as well as people in the US that are involved in the battle.

As to Xymphora's mention of the "Kurdish problem in Iraq," is that the same as the "Kurdish problem in Turkey," as in "the problem of Kurdish existence?" To my knowledge, there is no Kurdish problem anywhere; rather, there are Iraqi problems, Turkish problems, American problems, Israeli problems, etc., but no "Kurdish problems."

On the whole, however, it's good to see that a non-Kurd is trying to take a serious look at a serious situation, instead of simply regurgitating the "official" story.

MORE ON DEMOCRACY, MEDIA, AND KURDS

"Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele."
~ Ben Bagdikian.

For your Sunday evening reading, I'm going to point out a few items I've noticed from the past week and have not had the chance to write about due to the death of my hard drive. The good news about that is that it finally prodded me into changing operating systems. I'm now using the Linux Kubuntu OS and it is sweet.

I figured that since the nice people at Ubuntu went all the way to Turkish-occupied Kurdistan to do a demo of the Kurdish-language version of their distro for Abdullah Demirbas, then it had to be the only distro for me. There's even a Kurdish-language Ubuntu page. Cool. For information on the very friendly, and now very feisty, Kubuntu, see this page.

Please note that there's a new blog out about human rights in Turkey, Hasankeyf, Kurdish rights, and American involvement in the whole mess, at Insulting Turkishness, a name that seems to target the stupidity of the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code.

There's also a not-to-be-missed discussion of the Ilisu Dam fiasco by Goran at Zanetî.

Early last week, The Guardian published an article by Naomi Wolf in which she described how America was turning into a fascist state. The PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act are two of the more well-known pieces of legislation that serve as signposts to the place America is headed. There was another piece of legislation that kinda slipped under the radar, called the Defense Authorization Act. There's something on that at The American Conservative. The bottom line on the DFA is that the president can declare martial law at any time he takes a fancy to do so.

While Naomi Wolf does a pretty good job of outlining the ten steps of the slippery slope into fascism on which we're all sliding, Lenin, over at Lenin's Tomb notes something that I've been trying to point out for some time: The Democrats are no different than the Republicans. As Lenin says:

Naomi Wolf, a Clintonite feminist, on Bush's ten steps toward fascism. I don't doubt the existence of fascist potencies in the United States, but to speak of it as a clear and present danger is misleading, to put it blandly. If you ask me, it's part of this 'Anyone But Bush' politics that is destroying the American left and drawing the antiwar movement into the frigid Democratic Party graveyard. The politics of MoveOn.org, Howard Dean's fan club, and such alignments, are to divert mass disaffection with Bush's wars into the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Wolf rightly criticises Bush's openly repressive measures, including the Patriot Act. However, there is no mention Democratic complicity.

Well said, comrade. In a related item, you can read how illegal immigration to the US is being used to reinforce the Department of Homeland Security police state:

The programs described above, combined with two recent changes in US law, make the reality of a full police-state in the US increasingly more feasible. The Military Commissions Act, signed in October of 2006, suspends habeas corpus rights for any person deemed by the president to be an enemy combatant. Persons so designated could be imprisoned indefinitely without rights to legal counsel or a trial. And the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 allows the president to station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities. By revising the two-century-old Insurrection Act, the law, in effect, repeals the Posse Comitatus Act and gives the US government the legal authority to order the military onto the streets anywhere in America.

Threats of terrorism and illegal immigrants are being used to justify the implementation of police-state programs. But once started, enforcement can be rapidly deployed to any group of people in the US, and we all become endangered. Mass arrests, big brother in the sky and the loss of civil rights for everyone does not bode well for those who believe in democracy, free speech and the right to critically challenge our government without fear of reprisals.

Does anyone remember the Harrisonburg Kurds? Well, I finally figured out what they're called; they're called "terror trophies," and it looks like another US Attorney has been collecting his own "terror trophies" in New York state, but he's starting to come under attack for his poaching:

A small but increasingly vocal group of protesters is charging that a United States attorney in northern New York has pursued a series of terror-related "political prosecutions" to enhance his reputation as "a loyal Bushie" and thus avoid the fate of eight of his colleagues recently fired by Alberto Gonzales's Department of Justice.

[ . . . ]

Citizen pushback against overzealous prosecutors appears to be on the rise. It comes at a time when the controversy over the firings of US attorneys has become a contentious political issue that threatens to trigger the early departure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The DOJ's credibility has been further damaged by accounts of increasing departures of DOJ lawyers.

Maybe people are starting to wake up to the fact that they are sliding fast down that slippery slope . . . but I won't hold my breathe.

By coincidence, another Naomi left a free comment, also at The Guardian, but this Naomi is the Klein variety and her beef is with the World Bank and Wolfowitz:

The more serious lie at the centre of the [Wolfowitz-Riza] controversy is the implication that the World Bank was an institution that had impeccable ethical credentials - until, according to 42 former World Bank executives, its credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz. (Many American liberals have seized on this fairytale, addicted to the fleeting rush that comes from forcing neocons to resign.)

The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatise its water system; when it made telecom privatisation a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labour "flexibility" in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005 the World Bank withheld a promised $100m after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some anti-poverty organisation.

[ . . . ]

Perhaps we should all laugh at the World Bank. What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the effort to cleanse the bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable anti-poverty organisation has been sullied by one man. The bank understandably wants to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say: let the ship go down with the captain.

You go, girl.

Last Thursday, I posted something about the media and democracy, from an interview with American journalist Bill Moyers. It seems like the topic is suddenly sprouting up all over the Internet since then. The LA Times has an op/ed on the subject by another American journalist, this one working in the UK:

Again and again, I see this pattern repeated. Until there is some official investigation or allegation made by a politician, there is no story.

Or sometimes the media like to cover the controversy, not the substance, preferring an ambiguous and unsatisfying "he said, she said" report. Safe reporting, but not investigative.

I know some of the reasons why investigative reporting is on the decline. To begin with, investigations take time and money. A producer from "60 Minutes," watching my team's work on another voter purge list, said: "My God! You'd have to make hundreds of calls to make this case." In America's cash-short, instant-deadline world, there's not much room for that.

[ . . . ]

One of the biggest disincentives to doing investigative journalism is that it jeopardizes future access to politicians and corporate elite. During the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial, the testimony of Judith Miller and other U.S. journalists about the confidences they were willing to keep in order to maintain access seemed to me sadly illuminating.

Expose the critters and the door is slammed. That's not a price many American journalists are willing to pay.

Exactly what I found out while pushing the Ralston conflict of interest facts, and something that people like Sibel Edmonds have found out, too.

Another item from the Journalism Department comes from Yahoo News describes how international journalists are becoming more anti-American--and this at a State Department conference on journalism:

The audience then asked questions of the panel. Many were hostile in tone. One journalist from Dubai asked, "Is it not a scandal for one country to invade another country?" Woodward answered that it was a legal war approved by Congress.

A young reporter from a former Soviet state asked, "How can the United States support authoritarian regimes who forbid any form of free press or democracy in their country." The panelists agreed that American foreign policy since 9/11 has become very hypocritical.

[ . . . ]

At lunch, I sat with several Moslem journalists from Pakistan, Sudan, Sri Lanka and India. They were all critical of the US and told me that they had great respect for Voice of America and the BBC but can't stand America's foreign policy and they no longer respect the American press. They favor Obama for President because he studied in a Moslem school and understands their culture. They all dislike President George Bush.

[ . . . ]

The audience was very angry with the American government policy toward the Middle East and toward foreign journalists. The audience criticized US reporters living abroad, not getting the real story and digging enough. Seib made an impassioned defense of American foreign correspondents and the risks they take to get a story and mentioned his close friend, Daniel Pearl.

[ . . . ]

It was an interesting day and there has clearly been a shift in attitude toward the United States and the American journalists by the foreign press. It's not just the Bush White House that overseas reporters are critical of but the whole American press corps for not being tougher and more critical of the Administration. We must remember these 187 young journalists were nominated for the Edward R. Murrow Fellowships by the local US Ambassador. I would assume that they are more pro-American than some other local reporters who were not nominated.

Last Wednesday, Blogian had a very interesting post about how a mass grave of some 200 Armenians had been tampered with by Turkish authorities. Apparently, the grave had been discovered by local Kurds in a village near Nisêbin in 2006. I won't spoil the rest of the story; go ahead and read the whole thing at Blogian.

Last, but certainly not least, is the fact that the latest round of harassment against DTP mayors has to do with their call for independent medical examinations of Abdullah Ocalan, in the wake of the hair sample analyses that were conducted in Europe:

A Turkish prosecutor is investigating whether 54 Kurdish mayors broke the law by claiming last month that rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was being poisoned in his prison cell, the government-run Anatolia news agency reported Saturday.

Last month, mayors belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Society Party asked for an independent group of doctors to examine Ocalan to establish whether he was being poisoned. Turkish authorities said tests on Ocalan showed no signs that he was being poisoned and called the allegations "complete lies."

Of course, the "tests" referred to were conducted by the Turkish government and not by an independent medical team, so we can take the state-sponsored "tests" to be more state-sponsored bullshit. That, along with the continued harassment of DTP politicians, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And remember--these same 54 DTP mayors are still on trial for sending a letter to Danish PM Rasmussen on behalf of RojTV.

DEEP STATE ON VIDEO

"Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
Ill be watching you"
~ The Police, Every Breathe You Take.

Below is a link to a shortened version of the video, Kill The Messenger, about the Sibel Edmonds case. This is a short version, running 52 minutes . . . BUT until we see this aired in the US, we will content ourselves with that which is available on the Internet.

Get something to drink, get a snack, click on the video, sit back and enjoy.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

One part of the video makes me think of something though, when it mentions that Turkey used Israeli supporters in the US to gain $12 billion in military hardware during the 1990s, and then Turkey opened Turkish airspace to Israeli military aircraft . . . I wonder how many Israelis were actually bombing Kurds instead of Turks bombing Kurds? I wonder how many Israelis were actually bombing South Kurdistan under the "safe haven?"

After all, what's a few thousand dead Kurds among friends?

For more on KTM, check Lukery's other blog and, of course, more backgrounder on the video from Sibel's site.

There's something on the Islamist government of Turkey attempting to strike back at their rulers, the Paşas, from the Financial Times:

Senior ministers held an unplanned meeting hours after an unusually tough statement by the Turkish general staff that has thrown the constitutional process of choosing a new president into disarray.

The statement suggested the military was ready to intervene more directly in the political process to “defend secularism”, stirring memories of the ousting of an Islamist government in 1997.

[ . . ]

Cemil Cicek, justice minister and spokesman for the government, said the military’s announcement was an attempt to influence a constitutional court hearing on the vote in the coming days.

Once again, inquiring minds wanna know if the Paşas are going to be charged under Article 288 for their attempt to influence the court. If you ask me Cicek is full of hot air; the Paşas have more battalions than Cicek does.

For those of you who missed what the Turkish military had to say, the following should sum it up:

“The problem that has recently stood out in the presidential election process has focused on the issue of questioning secularism. The Turkish armed forces are following this with concern,” the general staff said in a statement late in the evening.

[ . . . ]

“It should not be forgotten that the Turkish armed forces are a side in this debate and are a staunch defender of secularism.

“The Turkish armed forces are against those debates... and will display their position and attitudes when it becomes necessary. No one should doubt that,” the statement said.

Don't you just love election years?

THE MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY

"What encourages me is the Internet. Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself."
~ Bill Moyers.

There's a fabulous, must-read interview with the American journalist, Bill Moyers, with The Christian Century, carried on Truthout, on the media and democracy.

Here's a teaser, on Moyers' assessment of the state of the media in the US today:

Unfortunately, a few huge corporations now dominate the media landscape. And the news business is at war with journalism. Virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the company's share price. One of the best newspaper groups, Knight Ridder - whose reporters were on to the truth about Iraq early on - was recently sold and broken up because a tiny handful of investors wanted more per share than they were getting.

Almost all the networks carried by most cable systems are owned by one of the major media conglomerates. Two-thirds of today's newspaper markets are monopolies, and they're dumbing down. As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace. And those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content.

Just the other day the major morning broadcast devoted long segments to analyzing why Britney Spears shaved her head, and the death of Anna Nicole Smith got more attention than the Americans or Iraqis killed in Baghdad that week. The next time you're at a newsstand, look at the celebrities staring back at you. In-depth coverage on anything, let alone the bleak facts of power and powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people, is as scarce as sex, violence and voyeurism are pervasive.

At the same time we have seen the rise of an ideological partisan press that is contemptuous of reality, serves up right-wing propaganda as fact, and attempts to demonize anyone who says otherwise. Its embodiment is Rush Limbaugh. Millions heard him take journalists to task for their reporting on the torture at Abu Ghraib, which he attempted to dismiss as a little necessary sport for soldiers under stress. He said: "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation. . . . You ever heard of people [who] need to blow some steam off?"

So we can't make the case today that the dominant institutions of the press are guardians of democracy. They actually work to keep reality from us, whether it's the truth of money in politics, the social costs of "free trade," growing inequality, the resegregation of our public schools, or the devastating onward march of environmental deregulation. It's as if we are living on a huge plantation in a story told by the boss man.

What encourages me is the Internet. Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself. The greatest challenge to the conglomeration of the media giants and the malevolent mentality of the partisan press is the innovation and expression made possible by the digital revolution. I'm also buoyed by the beginnings of a movement across the country of people who are fighting to keep mammoth corporations from controlling access to the Internet as they managed to control radio, then television, then cable. To find out more about this, go to Freepress.net or Savetheinternet.com.

Exactly. Brilliant. Sayonara, goat-smelling, egg-sucking mainstream media; you're history.

Read the rest.

For those of you who are concerned about the situation of Kurdish women in Kurdistan, check out the article from the hevals at KurdishInfo on the recent stoning of a teenaged Êzidî girl in Mûsil. Video of this atrocity is available at Jebar.info, while another video is on Youtube.

That's just one more reason to hope for the spread of the women's activist work that PKK is engaged in.

IRANIANS, IRAQ, ILISU, AND A UN REPORT

"I am deeply concerned about the devastating impact the controversial Ilisu dam would have on the lives of tens of thousands of people and about the irreversible loss of an invaluable cultural heritage in the Tigris valley. Allowing the Ilisu dam to go ahead will be a crime against the fundamental human rights of the people in this region and against our common cultural heritage."
~ Bianca Jagger.

Last Monday, I mentioned the following:

Hey, do you think if the US coughed up those Iranians it kidnapped in Hewlêr that Iran might cough up the American ex-FBI guy that went missing from Kish Island?

Surprise, surprise, surprise! There was an interesting development today, from McClatchy Newspapers:

The United States has quietly increased its back-channel diplomatic contacts with Iran, a sign that those who favor engagement have strengthened their hand in the administration, U.S. officials say.

Using Switzerland as an intermediary, American and Iranian officials have exchanged diplomatic messages on a variety of nuts-and-bolts subjects, including the fate of an American citizen missing in Iran, the future of five Iranian operatives whom American forces seized in Iraq, and old financial and property disputes.

I wonder . . . given the administration's rhetoric, could this exchange of diplomatic messages be construed as negotiating with terrorists? As we all know, the US never negotiates with terrorists, right?

I don't suppose that point about "property disputes" has anything to do with offshore boundaries that the UK may have been in violation of?

There was something else on this, on Tuesday:

Diplomats fear the case could mark a new twist in apparent tit-for-tat detentions involving the US, Britain and Iran, which began with the detention by US forces in Iraq of five Iranians in January and the capture of 15 British sailors by Iran who were freed earlier this month.

The US had to realize that when it seized those Iranians in Hewlêr in January, that it was provoking a reaction because there was no other purpose for the seizure. Additionally, the seizure created a difficult climate between Iraq and Iran, as if Iraq had no other problems to deal with right now. Bottom line? It was a stupid thing to do.

Speaking of Iraq, there's a new press release on Ilisu from KHRP:

Iraq's Minister of Water, Dr Latif Rashid, has strenuously denied giving Iraq's blessing to the controversial Ilisu Dam, which Turkey plans to build on the Tigris River [1].

The Minister's denial contradicts previous assurances by Turkey and the Governments of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, whose Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) approved funding for the dam in March 2007 [2], on the basis that Iraq had no objections to the dam.

If built, the dam could severely impact on downstream flows of the Tigris, which could be reduced to a trickle in summer months [3]. Turkey has failed to guarantee a minimum downstream flow to Iraq and Syria [4].

Although the ECAs made funding conditional on Turkey first supplying Iraq with the information it sought on the project, the Minister told a joint Kurdish Human Rights Project - Corner House fact-finding mission [5] that key information had still to be provided.

"The ECAs have breached their own conditions", says Nicholas Hildyard, who interviewed Iraq's Minister of Water. "Iraq made known its objections at the highest level. The ECAs appear to have ignored them."

How typical of greedmongers.

Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria have lied about the conditions required to move forward on the Ilisu Dam project, which is nothing more than an exploitation scheme that will result in further state-sponsored destruction of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan and the indigenous culture of the region. Moreover, this is another indication of the regard with which the EU holds the Kurdish people, Kurdish culture, and Kurdish rights, as well as those of the other ethnic groups of the area and those in Iraq.

The entire KHRP-Corner House report on this latest development and its downstream impact on Iraq can be accessed in this .pdf document.

More backgrounder on the Ilisu issue can be read on Rastî from last August and October.

In other news, the UN has released a report today which criticizes the KRG for lack of public services, government corruption, honor murders, detention of prisoners, and arrests and harassment against journalists.

I have no idea what Dindar Zebarî means when he says that "legal procedures are followed against some who overstep the standards of the journalism profession." How did the journalists in question "overstep the standards of the journalism profession?" Did they publish "state secrets?" Or is Zebarî more likely referring to the fact that the journalists simply wrote articles critical of the problems in South Kurdistan? Or maybe the KRG subscribes to the argument that since journalists are not elected, they have no business speaking at all, such as what happened in Sweden recently:

A Kurdistan Democratic Party official attacked a speaker of CHAK in the Swedish city of The Gothenburg, reported Awene, a Kurdish online Monday.

While Rafat Halabajayy, according to Awene, was giving his speech on behalf of the organisation on the anniversary of gassing Kurdish population of Halaja, the representative of KDP, led by Massud Barzani, interfered and disturbed the meeting, telling Mr Halabjayy that he does not represent the people; hence he has no right to talk.

Attacks on Kurdish intellectuals and scholars aboard by the PUK and KDP are not unusual. Two years ago Dr Burhan Yasin, a Kurdish scholar and thinker, was verbally abused by a number of KDP representatives in Germany while he was giving his assessment of the situation of Kurdistan. He was told by the KDP members that he is not allowed to talk. Dr Yasin is a well-respected scholar and he was invited by the organiser to give a paper in the conference.

CHAK is very critical of the corruption of the Kurdish administration of the PUK and KDP. CHAK is an international Kurdish organisation pursing the rights of victims of Anfal and fights corruption in Kurdistan.

While the KDP and PUK can control independent organisations in Kurdistan, diaspora organisations have become a challenged for them.

It's time for the KRG to grow up and get over the fascist inclination. Otherwise, the only thing we'll have in South Kurdistan is Turkey v.2.

IMAGE AND UXO'S

"During interviews Landmine Monitor conducted with people living in the Diyarbakır and Mardin provinces of the region of southeastern Anatolia, they said they had the impression that security forces sometimes purposefully leave unexploded debris in areas endangering civilians."
~ Landmine Monitor, 2006 Report, Turkey.

Abdullah Gul has been selected by AKP to compete for the Turkish presidency this year, and to hear the NYTimes tell it, you'd think the biggest problems facing the TC were non-segregated swimming pools. But what a fantastic legacy for AKP, eh?

Then there's Reuters, which tries to sell an Islamist as a "reformist." Well, at least it's an original idea.

Unexploded TSK ordnance in Şirnex killed one child and injured three others (two of which were also children). Bianet notes that local media failed to mention Turkey's status as signatory to the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, its obligations under the treaty, as well as local media's failure to take a critical approach in covering the incident in Şirnex.

What a shock.

There's more on that subject from Landmine Monitor's 2006 report on Turkey. Back in 2005, AKP cooked up a rather unconventional scheme to demine "The Southeast," as described by Reuters last month:

To clear explosives in heavily mined areas of the South and Southeast, Turkey's Finance Ministry has opened two tenders since 2005. Both were part of an effort to conform to the Ottowa Convention which gave signatories like Turkey 10 years to de-mine its interiors.

But both tenders were called off.

While most de-mining contracts are based on cash payments for land cleared, the Turkish ones were set up so the winning bidder would win the right to establish an organic farm on the cleaned land for 49 years after clearing it, in a kind of 'rehabilitate and operate' system.

"The government is trying to get the land cleared without spending any money," said de-mining consultant Ali Koknar, who heads Washington-based AMK Risk Management.

"The winning bid has to agree to farm the land for 49 years. That's not the way the de-mining industry works," he said.

No kidding.

But there were also problems with the real ruling elite, the Paşas:

In 2003, Turkey pledged to clear the land of mines, in a process to be completed by 2014. However the mine clearance business has turned into another controversial issue, since the question of how the land will be used after being cleared led to fierce debate between the government and the opposition. The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party government launched a tender, but then it was canceled since the TSK said it has both capacity and means to clear the border of mines.

TSK may have the "capacity and means" to clear mines from the "border," but it doesn't have the will. And if it doesn't have the will to clear mines from the border, it certainly doesn't have the will to clear them from Kurdish lands. Although a 1998 directive from the Turkish General Staff forbade the use of landmines, there was a report from FIDH that as late as 2003, TSK was laying more landmines along the border with South Kurdistan. Naturally the TSK failed to inform the local population of these new minefields because they weren't supposed to be laying them, according to the Genelkurmay Baskanligi.

So much for reform; so much for substance. It's all about image. For the sake of the image of the TC, Kurdish kids will continue to be blown to bits.

CENSORSHIP, PROPAGANDA, AND KURDS

"We do not need U.S. presidents to tell us where our homeland is. And even if they try to do so, we should not subordinate our better judgement to their economic, strategic or political agenda."
~ Monte Melkonian, Armenian freedom-fighter.

Okay, there's a lot of ground to cover today, so let's get to it.

First, there's a post at DozaMe about the US Treasury Deparment, Office of Foreign Asset Control's (OFAC) expansion into the censorship business.

What is interesting is the fact that the US Treasury Department's OFAC is supposed to do just that--control assets, i.e. money, finances, trade sanctions. Here's their mission statement (Note: I'm not going to link to the site, but whoever wants to, can google "OFAC" and it should come up as the first return, then check their mission statement):

Our Mission

The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. OFAC acts under Presidential wartime and national emergency powers, as well as authority granted by specific legislation, to impose controls on transactions and freeze foreign assets under US jurisdiction. Many of the sanctions are based on United Nations and other international mandates, are multilateral in scope, and involve close cooperation with allied governments.

I don't see anything in that mission statement that has anything whatsoever to do with First Amendment rights meddling. For those who don't know, here's the First Amendment to the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Specifically, free speech and free press rights are central to the mission of the sites listed at DozaMe as targeted by the OFAC. OFAC is, therefore, going outside of its mandate by meddling in questions of First Amendment rights, but I guess that acting "under Presidential wartime and national emergency powers," i.e. DICTATORIAL powers is consistent with the problem of rising global fascism.

Since Yahoo is now being sued by a court in San Francisco for handing over information to China that led to the arrest, torture, and imprisonment of cyber-dissidents there, it looks like the civil rights types are the only ones left to mount a defense of free expression. The organization bringing that suit is The World Organization for Human Rights USA. Then there is the Center for Consitutional Rights which brought the lawsuit against the PATRIOT Act on behalf of LTTE and PKK.

Until the legal machinery can get a handle on these violations of civil rights, I would expect more of the same from the fascist elites, particularly in the US and in Turkey, as well as from their wimpy, limp-wristed, panty-waisted proxy, the EU.

Then, there were several articles in American media this last week that focused on Kurds, the first of which is Justin Raimondo's critique of Christopher Hitchins' recent propaganda. Who would have thought that Raimondo would take the ultra-neoconservative point of view, aligning himself with the swill from the AEI's uberfascist, Michael Rubin? But this is what Raimondo does, in between hand-wringing over the "horrific persecution of Kamal Said Qadir" and the recent KDP attacks against journalist Nabaz Goran.

Now, I personally know of very few Kurds who supported KDP in its stupidity over the Qadir Affair, but was it "horrific persecution?" Yesterday I posted a number of examples from Peace in Kurdistan Campaign on the situation of Ragip Zarakoglu, Belge Publishing House, and Ozgur Gundem, and as we all know, these examples are a miniscule drop in the bucket compared to the truly horrific attacks against free expression rights for which America's ally, Turkey, is extremely well-known for. And on this score, I rush to point out that Michael Rubin has never, in his entire career as a professional propagandist, ever pointed out even the slightest minutiae of the slightest repression of Kurds by the Ankara regime. And that's a characteristic that Raimondo shares.

Aside from the fact that Raimondo ignores the plight of the ordinary Kurd in South Kurdistan who is struggling simply to survive, the lack of basic services in the face of "Dream Cities" and the construction of shopping malls for the elites, the huge number of Arab families that have fled the violence of Arab Iraq and have found a relative haven in South Kurdistan, or the numbers of Kurdish youth that are attempting to flee South Kurdistan because they feel they have no future there . . . aside from the fact that Raimondo ignores these examples and others, he conveniently leaves out the fact that there is great discontent among the general population and, because he prefers to view Kurds as two-dimensional, non-human, extras in a Hollywood-style fiasco manufactured by the American war industry, he overlooks one central fact of Kurdish history--Serhildan.

As an aside, but only because it's such bullshit--Raimondo sheds crocodile tears for Arabs leaving Kerkuk as Kurds "swarm" into the city, but he conveniently ignores the fact that thousands of Kurdish families were forced out by America's former best ally in the region, Saddam Hussein. By the way, if you'd like to hear a fabulous discussion of Donald Rumsfeld and how well he got along with Saddam and the Ba'athi regime, check out the two-part interview with Andrew Cockburn at Stress. Part 1 is almost an hour and Part 2 is slightly over 40 minutes.

Keeping in character with his apparent doppelganger at AEI, Raimondo characterizes PKK and the legitimate Kurdish armed struggle in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan as "terrorism." Let's cut to the chase, shall we? If Americans had to suffer forced evacuations of their small towns and the destruction of their homes; if they had to suffer real violations of their freedom of expression or freedom of association; if they had to suffer routine torture and impunity at the hands of security forces; if their mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, nieces, and other female relatives were routinely raped and otherwise sexually assaulted, do you think they'd fight back? Or do you think they'd "acquiesce" in their treatment like their good sidekick Tony Blair would counsel?

If Americans armed themselves and conducted a legitimate armed resistance against such state-sponsored atrocities, then Americans themselves would be classified as terrorists, by their own definition, just as PKK is classified as "terrorist." Oh, did I forget to mention that all of the atrocities perpetrated against the so-called terrorists of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan were backed by the US?

So that brings me to Raimondo's claim that "One of Kurdistan's chief exports is terrorism." Wrong. This is America's chief export. The US has exported terrorism to Indonesia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Vietnam, Colombia, Afghanistan, now Iraq, and, of course, Kurdistan, as brilliantly documented by Desmond Fernandes as far back as 2001 and more recently. This is on top of the tons of documents on Turkey's brutal repression of Kurds by human rights organizations, or Ismet Imset's analysis of PKK's legitimacy vis-a-vis armed struggle, or even John Tirman's book Spoils of War, to mention a few sources.

Should I even mention Raimondo's reference to Seymour Hersh's unsubstantiated claims about US support for PJAK? Whoever wants more on that can search Rastî for "PJAK."

At the end of Raimondo's self-serving rant is the mention of "romanticization" of Kurds (from Hitchens), which goes back to the whole two-dimensional, non-human view of Kurds and what is ironic about that characterization is that when a Kurd steps out of Western-imposed two-dimensionality and faces the enemies of Kurdistan on his or her feet with AK-47 in hand, that real-life, warm-blooded, very human Kurd becomes a "terrorist."

The second article from last week comes from David Ignatius on Lebanon's Daily Star. Bearing in mind that all the previous argument for legitimate armed resistance applies here, too, at least Ignatius makes the statement that Turkey "denounce[s] the PKK as a terrorist group . . . "

But . . . then he goes on to mention the role of that great humanitarian of our time, Lockheed Martin's Joseph Ralston, and how he's struggling to "defuse the crisis, clear[ing] a Kurdish refugee camp of suspected PKK members and talk[ing] regularly with both sides."

If Lockheed Martin's director was really so hot to "defuse the crisis," why didn't he take advantage of the PKK's offer of a democratic solution last August (when Ralston was appointed) or why did he reject PKK's fifth unilateral ceasefire out of hand and remove any kind of political negotiation from the solution table? Why? Well, because Ralston has been too busy reinforcing the business agenda of Lockheed Martin to keep all that blood money rolling in to Lockheed's management. This is Ralston's real job, since he is a vice-chairman of The Cohen Group, a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, and Ralston himself was registered with the US Senate last year as a lobbyist for The Cohen Group to specifically export tactical fighter aircraft, something which Turkey has since agreed to, to the tune of $13 billion.

What about this reference to Maxmur Camp as needing to be cleared of "PKK members?" I guess Ignatius missed the fact that the US military and the UN established the civilian nature of the camp, not even finding weapons suitable for PKK's legitimate armed resistance against the US-backed terrorist regime in Ankara. I guess Ignatius also missed that Ralston presented himself to Congress and proceeded to lie out of his ass to Congress. I guess Ignatius further missed the fact that the Turkish media wondered why Ralston was lying out of his ass.

Ignatius must subscribe to the American saying: If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.

Finally, there was an article by Hersh-wannabe, Reese Erlich, on PJAK. Erlich was mentioned here earlier this month, but now he tries to be amusing by pointing out the fact that PJAK's armed female gerîlas like American actors like girly-faced Brad Pitt and Mr. Alcoholics Anonymous himself, Mel Gibson. While I cannot account for the personal tastes of the gerîlas, I do wonder why this is an issue? Then my mind goes back to the two-dimensionality that gets applied to the Kurdish people and the extreme parochialism of Westerners. If movies are stories translated to the big screen, then why should Kurds not be familiar with movies or watch them? Why shouldn't Kurdish gerîlas watch them? After all, Kurds love a good story and story-telling done well.

By the way, Erlich acknowledges that the Washington regime permits Komala and KDPI "to operate openly in northern Iraq," while admitting of no American influence in PKK's/PJAK's camps. He also mentions that both Komala and KDPI have been to Washington last year for meetings. Neither PKK, nor its sister organization, PJAK, has done so.

In addition, the Erlich article brings up another subject that all the enemies of Kurdistan love to talk about, and that's the celibacy of PKK's gerîlas. What do all these enemies prefer, that PKK's gerîlas behave in the barbarous manner of American forces? Would they prefer that the crime of rape be a usual feature of gerîla life as it is for the lives of American soldiers? That fact of American military life was noted here on Rastî last Monday.

In this case, I will presume to speak for the gerîlas and say "No, thank you." The enemies of Kurdistan and their allies can behave in despicable ways with their own, in their own militaries; I prefer the honor of the gerîlas--Brad Pitt and all.

In contrast, if you'd prefer to read a much more thoughtful discussion of the Kurdish situation than you can find anywhere in American media, check out this post at the Shiraz Socialist blog.

A COURAGEOUS TURK AND 12 ŞEHÎDS

"The Security organs of the State are buttressing the Gray Wolves and through the tolerance of the government, army and bureaucracy, fascism has been growing in Turkey in the last thirty years. Otherwise, how could in our days three million Kurds be uprooted with such ease from their homes and villages and be deported? We have to learn from history and avoid denying the past tragedies, which should cause shame in us. Otherwise, history is bound to repeat itself."
~ Ragip Zarakolu, Ulkede Gundem, 1997.

The recent murders of Christian publishers in Malatya are examples of the extreme forms of censorship to which the Turkish state has had recourse throughout its history, particularly since the September 12 coup. In light of this tradition of extreme censorship, it might be appropriate to discuss another publisher and his battles with the Ankara regime.

Ragip Zarakolu is one of those brave and noble Turks who has stood for justice since 1968 when he began writing. With the military coup of 1971, he began his long history of persecution by the Turkish state. At that time, he was tried and imprisoned for having "secret" relations with that well-known subversive organization, Amnesty International.

With his wife Aysenur Zarakolu, he founded Belge Publishing House in 1977. Together with Aysenur, through Belge, he published writings that other publishing houses would not have touched with the proverbial ten-foot pole, especially after the September 12 coup, writings about minorities in Turkey, the Armenian Genocide, the Kurdish situation, and the impunity of the state in its terrorism against the people. In 1986, he joined with others as one of the founding members of the Human Rights Association (IHD), which has had a number of incredibly courageous human beings associated with it such as Akin Birdal, Eren Keskin, and Osman Baydemir.

[Note: Sadly, Aysenur Zarakolu, a lion in her own right for justice and freedom, passed away in early 2002 from cancer. She should be remembered as the freedom-fighter she was.]

For more on Ragip's life, check American PEN, English PEN, and Wikipedia, at least for the moment.

Ragip has also been closely associated with Ozgur Gundem for many years. In this regard, Ragip has the following to say (from Peace in Kurdistan Campaign):

From: rzarakolu@XXXXX.com
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:02:35 -0400

Subject: my newspaper were closed

Dear Friends,

Kurdish and oposition press went under the pressures of militarism in Turkey. Newspapers were closed, editors were arrested.

I am writing for 16 years for Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem (Free Agenda) for human and minority rights, Armenian Genocide, inpunity of the state and freedom of expression.

I could not write any more during last 2 months because of bannings and closures. It is sad, because I could write there under the de facto war conditions after 1991.

Ozgur Gundem is the first newspaper, which dared to speak about Armenian Genocide, every 24th April, during last 10 years.

This year I prepared a serie "Armenian Genocide in German Documents, around Trabizond Region" for Ozgur Gundem, in memoriam Hirant Dink. Now I don't know where I can give it.

Now I lost my newspaper. And I am at the black list of Turkish main stream media, because I wrote on minorities, Armenian Genocide and Kurdish question.

Yours

Ragip Zarakolu

An attachment to the email describes the situation of Ozgur Gundem, and other newspapers in Turkey, today:

Newspapers' Situation in Turkey


It is known that freedom of press, which is one of the indispensable indications of democracy, has a close relationship with freedom of thought/expression as well as right to get news. It is an undeniable reality that implementation level of freedom of press, which has formed its universal principles through years, represents level of freedom in a country. In this context, policies within "security" perspectives, prohibitions (embargo) of publications, pressures/interventions within different levels, legal arrangements that make these interventions, which have been implemented during recent months, easier against newspapers in Turkey should be discussed. All of these interventions cause anti-democratic results. Indeed, serious violations against freedom of press and thought still continue in Turkey.

Number of publications, which subjected to decisions that restrict thought/expression and violate right to get news-information, are higher than past. Such a panorama is the Turkey's shame for democracy. In this respect implementations against Gündem (Agenda) Newspaper, during the last, month are enough to describe to the situation of newspapers in Turkey.

In its fifth day our newspaper, which started on 17th January 2007, was suspended for one month. There are 10 court cases and against the newspaper. Moreover; there are investigations against its 30 issues. After one month suspension, the newspaper restarted to publish, however; just after two days the newspaper was suspended once again for one month. All of these incidents are little samples of serious situation of newspaper in Turkey. Violation of freedom of press, which is sine qua non condition of sustainability of democratic life, through these open and absolute censorships implementations is shelving the projects in democracy process. Political character of legal grounds harms independent law mentality that based on rights and freedoms.

The summary table, which represents censorships-pressures even suspensions against Gündem and other newspapers have similar publishing policy, is enough to realize the situation clearly. Other newspapers, which subjected to pressures and censorships in recent months are the following; Yaşamda Gündem (Agenda in the Life), Güncel (The Temporary) and Azadiya Welat (Free Country).

Gündem Newspaper is suspended for one month

06.03.2007

Gündem Newspaper is suspended for one month by two separate decisions by the 13th Heavy Penal Court of Istanbul. The court reviews the application by Deputy-President of Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office and decides for one month suspension in accordance with Law on Press numbered 5287 and its article 25. The court shows the news, on 2nd March 2007, about poisoning of Ocalan as reason of the sentence. In its second decision of sentence; the court decides sentence to suspension, once again, for one month in accordance with Law on Press numbered 5287 and its article 25. The court shows the newspaper's issue dated 5th March 2007 as reason for sentence. Therefore; the same court gives two separate suspension sentences by showing the same law as reason in one day. In its decision statement, the court makes a political comment as the following: "in order to keep sustainability of democratic life in the society, intervention becomes necessary".

Gündem Newspaper is closed once again

09th April 2007

Gündem Newspaper, which was closed by 13th Heavy Penal Court of Istanbul for one month by its decision dated 6th March 2007, restarted to publishing on 7th April 2007. However, Gündem Newspaper was closed, at this time by 11th Heavy Penal Court of Istanbul, just after two days for 15 days. The Court shows almost every news, some advertisements and articles, which published on the issues dated 7th and 8th April 2007, as reasons for the closure decision. Advertisements, which published by Gündem Newspaper in the issued date 07th April 2007, on commemoration and marching to Amara (village of Abdullah Ocalan), to celebrate the birthday of Abdullah Ocalan, are some of the reasons for closure that given by 11th Heavy Penal Court of Istanbul. Moreover; the news (again in the same issue 7th April 2007), which is statements by Ocalan, who made them in the meeting with his lawyer in Imrali Prison, are considered as "propaganda of PKK/Kongra Gel". Another reason for closure decision belongs to the news, of Newspaper's issue dated 8th April 2007, which is the continuation of Ocalan's statement. In the same issue Ali Haydar Kaytan's article, whose title is "barışa götürecek yol" (path that will bring peace), is showed another reason for closure. The court shows also commemoration advertisements as reasons for closure. The court, in accordance with numbered 5187 Press Law and its article 25/2, decides to confiscation and prohibition of selling/distribution of Gündem Newspaper's issued dated 7th-8th April 2007. Moreover; the court, in accordance with numbered 3713 The Prevention of Terrorism Act and its article 6/the last one, decided to suspension of Gündem Newspaper for 15 days, which begins at the 08.04.2007.


Immediate Censorship against Yaşamda Gündem (Agenda in the Life)

Mr. Zekeriya Ay, Public Prosecutor of Istanbul, orders confiscation for Yaşamda Gündem, which starts on 9th March 2007, issue dated 9th March 2007 (the day when it starts) to Istanbul Security Directorate on Security Unit (İstanbul Emniyeti Güvenlik Şube Müdürlüğü). Prosecutor Mr. Ay violates law by making decision to confiscation even the unpublished issues of the newspaper. The prosecutor makes decision arguing that Yaşamda Gündem Newspaper is the continuation Gündem Newspaper, which was suspended for one month at the 6th March 2007. Mr. Özcan Kılıç, lawyer of the newspaper, considers the implementation that based on arbitrary interpretation-thoughts as an "open censorship" and appeals the decision. Mr. Ahmet Abakay, President of Contemporary Journalists' Association (Çağdaş Gazeteciler Derneği) underlines the decision is contrary to national and international arrangements. Mr. Abakay states "the decision is shame of Turkey".

Distribution Censorship against Güncel (the Temporary) Newspaper by Merkez Distribution Company

22.03.2007

Merkez Distribution Company, which is one of the big newspaper distribution companies, announces that it will not distribute the Güncel Newspaper, which starts on 19th March 2007, and Azadiya Welat the only Kurdish daily Newspaper in Turkey. Merkez Distribution Company stops the distribution, which continues for 7 months, on 21st March 20007 and requests information from Security General Directorate about distribution of Güncel Newspaper. The Company authorities announce that they will not distribute the newspaper till they get response from the Security General Directorate. It is argued that Security General Directorate orders not to distribute newspapers, which publish news related with Kurds. Çağdaş Gazeteciler Derneği (Contemporary Journalists' Association) considers 'censorship of distribution', which implemented by Merkez Distribution, as "an indication of police state mentality's placement into institutions".

15 Days Suspension against Güncel (Temporary) Newspaper

30.03.2007

Güncel Newspaper, which started on 19th March 2007 and was not distributed by the distribution company, published just during 12 days. The 13th Heavy Penal Court of Istanbul sentenced to Güncel (Temporary) Newspaper for 15 days suspension that started at the 30th March 20007. The sentence is given in accordance with TCK (Turkish Penal Code) 215 and 3713 articles. "Propaganda of organization" is showed as the reason of the sentence.

Azadiya Welat is sentenced to suspension for 20 days

23.03.2007

Azadiya Welat Newspaper, which is the only Kurdish daily newspaper in Turkey, is sentenced to suspension after its distribution was blocked. The 5th Heavy Penal Court of Diyarbakir sentences Azadiya Welat Newspaper to suspension for 20 days. The sentence is given in accordance with the Prevention of Terrorism Act numbered 3713 and its article 6. and the paragraph 5; "making propaganda of organization".

Attachment 2: General brief about implementations of censorships-pressures that Gündem Newspaper and other similar newspapers have faced during the 17 years and also samples of double standards against these newspapers.


TRADITION OF GUNDEM (AGENDA) NEWSPAPER: 17 NEWSPAPERS DURING 17 YEARS


Tradition of Gundem Newspaper, which decides/adopts its publishing policy as opposition and free newspaper process, has established 17 newspapers for 17 years. This tradition gives voice to an important witness through openly publishing realities of Turkey and in terms of freedom of the press/expression; represents an important historical period because of the pressures that faced. All of the 17 newspapers has faced suspensions, seize, confiscations, censorships and some similar pressures and also many of its employees have been killed during this 17 years period. Such practises are often seen during 1990s, however; we can argue the circumstances are same in the March of 2007. Actually; there is no during these long years. From 1st to 31st March the publications of Gündem (Agenda), Yaşamda Gündem (Agenda in the Life), Güncel (the Contemporary) and Azadiya Welat (Free Country) were suspended, many court cases opened against them and their distribution were blocked.

As Apê Musa, who is one of the veterans of the tradition and killed in this difficult struggle, says that Gundem tradition continues to become witness and accused of Turkey.

Tradition of Gundem starts with Halk Gerçeği (Truth of People) and Yeni Ülke (New Country), which are weekly magazines, in 1990s that armed conflict also on the increase. Publishing policy of Gundem is built up to decipher of pressures by the Turkish State, extrajudicial killings, burning of villages, similar human rights violations and to defend the democratic solution of Kurdish problem. Actually, in 1990s anybody could not dare to reveal these pressures by the State.

Pressures against Gundem Newspaper, which is the voice of opposite groups, also occurs just after the a few issues of the first newspaper of Gundem tradition. It can be said that murder of Cengiz Altun, correspondent of Yeni Ülke (New Country), is the starting point of pressures. Yeni Ülke is one of the important components (newspaper) of Gundem tradition. 26 correspondents, journalists and distributors, who work for the newspapers of Gundem tradition, are murdered in the period of 1990-1995.

Bomb attack to the Newspaper


Pressure policy against Gundem tradition becomes serious, intense between 1992 and 1995. During this period newspapers and magazines are seized, offices are raided; employees are taken into custody, subjected to torture and arrested. According to indefinite numbers just during this period; DGMs (State Security Court) make decisions to seize 443 publishing issues and to close down of 67 publications. Some of the newspapers, which are closed down by DGM, are; Özgür Gündem (Free Agenda), Özgür Ülke (Free Country), Yeni Politika (New Politics), Demokrasi (Democracy) and Ülkede Gündem (Agenda in the Country). Moreover; the main centre in Istanbul and two offices of Özgür Ülke, which is subjected to the most serious pressures are bombed, on 4th December 1994, by the command of Ms. Tansu Çiller that is the Prime Minister of the period.

Censorships of Page(s) in 1995


The publishing of the Newspapers cannot be blocked despite the all of pressures. Then censorship is applied to newspapers, subsequently; the newspapers are published with censored pages. Yeni Politika, which starts on 13th April 1995, has to publish its news, articles, photos, advertisements and caricatures with writing "It is censored" because of the censorships by public prosecutors of DGM.

Daily censorships starts

Ülkede Gündem, which starts on 7th July 1997, is also subjected to censorships applications. During the period, on which the newspaper is published its 57 correspondents and 10 distributors are taken into custody and subjected to torture. 278 court cases are opened against the newspaper and sentenced to suspension for 302 days. The newspaper's 125 news, 63 articles, 9 photos and 14 advertisements are censored. At the end, Ülkede Gündem is closed down by DGM decision on 23rd October 1998.

Prohibition of OHAL (Emergency State Governorship)

As its predecessors; entrance of Özgür Bakış (Free View), which starts on 18th April 1999, to OHAL region is prohibited. Confiscation decision is made against 22 issues of total 93 issues of Özgür Bakış newspaper. There are also many court cases against the newspaper. Moreover; arrest decision is given against the newspaper's editor, whose name is Hasan Deniz, on 4th June 1999. The editor is charged with the article 169 that is about "assisting and supporting an organization". Tradition of free newspaper continues with Yeni Gündem (New Agenda) in 2000. As a result of pressures, confiscations and OHAL prohibitions; this newspaper is closed down in 2001.

List of the newspapers, which established after Yeni Gündem, are in the following:


Yedinci Gündem (Seventh Agenda): Yedinci Gündem is published weekly between 23rd June 2001 and 30th August 2002. Newspaper's entrance to OHAL region is prohibited. It has 60 issues. The newspaper is sentenced to suspension for 15 days and its responsible editor is sentenced to money penalty whose amount is over 6 billions TL in total.

Yeniden Özgür Gündem (Free Agenda once Again): It starts on 2nd September 2002 and ends 28th February 2004. The newspaper is sentenced to suspension for 4 days during its 545 days period. Its editor is sentenced to imprisonment for 25 months and its license holder is sentenced to money penalty whose amount is 478 billions TL. There are 315 court cases against the newspaper.

Record numbers of court files

Ülkede Özgür Gündem (Free Agenda in the Country): The newspaper starts on 1st March 2004 and ends 16th November 2006. There are over 600 court cases against its responsible editor, some journalists and correspondents grounding different reasons. In total 102 resulted court cases that resulted in sentence; totally 344.964 YTL money penalty is given and Hasan Bayar, who is responsible editor, is sentenced to 15 years-11 months-10 days imprisonment. It is interesting that the second suspension decision, against Ülkede Özgür Gündem, is made 6 days later after Staff of General Yaşar Büyükanıt's statement: "its publications should not be permitted". Lastly, 120.000 YTL money penalties are given against Ülkede Özgür Gündem and Toplumsal Demokrasi (Social Democracy) under the 4 different courts of files. Moreover; Özlem Aktan, who is the responsible editor of Ülkede Özgür Gündem, is sentenced to one year imprisonment.

Toplumsal Demokrasi: the newspaper starts after Ülkede Özgür Gündem, which is sentenced to suspension, on 8th August 2006. After a short period Toplumsal Demokrasi stops its publication and restarts on 16th November 2007. At this time, Toplumsal Demokrasi is published for two months and during this short period there are many court cases against the newspaper. Toplumsal Demokrasi closes down itself on 5th January 2007.

Gündem (Agenda): It starts on 17th January 2007 and is published for 50 days. Gündem is suspended for a month on 6th March 2007. The suspension decision is given grounding news on poisoning Ocalan. Court give two different decisions for one month suspension in the same day. Actually, the two decisions on the same issue by the same court is considered as law scandal. There are also many investigations and court cases against the newspapers.
Yaşamda Gündem (Agenda in the life): It starts on 9th March 2007 but is published only for 3 days. Yaşamda Gündem is confiscated grounding that it is the continuation of Gündem newspaper. Actually, the confiscation decision is the one that has never seen. In accordance with censorship; it is decided that Yaşamda Gündem's probable forthcoming issues also will be confiscated.

Güncel (Contemporary): It starts on 19th March 2007 and is published for 12 days. Güncel is sentenced to suspension for 15 days. There is a new point in this suspension sentence. In the context of suspension the statement "Leader of Kurdish People" is regarded as crime however it is not regarded as crime until that time.

WHEN GÜNDEM is PUBLISHED CENSORSHIP is APPLIED


The newspapers, which are the successors of Gundem tradition that starts in 1990s, break grounds in the field of news. All methods are practiced to stop these newspapers. The newspapers, which are targeted by the army or the government authorities, are subjected to double standards as well as censorships.

* In a panel; Umur Talu, who is the journalist of Sabah Newspaper, states that his articles might be reason for closing down if he writes in Gündem, but; it is not problem since he writes in Sabah newspaper.

* In 19th July 2005; İlker Başbuğ, Vice-president of General Staff, targeted Ülkede Özgür Gündem Newspaper in a 3 hours briefing to the journalists that shape Turkish media.

* 10th November; Yaşar Büyükanıt, President of General Staff, implying with Ülkede Özgür Gündem states that "PKK's Daily Newpapers are being published. These should not be permitted". After the 6 days; the newspaper is sentenced to suspension for 15 days.

* 11th June 2006; In his speech at the General Assembly of Gazeteciler Cemiyeti (Union of Journalists) Cemil Çiçek, Minister of Justice, targeted openly Ülkede Özgür Gündem. Cemil Çiçek says "This newspaper should be stopped" with identifying the newspaper as "paper rag".

* There is decision, which states publishing statements of Murat Karayılan Executive Committee President of KKK (Democratic Confederation of Kurdistan) as news is not a crime, by ECHR and there is a sentence against Turkey regarding with this issue. On the other hand; courts continue practises that are contrary to the decision ECHR. In the court cases, which opened because of the statements by Murat Karayılan, license holder and editor of Ülkede Özgür Gündem and Toplumsal Demokrasi is sentenced to money penalties whose amounts are 120.000 YTL. In this context; the responsible editor is sentenced to one year heavy imprisonment.

* Ülkede Özgür Gündem newspaper makes speech of Mehmet Ağar Leader of DYP (True Path Party) headlines of the newspaper. Mehmet Ağar makes his speech at Habertürk TV on 13th November 2006. Although there is not any process against the TV Channel, the speech is used as reason for 15 days suspension of Ülkede Özgür Gündem.

* 30 October 2006; Ülkede Özgür Gündem newspaper publishes news, whose title is "Life story of a Swiss guerrilla is being recorded as documentary". The same news is published with the same photo under the title of "A Swiss in the PKK's Camps". Ülkede Özgür Gündem newspaper is sentenced to suspension for 15 days grounding the news, though there is not any court cases against the Hürriyet newspaper.

* Nokta, a weekly magazine, publishes news about newspapers that belong to Gündem tradition. After Güncel newspaper uses the news, an investigation is opened against the newspaper.

* In 1995 ANKA news agency makes news the interview of Ocalan to Med TV. Yeni Politika (New Politics) newspaper is subjected to censorship since it publishes the mentioned news by ANKA. The newspaper reveals the double standard with the title of "Special Censor against our Newspaper" in its issue of 23rd April 1995.

* Cumhuriyet (Republic) Newspaper publishes news under the title "Kurdistan Parliament Condemns" in its issue of 15th April 1995 and there is no process against the newspaper. After one day; Yeni Politika publishes the same news as Cumhuriyet publishes, but the former is confiscated. The newspaper reveals this situation under the headline "Scandal".

* A confiscation decision is made against Yeni Politika newspaper since it publishes news under the title "Pope said dialogue" in 18th April 1995. On the other hand; there are no process against Hürriyet (Freedom) and Milliyet (Nationality) newspapers, which publish the same news under the title "Pray for Kurds by Pope" (Hürriyet) and "Call for Kurds by Pope" (Milliyet).

* Yeni Politika newspaper is confiscated because of its news that is taken from BBC and whose title is "Complete Support for Kurds by Kaddafi". The same news are used also by many other newspapers.

* Yeni Politika newspaper is confiscated since the newspaper publishes an article by Ahmet Altan. The title of the article is "Atakürt" and published by Milliyet a few days ago.

* Yeni Politika newspaper is confiscated since it publishes news, which is done by Reuters, under the title "Call for interview by PKK Leader Abdullah Ocalan to Germany".

* Censorships against the newspapers are practiced also in distribution. Distribution companies that are not willing to distribute newspapers, which belong to Gundem tradition, are lastly seen in their attitudes against Güncel newspaper that starts on 19th March 2007. Merkez Dağıtım, which belongs to Sabah Group, states that it will distribute Günceş newspaper in accordance with the permission, which it gets from General Directorate of Security, otherwise it will not distribute the newspaper. Actually such a decision does not have any legal grounds. Then, the distribution decides not to distribute Güncel Newspaper.

So, now you know which newspapers have a history of speaking the truth. You might want to think about that the next time you go searching for news.

By the way, Ozgur Gundem has a list and photos of HPG's şehîds from this past week during TSK's operations in Dersim and Şirnex.

Şehîd namirin!

RAGIP ZARAKOGLU AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN TURKEY

Peace in Kurdistan Campaign
Press Statement

17 April 2007

Ragip Zarakoglu and Freedom of Expression in Turkey

We are profoundly concerned about the intolerable restrictions on the press in Turkey which have worsened considerably under the impact of the new anti-terrorism law; in particular an effective ban on the reporting of taboo subjects such as the Armenian Genocide, the Kurdish question and the treatment of minorities. Newspapers are being closed, editors arrested and a blacklist of awkward voices is preventing journalists with long and distinguished records from working in Turkey today. An atmosphere of coercion and intimidation of journalists is prevailing in the country and we need only refer to the assassination on 19 January of Hrant Dink, whose circumstances still await a full investigation.


In this respect, we wish to draw your attention to the plight of Ragip Zarakoglu, writer and owner of Belge Publishing House, one such victim of the new repression: he has been writing for 16 years for the newspaper Ozgur Gundem (Free Agenda) on human and minority rights, but finds himself today unable to express his views in print freely under the new restrictions.


This lamentable situation is surely not what should be expected of a country that is allegedly attempting to democratise itself and abide by European and international conventions pertaining to human rights and rights of free expression and association.


We call on the British Government and the EU to urgently take this matter up with the Turkish authorities during the EU accession process and to insist that the Turkish authorities comply fully with European standards and conventions ratified by Turkey.



Peace in Kurdistan Campaign
For information contact:
Estella24@tiscali.co.uk
Tel 020 7586 5892

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN TURKEY

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION and TO PUBLISH IN TURKEY 2006-2007

Ragıp Zarakolu

Chair of Freedom to Publish Committee of Turkish Publishers Association. Executive member of International PEN’s Turkish Section


In Memoriam Hrant Dink, the courageous defender of freedom of expression

2006 was one of the least succesful years for freedom of expression and publishing and unfortunately things are continuing into 2007. Perhaps the most disheartening of these developments is the level of violence that has crept into the system and the fact that these groups that are bringing about this violence have also started affecting the Judiciary. The murder of Hrant Dink this year proved only tragically to the government, the judiciary and the press that it has to be very cautious about allowing those who express different thoughts and supports different view to be targeted. January started with cases filed against Taner Akcam and Aydin Ergin and the government has refused to alter article 301 of the penal code and all of these early developments in are indicators that 2007 is going to problematic in terms of freedon of expression and publishing.

Although things had seemed to be getting better during the previous 2 years concerning the question of the freedom to publish, the current year has seen an aggravation. The reason behind the earlier improvement was, of course, the willingness of the government to comply with EU demands. But unfortunately it did not continue.

According to data provided by the Ministry of the Interior, 290 books were confiscated between 2000-2006. In the aftermath of the recent amendments in the law, the ban on 49 of these have been lifted, while 241 continue to be banned.

According to the data of Independent Communication Network BIA, last year 293 writers, journalists, publishers, intellectuals, translators and human rights activists had to face the Courts because of their expressions. Last year this number was 157.

According to the data of Initiative for Freedom of Expression, there were 59 acquittals for 172 trials of last year; 15 convictions and the other files were at the Appeal Court. On the base of Article 301 of TPC, there were 72 trials; and there were 20 acquittals, 8 convictions. On the base of Article 312 of TPC, 35 trials were going on and there were 21 acquittals, 3 convictions.

According to the data of Platform for Journalists in Prison, editors and correspondent of opposition press are prison during 2006.

During last year, 25 publishing houses, 42 writers, 5 translators and 45 books were prosecuted. 10 of these court cases ended in acquittals, another 13 in convictions, while 5 were dismissed. The trials for the remaining 17 are pending.

Bans on books have become rare since October 2004. However, books, writers and publishers are still prosecuted on grounds of “defamation”, “denigration”, “obscenity”, “separatism”, “subversion”, “fundamentalism” and “blasphemy”. In addition, a negative development is that translators will be held responsible for the books they have translated. However, publishers’ legal liability continues regarding only the books whose author lives abroad.

Unfortunately, the new Turkish Criminal Code, which has received the seal of approval of the EU, has provided new avenues for the prosecution of writers and publishers. Warnings to this end by the Publishers Union, as well associations of writers and of journalists, before the passing of the law went unheeded. The greatest damage was done to the democratic reforms, which were geared to the process of harmonization with the EU. One of the tragic developments during this past year is undoubtedly the trying of translators. During this past year writers, reporters and publishers were faced with violence from ultra nationalist groups in addition to their trials. [emphasis of this paragraph: Mizgîn's]

Certain developments this year are also of a novel nature. The Publishers Union’s right to represent Turkey at the Frankfurt Book fair was taken away and handed over to a group with political and ideological biases.


INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF IDEOLOGICALLY-BASED CASES

The most striking feature of this new period is an explosion in the number of cases started against writers, journalists and publishers as a result of complaints filed by ideologically motivated circles. These cases were based on the grounds of “defaming Turkishness, the Turkish Armed Forces, the Republic, the memory of Ataturk etc.” Many convictions were handed down in these cases.

More serious still, Orhan Pamuk, Perihan Magden, Murat Belge, Ismet Berkan, Hasan Cemal, Elif Safak and other writers and journalists were attacked physically before or after the hearings. Elif Safak, along with her publisher Semih Sokmen of Metis Yayinlari, has recently been added to the list of writers of international fame prosecuted as a result of such ideologically motivated complaints for “defaming Turkishness”. (Elif Safak was acquitted, but violence again accompanied during the hearings.) On the basis of these complaints, the courts are being transformed into a platform for a chauvinistic ideological group. Concerning these cases, it must be said that the Ministry of Justice has not risen to the task of guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary. This situation should be compared to the fact that a plethora of complaints regarding violations of human rights have constantly gone unheeded by public prosecutors. Had public prosecutors not taken these ideologically motivated complaints seriously and not prosecuted the writers in question, the impact of this small but cantankerous group would have dwindled to insignificance. ( And more tragically, at the end of the hate speeches of ultra-nationalist groups, which based on these provocative trials, the courageous defender of civil rights, Hrant Dink was killed 19th January.)

On the other hand, many writers who criticized these cases were themselves prosecuted for “attempting to influence the course of trials pending”. Some of the cases on such charges were thrown out, while Hirant Dink, editor-in-chief of Armenian language weekly Agos, his son Arat Dink, Serkis Seropyan and Aydin Engin were prosecuted on these grounds. They had to face attempted violence and insult from a chauvinistic group during the hearings.

Altogether 12 journalist were accused “to intervene in justice”, as a result of complaints fired by ultra-nationalist groups. But nearly all of them were acquitted. But there is a conviction for Ilhan Selcuk, of Cumhuriyet daily, because of a news about the torture.

INCREASE IN CASES AGAINST THE PRESS, THE RETURN OF BANS AND THE THREAT POSED BY THE ANTI-TERROR LAW

The current year has seen an increase in the number of cases against the press. Bans were imposed once again after a respite on the dailies Birgun, Evrensel and Ozgur Gundem. Lastly Kaos GL,review of gays and lesbians, was banned.

A total of 530 cases have been filed against Ozgur Gundem and its editors. Of these 104 resulted in convictions and 22 in acquittals. The owner of the daily was sentenced to an overall fine of 192,755 new Turkish lira (approximately 125 thousand US dollars). The editor legally responsible was sentenced to a prison term of over 15 years, and was also fined a total of 134 thousand New Turkish Liras (around 90 thousand US dollars).

ıEditors and correspondents of the daily Cumhuriyet, including Ilhan Selcuk, owner of the newspaper and famous columnist, were convicted for a news article titled “Acquittal for Torture”. Journalists of establishment daily Hurriyet are being tried on charges of violating article 7 of the Anti-Terror Law. Huseyin Aykol, of Ozgur Gundem and Memik Horuz, of Isci-Koylu were tried with the same reason, “to interview the Kurdish guerillas." Mehmet Ali Birand, a famous anchor and show host, is in court under the same charges for having interviewed the attorneys of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK. The same charges were levelled against Nese Duzel of the daily Radikal for her interview with former Kurdish MP Orhan Dogan. Ahmet Kahraman, a journalist in exile was accused also, because of his book, ‘Kurdish Rebelions” with editor of Evrensel Publishing, Ms. Songul Ozkan.

Writer Emin Karaca was convicted for defaming the army in an article on the military coup of 1971. A writ of arrest in absentia was aimed at co-author Dogan Ozguden, an old hand of Turkish journalism for the same article. A journalist of Turkish Daily News, an Istanbul English-language daily, was convicted for contempt of court.

The new Anti-Terror Law, with its extremely lax definition of offences and the authority to be accorded to public prosecutors to stop the publication of periodicals indefinitely, poses a potential threat to the freedom of expression, freedo of the press and the freedom to publish. Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem was closed for two months and the editors of Atilim weekly and Free Radio were arrested after new Anti-Terror Law passed. They were placed in isolation wards in Type-F Prisons. As a negative trand, the Criminal Courts began to trail again the books about socialist theory and practice in 2007, with the example of Ms. Songul Ozkan’s trial, editor of Evrensel Publishing House. She was accused under new Anti-Terror Law, because of the memories of a socialist worker, named Imran. It was the third edition of the book. And 2 earlier prints of the book were not accused.

THE ABUSE OF CIVIL LAW

A trend that had started earlier continued into the current year: the abuse of civil law for the purpose of restricting the freedoms of expression and of the press. When it is not a question of defaming a certain institution, the road chosen is to claim defamation of persons. Politicians are deemed above criticism. A series of professions (ranging from medical doctors to superintendents of buildings) have claimed to be insulted by works of fiction or TV shows. Many publishers were sentenced to heavy compensation and at least one of them had to close down his publishing house. There have been cases of writers being taken to court with a demand for compensation because of their criticism of another writer or journalist’s ideas.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself has resorted to the same methods against many criticisms. He took cartoonist Musa Kart of the daily Cumhuriyet to court for having depicted him as a cat entangled in a web of yarn. Another case filed against the very popular humoristic magazine Penguen for having depicted him in the form of various animals was rejected by the court. Overall 59 cases were filed on the grounds of defamation against the Prime Minister, of which 28 are still pending. Among the 31 cases already decided 21 rulings were in favor and 10 against Erdogan.

Michael Dickinson, a British cartoonist and lecturer was arrested and deported, because of his cartoon about Prime Minister Erdogan, which depicted the Prime Minister as President Bush’s dog.

The editor of Pencere Publishing House, Muzaffer Erdoğdu have been taken to court with a demand for compensation, because of the introduction written by Taner Akcam in the turkish edition of Blue Book concerning the Armenian Deportation in 1915, which was published by Erdogdu. Senator Sukru Ekedag accused Profesor Taner Akcam and the editor, for defaming his personality as deputy of Turkish Parliament.

ARTICLE 301 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE

Last year during the deliberations on the new Turkish Criminal Code, the Publishers’ Union drew attention to Article 301. Thi article stipulates up to three years of imprisonment for denigration of “Turkishness, the Republic, parliament the government, the judiciary, the armed forces or the police”.

Because of Article 301, 72 persons were tried last year.

For last ten years, books on the Armenian question had not been subjected to legal persecution, but within the current year new prosecutions have been started on this issue, connected with Article 301. To define Armenian deportation in 1915 as “genocide” may be viewed as “defaming Turkishness”. The first conviction on these grounds was handed down recently. Erhan Akay of the review Cagri was convicted to five months of prison for his article entitled “Time to Confront the Armenian Question After 90 Years”.


PROSECUTION FOR DEFAMATION OF ATATURK

The moral integrity of Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic, is protected through a special law. Many cases have been fined during the current pastyear on the grounds of defaming of Ataturk. Even an Istanbul City Guide, prepared by Master Card, was prosecuted on theses grounds.

This is in fact in article 301 of the TPC, and the special law regarding the “defamation of Ataturk”, which formed the foundation for cases lanched against many writers, academics and publishers were prosecuted, including novelist Orhan Pamuk, the Armenian journalist Hirant Dink, Ibrahim Kaboglu and Baskin Oran, two professors who, as members of the Advisory Board of Human Rights at the Prime Minister’s Office, proposed reforms in the state’s attitude to the Kurdish question and minority rights, Halil Altindere, one of the curators of the Istanbul Biennial, Murat Pabuc, a retired army officer, Eren Keskin, vice-president of the Human Rights Association, Ragip Zarakolu, of Belge International Publishing House, Ahmet Onal, of Peri Publishing House, Fatih Tas, of Aram Publishing House, Rahmi Yildirim, a journalist, Erol Ozkoray, a journalist and author of Totalitarian Farm of Turkey, Fatih Tas, editor at Aram Publishing House, researcher Osman Tiftikci and his publisher Sirri Ozturk of Sorun Publishing House, Osman Pamukoğlu, a retired-General, the Iraq kurdish leader Mesut Barzani, EU commissioner and dutch MP Joost Lagendjik, sociologist Ismail Besikci, who received a great deal of attention for his researches on Kurdish situation , Karekin II, the Pope of Armenian Apostical Church, Michael Dickinson, a british cartoonist and lecturer, Ipek Calislar, author of Ataturk’s wife Latife Hanim, Abdullah Dilipak and Mehmet Sevki Eygi, both islamist journalists, Yalçın Ergündoğan and Ibrahim Cesmecioglu, editors of Birgun daily, Professor Attila Yayla, director of Liberal Thought Association, Belma Akçura, Cuneyt Arcayurek and Tuncay Ozkan, mainstream journalists, Perihan Magden and Elif Safak, novelists and essayists, Taner Akcam from Minnesota University ( in January 2007) and translator Attila Tuygan. A Greek novel by author Mara Meimaridis, “The Witches Of Smyrna” was also indicted under article 301. And editor Mehmet Ali Varış, of Tohum Publishing House was also convicted two times and sentenced 1 and half year to prison under article 301 and Defamation of Ataturk Law, like another Kurdish Publisher Ahmet Onal of Peri Publishing House.

CONCLUSION

In closing, we must stress even further the comment made in last year’s report. The new Turkish Criminal Code creates a potential threat to the freedoms of thought, expression, of the press and to the freedom to publish. The increase in the number of cases filed on the grounds of denigration of Turkishness, “public denigration of the armed forces”, and ”defamation of Ataturk” can be viewed as an indicator of this. Many articles of the Criminal Code must undergo comlete revision. Now, to this threat is added the dangers created by the new Anti-Terror Law. The ıprotection and enhancement of the freedom of expression is the duty of not only for the legislative branch of the political system, but also of the judiciary and executive branches.


ANNEX: BOOKS PROSECUTED IN 2006 and 2007

Publishers Author Book

Aram Timur Şahan “İtirafçı/ Bir Jitemci Anlattı” (An Informer) …………

Aram Kayhan Adnut “Tufanda 33 Gün” / 33 Days in Deluge (Acquitted)

Aram Fatih Taş “Kayıpsın Diyorlar” (Convicted)
(They Told You are Missing)

Aram John Tirman “Savaş Ganimetleri”/Spoils of War (Acquitted)

Aram Noam Chomsky “ Kitle Medyasının Ekonomi Politiği” (Acquitted)
(Political Economy of Mass Media)

Aykırı Seyfi Öngider “İki Şehrin Hikayesi/ İstanbul-Ankara” (dismissed)
(Story of Two Cities / Istanbul and Ankara)

Belge George Jerjian “Gerçek Bizi Özgür Kılacak” …………
(Will Free All of Us)

Belge Dora Sakayan “Bir Ermeni Doktorun Yaşadıkları” …………
(Armenian Doctor in Turkey)

Belge Peter Balakian “Kaderin Kara Köpeği” (dismissed)
(Black Dog of the Fate)

Belge Zülküf Kışanak “Yitik Köyler” (Convicted)
(Lost Villages)

Bilge Karınca Cemal Anadol “İsrail ve Siyonizm Kıskacında Türkiye” (Acquitted)
(Turkey under the Yoke of Israel and Zionism)

Bora Derleme “Tecritte Yaşayanlar Anlatıyor” ………
(Testimonies from the Cells in Isolation)

Bora Senay Dönmez “Yaşatmak İçin Öldüler” ……….
(They Died to Keep Alive)

Doz Mesut Barzani “Barzani ve Özgürlük Hareketi” …………
(Barzani and Freedom)

Doz Mustafa Balbal “Ararat’taki Esir General” (Convicted)
(General Captived in Ararat)

Evrensel Ahmet Kahraman “Kürt İsyanları” …………
(Kurdish Rebelions)

Evrensel Zeynep Ozge “Imran, Bir Isyan Andi” …………
(Imran, A for the Rebelion)

Güncel Ersin Kalkan “Katille Buluşmak / Musa Anter Cinayeti” …………
(Appoinment with the Killer)

Güncel Belma Akçura “Derin Devlet Oldu Devlet” (Convicted)
(Deep State Became State)

İnkılap Osman Pamukoğlu “Unutulanlar Dışında Yeni Bir Şey Yok” …….
(There is Nothing to Tell, only the Fogottens)

İstanbul Bienali Halil Altıntepe “9. Bienal Kataloğu” ……………
(Catalog of Istanbul 9th Art Bienal)

Kaynak Muazzez İlmiye Çığ “Vatandaşlık Tepkilerim” (Acquitted)
(My Reactions as Citizen)

Literatür Mara Meimaradi “İzmir Büyücüleri / Witches Of Smyrna (Acquitted)

Mastercard Özlem İmece “İstanbul Şehir Rehberi/Istanbul’s City Guide” …….

Mektup Emine Şenlikoğlu “Burası Cezaevi /You are in Prison” (Convicted)

Merkez Yay. Perihan Mağden “Hangimiz Uğramadık ki Haksızlıklara” (Acquitted)
(None of Us were Free From Injustice)

Metis Elif Şafak “Baba ve Piç/Father and Bastard” (Acquitted)

Pencere Toynbee “Mavi Kitap / Blue Book” …………

Peri M. Erol Coşkun “Acının Dili Kadın” (Convicted)
(Woman as Tongue of Grief)

Peri Evin Çiçek “Tutkular ve Tutsaklar ” (Convicted)
(Passions and Captives)

ıPeri Hejare Şamil “Diaspora Kürtleri” …………
(Kurds in Diaspora)

Peri Munzur Cem “Dersim’de Alevilik” (Convicted)
(Alewi Belief in Dersim Region)

Peri Mahmut Baksi “Teyre Baz / Hüseyin Baybaşin” (Convicted)
(A Kurdish Businessman)

Peri Hejare Şamil “Öcalan’ın Moskova Güleri” (dismissed)
(Ocalan’s Days in Moskow)

Say Yalçın Pekşen “The Türkler” (dismissed)
(The Turks)

Sel Metin Üstündağ “Pazar Sevişgenleri” (Acquitted)
(Making Love Sundays)

Sel Enis Batur “Elma / Apple” (Acquitted)

Sol Murat Pabuç “Boyalı Bank Nöbetini Terk Etmek” (Dismissed)
(To Leave Guarding Painted Bench)

Sorun Osman Tiftikçi "Osmanlı'dan Günümüze Ordunun Evrimi" ………..
(Evolution of Turkish Army)

Sorun Talat Turan “Mehmet Eymur, Bir MIT’cinin Portresi” (Convicted)
(Portrait of an MIT Agent)

Tohum Mehmet Ali Varış “Kuzey Batı Dersim: Koçgiri” (Convicted)
(North West of Kurdish Region Dersim)

Tohum Mehmet Ali Varış “Kemalizm” (Convicted)

Tohum Aytekin Yılmaz “Çok Kültürlülükten Tek Kültürlülüğe Anadolu” ……..
(Anatolia from Multiculturalism to Mono Cultur)

Sweden Publ. Astid Lingrens “Pippi” (Kurdish edition) (Confiscated at Post)

INTERNET, POLITICAL DISSENT, AND LITIGATION

"Everyone's interested in the Internet--especially dictators."
~ Julien Pain, Internet Freedom Desk, RSF.

Good news! Yahoo is being sued for forking over information on Chinese dissidents to the Chinese government, from Computer World:

Washington-based World Organization for Human Rights USA has filed a lawsuit against Yahoo Inc. for allegedly providing information to Chinese authorities that led to the persecution, torture and imprisonment of four Chinese dissidents.

The lawsuit was filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

[ . . . ]

According to the lawsuit, Yahoo's Hong Kong subsidiary (Yahoo HK) provided information to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of Xiaoning, a writer, on charges of incitement to subvert state power, a human rights group said.

Wang was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in September 2003, due in part to writings distributed over the Internet.

[ . . . ]

Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan said Yahoo is distressed that citizens in China have been imprisoned for expressing their political views on the Internet.

"We call on the U.S. Department of State to continue making this issue of free expression a priority in bilateral and multilateral forums with the Chinese, as well as through other tools of trade and diplomacy, in order to help secure the freedom of these dissidents," he said.

There's a short report (approx. 3 mins.) on this from NPR, and more at the NYTimes.

Yeah, I'm sure Yahoo's really torn up about the "persecution, imprisonment, and torture" of a few nobody-dissenters in China, and I'm sure the State Department will get top people right on that freedom of expression thing . . . when pigs fly.

What this means, boys and girls, is that the legal door is open and a precedent may be coming. Potentially it means that big Internet businesses can be hung out to dry as accomplices to the crimes of governments like China, or Iran, Syria, or Turkey . . . since Turkey is so hot to get on the Internet censorship bandwagon.

Check out the BBC for a little something on anonymity. They even mention one of my all-time favorite programs--Tor.

For email security, try PGP or GPG for Windows, a variation of GnuPG. SimpLite offers free encryption for instant messaging clients, including MSN, Yahoo, ICQ/AIM, and Jabber/Google. Another option for instant messaging is ScatterChat.

For those with families living in countries that censor the Internet, there's a way around at Psiphon. If you want (or need) an anonymous USB key, check out Traveling Forever's "How to Protect Yourself From Big Brother." There's an open source disk or USB flash drive encryption at Truecrypt

And the handbook for cyber-dissidents that the BBC article referred to? It's right here, at RSF.

Another means of battling censorship is through activist shareholders, as Google recently found out, from the TimesOnline:

Shareholder activists are gaining strength in the US as corporations such as Google, the world’s biggest internet company, and ExxonMobil, the largest oil producer, come under fire from special-interest groups.

The New York State Pension Funds, one of the biggest and most powerful investors in the US, has got a resolution included on Google’s proxy form that could dramatically affect the way that the company does business if it gains the support of a majority of shareholders.

The New York pension funds, which own 486,617 shares of Google class-A stock, demand that Google implement a clear code of conduct to protect users from being monitored by what they consider oppressive foreign regimes.

The funds outlined a six-point agenda in the proxy demanding that Google should not host user information in countries that restrict internet usage, such as Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The group also demands that Google should pledge not to engage in censorship, using all means at its disposal to fight government demands to restrict access to certain information.

Google made clear its opposition to the proposed resolution by urging shareholders to vote against it, adding that all blank ballots would be taken as a vote against the proposal.

"Google made clear its opposition . . . " Well, if shareholders can't bend these Internet companies to their will, maybe a lawsuit will . . . as Yahoo is about to find out. When it comes to the bottom line, the only way to get their attention is by attacking the bottom line, and that's what this is really all about anyway--business deals and money. The Google shareholders at New York State Pension Funds should be applauded for standing on principle and demanding ethical and moral behavior from those businesses in which they have invested. I mean, this is a very rare thing.

For more on Internet censorship, and the complicity of Western companies, see RSF's 2006 Annual Report. Page 107 begins the Internet section.

In other news, the AP reports that five others have been detained in the murder of the Christian publishers in Malatya.

As for the star-crossed lovers, Wolfowitz and Riza, there's a round-up of commentary on the subject at the Winter Patriot, including a link to yours truly. Also from Down Under by Lukery at Wot Is It Good 4, with the additional news that Shaha Ali Riza worked with Dick Cheney's daughter, Elizabeth, at State.

And so the plot thickens.

TWO OLD MURDERS AND THREE NEW ONES

"When asked whether the Turkish system is effective in preventing radicalization, the imam of the Ülkealan Mosque in Ankara, Mustafa Matur, said, 'Certainly! Diyanet does a great job of inspecting the mosques and the imams, and they always urge the imams to adopt a positive tone when they are giving their sermons.'"
~ quoted by Soner Cagaptay, Turkish state propagandist at WINEP.

Let's see . . . first of all, there's a new Kurdish blog coming at you from the US, at Zanetî so have a look and visit often. I mean, the more you visit, the more you will encourage this guy to write, which is something that I always like to see. At the very least it's another Kurdish voice online, and that's always a good thing. A link is already up under the blog list in the right margin.

There's a really good rip on the Riza-Wolfowitz affair at TruthDig. I didn't know that Wolfowitz was a philanderer nor did I know that his first wife of 30 years dumped him amid rumors of his philandering. Ah, the tortured lives of the rich and powerful. Don't it just make you want to cry a freakin' river?

I know everyone, particularly those from Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, will remember when Turkish state security forces murdered Ahmet Kaymaz and his twelve-year-old son in cold blood back in November, 2004. After a change of venue and much judicial footdragging--Surprise! Surprise!--the state's murderers go free, as reported by Turkish NTV:

Four Turkish police officers charged with the killing of a father and son mistakenly believed to be members of a terrorist group have been acquitted by a court in Eskisehir Wednesday.

The four officers, Salih Ayaz, Mehmet Karaca, Yasafettin Acikgoz and Seydi Ahmet Dongel, were accused of wrongfully killing Ahmet Kaymaz and his 12 year old son Ugur in the south eastern Turkish town of Kiziltepe in the province of Mardin in 2004.

The reason that the "justification for the not guilty verdict" doesn't really have to be made public because we all know what the reason is: The victims were Kurds and the murderers were official Turkish state assassins, also known as state security forces. Sounds to me like a little extrajudicial Kurdish-style justice ought to be applied to the murderers named above. More on the issue is available from the AP on Kurdish Aspect. Backgrounder on the murders is available from the Project on Extrajudicial Executions at the New York University, School of Law.

So much for Europe's test case. You know, the only reason any minor changes have been made in Turkey toward anything vaguely resembling an excruciatingly primitive form of democracy has come about through armed resistance. The EU isn't going to do anything to change Turkey because the EU doesn't want Turkey changed. At this moment the Europeans are busily rubbing their greedy hands together with glee over their expected exploitation and destruction of Kurdistan--never mind that the "farmers" mentioned are not farmers in the real sense of the word. They are feudal landlords who haven't stepped foot in Kurdistan for decades. They are assimilated, traitorous Kurds living in the West.

As far as these Europeans and their Kurdish collaborators go, the only thing I can say is, "Good luck, TAK!"

Oh, yeah . . . before I forget . . . the Deep State has once again unleashed one of its monsters on another group of "The Other" in Turkey. The victims are publishers of Christian bibles. Some are suggesting that Turkish Hezbollah is behind this latest atrocity and, as we all know, Turkish Hezbollah was created by the Deep Staters and Paşas in order to fight PKK, in a blast from the past from Le Monde Diplomatique, circa 1997:

The army had, in fact, already set the stage at the time of its September 1980 coup. Anxious to combat the left, the military encouraged Necmettin Erbakan’s National Salvation Party (forerunner to Refah) by making religious courses obligatory in schools and creating special Koranic schools which were to become seedbeds of Islamism. The army also embarked on the even more radical strategy of introducing an "Turkish-Islamist synthesis", through which the officers sought to water down what they saw as the more "revolutionary" aspects of Kemalism. Not only would Islamic values enhance the conservative elements of society - both Turkish and Kurdish - but the "Turkish" component of the synthesis would discourage the seeds of Kurdish nationalism. As a result, they went about co-opting Islamists and neo-fascists - long-established within the state bureaucracy under Alpaslan Turkes’s National Action Party (MHP) with its Grey Wolves militia - into the security forces and other parts of the state apparatus in return for their suspending their own independent activities (5).

The article also mentions the role of the notorious Gulen gangster, Turgut Ozal. More on the whole Turkish-Islamist Synthesis thing at MERIA. I guess the Deep State wants to put Turkish Hezbollah back to work in order to get rid of all the undesirables while, at the same time, focusing attention elsewhere than on the usual suspects . . . like Veli Kucuk or DYP frontrunner, Mehmet Agar.

What can I say? This is the Model of a Muslim and Secular Democracy for the entire Middle East. Just ask the Bush Administration.

As always, Turkish politicians cut to the heart of the matter, from Zaman:

Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputy Ali Osman Başkurt expressed his view that such an incident occurring in Malatya after the killing of an Italian pastor in Trabzon merited concern. “This is tantamount to isolating Turkey from the world. There are those who would like to cut foreign investment and drag Turkey into misery. There are circles working to axe Turkey’s efforts.”

While Hrant Dink's murder was a worry because it damaged Turkey's image, the murders of bible publishers is a worry because it will ruin the economy. Then we have the comments of religious fanatics:

TİMAV [Turkey İmam-Hatip Alumni Foundation] President Ahmet Ağırbaşlı said in a written statement: “We vehemently condemn this attack. Such an incident can be accepted neither by Islam nor by humanity. Every member of every religion is at the same time a missionary of his religion. There is nothing more natural than one wanting to explain and promote his religion. Every member of every religion has the right to work to promote his religion.”

Ağırbaşlı said he hoped the assailants would soon be captured and punished as prescribed by law.

Now, that last line is highly ironic in a country in which criminals--like murderers--are routinely given amnesty after a couple of years, while political prisoners languish in isolation for decades.

In other words, the idea of "punishment as prescribed by law" is utterly meaningless.

FOR LOVE AND BLOOD MONEY

"Everybody knows Northrop Grumman and G.E., but if you went out on the street and asked who the top 10 [defense] contractors are, I can guarantee you that SAIC would not be one of them."
~ Glenn Grossenbacher, in "Washington's $8 Billion Shadow".

Last Thursday, I posted a link to a long article on the Wolfowitz scandal from The New Yorker and carried at Truthout, noting that the article suggested that Wolfowitz had been appointed to the World Bank in an effort to keep events in Iraq moving according to the Bush Administration playbook.

More on that has come out today, from the NYTimes:

The Defense Department directed a private contractor in 2003 to hire Shaha Ali Riza, a World Bank employee and the companion of Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense, to spend a month studying issues related to setting up a new government in Iraq, the contractor said Monday.

The contractor, Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, said that it had been directed to hire Ms. Riza by the office of the under secretary for policy. The head of that office at the time was Douglas J. Feith, who reported to Mr. Wolfowitz.

After her trip to Iraq, Ms. Riza briefed members of the executive board of the World Bank on efforts to rebuild after the American invasion and specifically on the status of Iraqi women, according to Ms. Riza’s supervisor at the time.

All of this is very loaded. For example, SAIC is perhaps one of the worst corporate parasites sucking blood money out of Iraq. Check this excellent rundown on the SAIC bloodsuckers at in a Vanity Fair article from last month:

The company's annual revenues, almost all of which come from the federal government, approached $8 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, and they are continuing to climb. SAIC's goal is to reach as much as $12 billion in revenues by 2008. As for the financial yardstick that really gets Wall Street's attention—profitability—SAIC beats the S&P 500 average. Last year ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, posted a return on revenue of 11 percent. For SAIC the figure was 11.9 percent. If "contract backlog" is any measure—that is, contracts negotiated and pending—the future seems assured. The backlog stands at $13.6 billion. That's one and a half times more than the backlog at KBR Inc., a subsidiary of the far better known government contractor once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Halliburton Company.

And since we just celebrated Tax Day in the US, check this out:

It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS.

How much did you donate last year to SAIC's war industry welfare?

What everyone agrees on is this: No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC. No contractor seems to exploit conflicts of interest in Washington with more zeal. And no contractor cloaks its operations in greater secrecy. SAIC almost never touts its activities in public, preferring to stay well below the radar.

Naturally, there's a link to what Sibel Edmonds has referred to as Dime-a-Dozen Generals:

Civilians at SAIC used to joke that the company had so many admirals and generals in its ranks it could start its own war. Some might argue that, in the case of Iraq, it did.

[ . . . ]

SAIC executives have been involved at every stage of the life cycle of the war in Iraq. SAIC personnel were instrumental in pressing the case that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the first place, and that war was the only way to get rid of them. Then, as war became inevitable, SAIC secured contracts for a broad range of operations in soon-to-be-occupied Iraq. When no weapons of mass destruction were found, SAIC personnel staffed the commission that was set up to investigate how American intelligence could have been so disastrously wrong.

It's all an inside job, and a completely cynical one at that. There's more backgrounder on SAIC at CorpWatch, and a search of that site for "Science Applications International Corporation" reveals more info. Then there's a listing at Sourcewatch.

Another connection between the Wolfowitz girlfriend scandal and Sibel's information is the mention of Douglas Feith. In the NYTimes article, once again Feith feigns Alzheimer's disease by claiming that he can't recall a damned thing about ordering Wolfowitz's main squeeze to be hired by SAIC or to be sent to Iraq. Of course, "Doug Feith's International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey . . ." as Lukery has previously posted, meaning that Feith is deep into the deep shit of the Deep State.

More on Feith's stupidity vis-a-vis Iraq here. Feith also cooked the books, so to speak, on the al-Qaeda/Saddam connection.

And what about Shaha Ali Riza? Well, for one thing, the arrangements Wolfowitz made for her put her in the State Department and increased her salary from $132,660/year to $193,590/year--with no donations to SAIC required because, not being a resident of the US, Riza paid no taxes on income. That tax-free salary definitely put her way over Condoleeza Rice, who earns $186,000 before taxes, according to the BBC.

Riza herself took to playing the helpless, innocent victim last week, an angle that the LATimes has begun to manufacture. But is Riza really so helpless or innocent?

The story is that Riza moved out of the World Bank to the State Department because Wolfowitz took over as the World Bank chief and you can't have that kind of conflict of interest at the World Bank. But with the news today of Doug Feith's involvement with this business, I suspect Riza's move was contrived to continue to facilitate blood money rolling in to war industry contractors, like SAIC, from Iraq. In the build-up to the Iraq war, there was considerable tension, if not downright hostility, between the State Department and CIA, and the Pentagon. Kanan Makiya talked about the hostility in a PBS Frontline interview in 2003. That hostility continued during the so-called reconstruction and continues this day through the neoconservative gang vs. Baker-Hamilton gang (read that as Pentagon gang vs. State/CIA gang).

If Wolfowitz was appointed to lead the World Bank in order to facilitate the Pentagon gang's interests in Iraq, then my money says Riza was moved to the State Department not to avoid a conflict of interest at the World Bank, but to keep tabs on the State Department's handling of Iraq for the Pentagon gang. That's the real reason why everyone's making a big deal of this affair.

With the big blood bucks of the war industry on the line in Iraq, the antagonism between the Pentagon gang and the State/CIA gang continues, only this time underground and with a mole--Shaha Ali Riza.

MILITARY KEYNESIANISM AND MILITARY RAPES--AMERICAN STYLE

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower, January, 1961.

It seems like more people are taking notice of military spending by the US government lately and the lucrative permanent state of war known as the War on Terror, Inc. that's enriching the elites and screwing everyone else. There's a discussion of this subject in an interview with Anthony Gregory at Stress (Runtime: 40 minutes) and there's a discussion of how ridiculous the War on Terror, Inc. really is, at the same blog, in an interview with John Mueller, a political science professor from Ohio State University (Runtime: just shy of an hour).

Stress was also the blog that did the great interview with Richard Cummings on his great Lockheed article back in January.

Warning: Those interviews contain a heavy does of history, which is good for you anyway so just suck it up and listen.

Additionally, in browsing the news this morning, I came across this little gem from Counterpunch. How's military spending these days? Take a look:

The Pentagon budget for the current fiscal year (2007) is about $456 billion. President Bush's proposed increase of 10% for next year will raise this figure to over half a trillion dollars, that is, $501.6 billion for fiscal year 2008. A proposed supplemental appropriation to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "brings proposed military spending for FY 2008 to $647.2 billion, the highest level of military spending since the end of World War II-higher than Vietnam, higher than Korea, higher than the peak of the Reagan buildup."[1]

[ . . . ]

Although the official military budget already eats up the lion's share of the public money (crowding out vital domestic needs), it nonetheless grossly understates the true magnitude of military spending. The real national defense budget, according to Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute, is nearly twice as much as the official budget. The reason for this understatement is that the official Department of Defense budget excludes not only the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also a number of other major cost items.[3]

[ . . . ]

After adding these camouflaged and misplaced expenses to the official Department of Defense budget, Higgs concludes: "I propose that in considering future defense budgetary costs, a well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it. You may overstate the truth, but if so, you'll not do so by much."[4]

Who benefits, you ask? All our old favorites:

Giant arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman have been the main beneficiaries of the Pentagon's spending bonanza. This is clearly reflected in the continuing rise of the value of their shares in the stock market: "Shares of U.S. defense companies, which have nearly trebled since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, show no signs of slowing down. . . . The feeling that makers of ships, planes and weapons are just getting into their stride has driven shares of leading Pentagon contractors Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., and General Dynamics Corp. to all-time highs."[6]

Who bears the brunt of all this--besides the overseas victims of the War on Terror, Inc., that is? The ordinary people in the US, that's who, and the author of the piece, Ismail Hossein-Zadeh, makes the case that the elites of the Military-Industrial Complex are redistributing the wealth by taking it away from the ordinary people and putting it in their own pockets. Read the article for the details on that.

These ideas are not entirely new. Some were warning of these things back in 2001 but, then, they were Marxists so why bother to pay attention?

Now, if you listen to the Anthony Gregory interview in particular (Don't be such a gundî; Listen to it!), you'll get an idea of how this particular system works. The thing is, this system has a name: military Keynesianism. I don't see any "Neutrality Disputed" signs over at Wikipedia, so let's go with their definition:

Military Keynesianism is a government economic policy in which the government devotes large amounts of spending to the military in an effort to increase economic growth. This is a specific variation on Keynesian economics, developed by English economist John Maynard Keynes. Instances commonly supplied as examples of such policies are Germany in the 1930s and the United States in the 1980s, although whether these assessments are accurate is the subject of vigorous debate.

Germany in the 1930s? How appropriate.

Not only does military Keynesianism characterize the policies of Nazi Germany and the US under the Reagan years, but it's continued into the new century, as Chalmers Johnson has made the argument this year for policies of military Keynesianism as characterized by the current US administration. Of course, one could argue that the current administration is merely a continuation of the Reagan administration as it was passed on by the Clinton administration (Remember all the weapons that Clinton's gang sold to Turkey during the Dirty War?)

Think about it: Is this what you want for the future of Kurdistan, because we know that unending low-intensity conflict is what THEY plan for Kurdistan? If not, maybe you should read that Marxist article from 2001 again, focusing on what a proper response to the MIC elites should be.

There was something else I noticed while reading the Hossein-Zadeh article at Counterpunch, and this is something that I haven't really seen in the mainstream US media: Ralph Nader asking the question, "Where are the cries of outrage over military rapes?" This news started to leak a little bit last year, when a US Army female colonel mentioned it at some commission in New York, but the news sure as hell didn't take off. You would think the fact that American female soldiers are being raped by their comrades-at-arms would be a subject for intense public debate, if not scrutiny. But no. The media elites would rather distract everyone with Anna Nicole "Call Girl" Smith's death and the huge mystery of whom the father of her baby might be, or with Britney "The Freak" Spears shaving her head, or, as Ralph Nader points out, with the Don "Nappy-Headed Ho" Imus sacking.

Why is that?

Well, for one thing, the media only reports on what it really cares about, and it really only cares about other media or Hollywood types--the kind all the scumbag talking heads hang out with. For another thing, it just doesn't fit the wholesome, egalitarian, democratic, OFFICIAL bullshit that the MIC elites want the ordinary people to believe.

Some journalists and researchers have done their homework on the fact that US soldiers rape their own, at places like Truthout, AlterNet, Salon, or MediaWatch.

There's nothing, however, from the mainstream US media or others on the reactionary right. If Americans can do that to their own, and the American military and elite establishment can guarantee that the news isn't discussed by the public, then what do you think these same predators do to ordinary, foreign women?

And the last question you should ask yourself is this: Do you want these same predators "protecting" Kurdistan? Think long and hard about your answer to that, hevals, because if the US covers up what it does to its own, what do you think it will do when it brings this behavior to Kurdistan? They don't give a damn about you.

And you might want to bear in mind the military Keynesian aspects of that so-called protection as well.

Hey, do you think if the US coughed up those Iranians it kidnapped in Hewlêr that Iran might cough up the American ex-FBI guy that went missing from Kish Island?

PROBLEMS FOR THE PAŞAS

"While at the trial, the mission learned that the evidence uncovered during the investigation of the Umut bookstore bombing supports the claim that there are parties unaligned with Kurdish nationalism using unlawful political violence in the region. Further, the mission concluded that the events surrounding this particular incident —irrespective of the eventual verdict for or against the three accused— put into question the authorities’ will to carry out an effective investigation to uncover the real facts of the case."
~ KHRP, Semdinli Bombing Trial Observation Report.

Serhado has a new CD out, thanks to the hevals at KurdishInfo:

Serhados' "Xewna Jiyan" is now out in the stores both in Kurdistan and in Turkey.

22-year-old Serhado, was born in the Swedish capital of Stockholm with a blood-line originating from Midyad in the Merdin province of northern Kurdistan. He grew up with his mother, his older brother and younger sister in the segregated suburb of Sollentuna in Stockholm, not seeing much of his father during his childhood as his father was working for the Kurdish TV channel MED-TV in Belgium.

More at the link, plus a link to Serhado's website at which you can download one of the songs from the CD. Is Serhado, and the other Kurdish rappers, the dengbêj of Kurdistan's future? I would love to see interaction between the older generation of dengbêj and the younger because art and music, like history, does not have abrupt endings and beginnings. Nor do these things occur in a vacuum, but there is always some degree of continuity. Therefore it would be interesting to know how the young dengbêj draw upon tradition while embracing new and non-Kurdish forms of their art and what advice or comments the older dengbêj would have for the younger.

At zReportage, you can check out a new photo slide show of the women of PKK, in a short photo essay by Anastasia Taylor-Lind titled, "Kurdish Amazons." Click on the View Slide Show or you can view the photos individually (but in smaller format). Check out the kitten. As noted in the text that accompanies the photos, "With their camps in the mountains and an emphasis on education and equality, the PKK aims to offer an alternative model for Kurdish and Middle Eastern women." More on that from last November.


In a TDN article carried on KurdishInfo, it appears that military prosecutors have put their boots down on Nokta magazine, which broke the story of the paşa's diary and the two planned coups from 2004:

Police with search warrants on Friday raided a magazine that ran a story about two alledged coups planned in 2004 by senior officers in the military for possible information on an ongoing investigation.

The police closed all the entrances to the building before launching the search. The prosecutor's office in Istanbul's Bakırköy district acted on behalf of the military prosecutor's office.

CNN-Türk reported that the police were also searching for information linked a another case that involved a report prepared by the Office of the Chief of General Staff on the positions of various journalists and newspapers. The report was leaked to the press. Reports also said that the police were seizing the magazine's computers.

In the March 29 issue of the magazine, it was claimed that the commanders of the army, navy and the air force, together with the gendarmerie chief, planned two separate coups in 2004. The information was based on the supposed diaries of retired Navy Commander Özden Örnek, who denied owning such diaries.

The article claimed that the chief of general staff of the day, retired Gen. Hilmi Özkök, had opposed the top commanders.

Geez, what a shock!

While the raid and confiscations at Nokta are not surprising, shades of Ferhat Sarikaya and Semdinli in Amed certainly are surprising. According to a report in TNA, the Amed Bar Association will file a criminal complaint against Yaşar Paşa (Buyukanit) for interfering in the legal process of the Semdinli bombing investigation:

Diyarbakir Bar is preparing to file a criminal complaint against Chief of General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit claiming that his statements regarding the Semdinli Case may affect the judicial process.

Diyarbakir Bar head Sezgin Tanrikulu stated on Friday that referring opinions of the Chief of General Staff and his making statements frequently can only be explained with the unique character of Turkish democracy.

Buyukanit commented on Semdinli case at the press conference held on Thursday stating that the accusations targeted to Buyukanit have nothing to do with his personality, but the Turkish Armed Forces itself. "A legal murder was committed that will go down in history of law," said Buyukanit on Thursday.

". . . [U]nique character of Turkish democracy"--what a euphemism that is! More from the Gulf Times:

“The remarks by the chief of the General Staff (on Semdinli) were aimed at influencing the legal process,” the head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association Sezgin Tanrikulu said in a statement, announcing the decision to take legal action against Buyukanit.

The particular article of the TCK (Turkish penal code) that Tanrikulu is invoking is Article 288:

A person who explicitly makes a verbal or written declaration for the purpose of influencing the public prosecutor, judge, the court, expert witness or witnesses until the final judgement is given about an investigation or prosecution will be imprisoned for a term from six months to three years. If this offence is committed through the press or media, the penalty to be imposed shall be increased by one half.

Now, there have been journalists charged with Article 288 for simply writing about investigations or trials. Hrant Dink and others at Agos newspaper had been charged with Article 288. More on all of those charges at IFEX.

However, as Article 288 clearly states, you don't have to simply write about these things, but you can be charged for talking about them, too. In the case of Yaşar Paşa, the one person with the most power in Turkey, and whose every word is reported on in the Turkish press . . . well, since Yaşar Paşa knows all of this very well, then I think it can easily be argued that his offence was committed through the press and media and should result in the increased penalty.

Let's review what happened with Ferhat Sarikaya and the Semdinli investigation, including Yaşar Paşa's meddling in the affair, from HRW:

In late February, Sabri Uzun, Director of the Police Security Intelligence Bureau, raised concern about possible military involvement in the bombings in Şemdinli when he was questioned by a parliamentary commission. He indicated in coded but quite clear terms that the November 1 explosion had possibly been the work of people within the security forces, and expressed doubt that the gendarmes indicted for the bookshop attack could have been in Şemdinli without the knowledge of higher ranking officials, as claimed. Within a month Sabri Uzun was removed from his post. This administrative sanction appears to be an attempt to intimidate any other public officials who might be considering providing information to the parliamentary commission, or offering testimony in the Şemdinli prosecutions.

On March 3, 2006, the prosecutor in the Şemdinli bombing case, Mr Ferhat Sarıkaya, issued an indictment, in which he also proposed that further investigations be carried out to determine whether senior military officers had ordered the attack on the bookshop. The indictment suggested that a motive for the original killing may have been “[t]o bring the local [Kurdish] population to a state where it can be lured with ease into action … then exaggerating this threat beyond its true level, in order to prepare the way for violent measures by the state and to permit emergency rule to take precedence over the administrative system in the region … permitting security chaos in the region to be used to apply pressure on the political authority, and thereby … to frustrate Turkey’s fundamental political directions—the modernizing project, the EU process—and to protect the power and place of the core political/bureaucratic governing elite.” The indictment also referred by name to a general who had reportedly described one of the alleged perpetrators as “a good offıcer.” On March 20, the Office of the Chief of General Staff issued a statement that the indictment was “political … aiming to undermine the Turkish Armed Forces and the fight against terror,” and made a complaint against the prosecutor. By April 21, the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors had taken Prosecutor Sarıkaya off the case, removed him from his job, and stripped him of his status as a lawyer for “abuse of his duty and exceeding his authority.”

The general referred to by name was none other than Yaşar Paşa, Land Forces Commander at the time.

This is going to be very interesting to watch. Will the charges go through? Will Sezgin Tanrikulu go the way of Ferhat Sarikaya? Will every lawyer in Amed be rounded up and arrested à la DTP? Will the paşas resurrect their coup plans from 2004? Are Yaşar Paşa's brayings about an invasion of South Kurdistan a distraction from the charge of influencing the legal process?

Stay tuned.

MORE FROM HOUZAN ON KURDISH WOMEN AND SECULARISM

"Throughout December the verbal attacks continued from the mosques throughout Halabja, Erbil and Kirkuk. Then three of Kurdistan's Islamic parties, the United Islamic Party, the Islamic Kurdish League and the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, joined the debate. By which I mean they bellowed for him [Mariwan Halabjayi] to be punished."
~ Mark Thomas.

Toward the end of March I provided a link to a petition against Shari'a as a major source of law for South Kurdistan, and mentione Houzan Mahmoud as one of the driving forces behind the petition. On Friday, an article written by Houzan appeared in the Guardian's Comment Is Free:

It is clear to the world that in those countries where sharia law is practised - or simply where groups of Islamic militias operate - freedom of expression, speech and association is under threat, if not totally absent. The rights of non-Islamic religious minorities are invariably violated and women suffer disproportionately.

Mmm . . . sounds like that great and secular Model of Democracy, Turkey, doesn't it?

The implementation of sharia law in Kurdistan would be the start of new bloody chapter in the Islamists' history of inhuman violence against the people, of oppression sanctioned by religious law.

In truth, sharia law contains explicit legal prescriptions that justify the violation of women's rights, specifically when it comes to family matters such as inheritance, marriage, divorce and custody of children.

Violent acts against women are already practised in Kurdistan. For decades, Kurdish women have been denied rights and have been oppressed due to patriarchal and religious cultures. Women in Kurdistan are still caught between the "values" of Islamic teaching and the desire for liberation. Thousands of women have been murdered in so-called honour killings, and the slaughter goes on to this day.

Women "self-burning", being forced into marriage and being denied the right to choose a partner are widespread. According to the Kurdistan human rights ministry, more than 533 women are reported to have committed suicide over the past year alone.

Well, if it isn't a damned shame to know that "more than 533 women" have committed suicide within the span of a year in South Kurdistan alone, then I don't know what a damned shame is. To think that patriarchal society places such restrictive, unjust pressure on the Middle East's most courageous, intelligent, and beautiful women is a filthy, stinking shame and a scandal of the worst proportions. Those Kurdish men--and Kurdish women--who continue to support a patriarchal system that brutally represses half of the Kurdish people, should be taken out and publicly horse-whipped within an inch of their lives as an example to everyone else.

I travelled back to Kurdistan in order to meet with two other members of our campaign, Sozan Shehab, member of the Kurdistan parliament, and Stivan Shamzinani, a journalist, to present our petition calling for removal of article seven to the Kurdistan parliament.

We met the committee responsible for the writing of the constitution and we held a press conference in the parliament buildings. Our campaign and our unequivocal demand for secularism became big news in Kurdistan and we were featured in the national papers and on TV channels, radio and websites.

Bijî Houzan, and her comrades, for making the situation of Kurdish women and the question of secularization into the public forum. Certainly there needs to be much public scrutiny of this subject.

The media attention given to our campaign panicked the Islamists, and just few days after our visit to parliament they launched a counter-campaign. They have announced their intention to "campaign to retain the Islamic identity of the Kurdish people". They have started to propagate the nonsense claim, via their various media outlets, that we want to impose secularism and forcibly deny people any right to express their identity as Muslims. Of course, this is simply another cowardly lie from a group of reactionaries who have been put on the back foot by our campaign's successes.

Well, if you want to impose the Turkish flavor of secularism, then of course people will be forcibly denied the right to express any religious identity (as well as any distinct ethnic identity), but the Turkish model is severely flawed anyway. This may be a place where Diaspora Kurds can jump into the battle and explain how secularism in the West has guaranteed the freedom to practice one's religious identity, at least before the jackasses on the fascist Western right purposely began to fuse their ideas about "Islamofascism" (what I prefer to call "totalitarian political Islam") with Islam as a whole.

The same goes, naturally, for the question of ethnic identity. Go to the link to read all of the things Houzan has to say about the campaign for secularism in South Kurdistan.

Deutsche Welle has a little something on the recent verbal sparring between Hewlêr and Ankara. Apparently the EU is urging "restraint." Yeah, I guess they'd have egg on their faces if South Kurdistan turned into another Northern Cyprus-type project for the paşas. I mean, how bad for image would it be to allow Turkey to join the economic club if that happened? They'd have to put off EU accession for at least six months.

I want to point out the third picture in the DW article, particularly the caption. That photo is from the Amed Serhildan last year, and it shows Turkish security forces massacring Kurds in Amed. But the caption gives the impression that those magnificent defenders of Turkish democracy are battling "rebels," meaning HPG. If DW can't or won't put a proper caption on the photos, then don't use the damned photos.

Asia Times has an article on the battle between Hewlêr and Ankara, too. Written by a former Indian ambassador to Turkey, it seems to stress the fact that Ankara already has economic control over South Kurdistan. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, to allow free economic reign to Turkey in South Kurdistan is to simply create a very strong reason for Turkish invasion. Business interests are national and security interests--just look at the US example. Any threat to US business interests is considered a threat to national and security interests, and since Turkey is always looking around with that monkey-see-monkey-do attitude, it's going to use this as another excuse for invasion on top of the Kerkuk issue.

But that's old news. What was interesting about the Asia Times article was something on page 2:

There is an extraordinary passage in the recent book The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End by Peter Galbraith, adviser to the Kurdish regional government. Galbraith reveals how Kurdish leaders themselves are modest in their expectations of Kurdish autonomy but external actors significantly influence them.

Galbraith said, "I realized that the Kurdish leaders had a conceptual problem in planning for a federal Iraq. They were thinking [circa 2003] in terms of devolution of power - meaning that Baghdad grants them rights. I urged that the equation be reversed. In a memo I sent [Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime minister] Barham [Salih] and [Prime Minister of the KRG] Nechirvan [Barzani] in August, I drew a distinction between the previous autonomy proposals and federalism: 'Federalism is a bottom-up system. The basic organizing unit of the country is the province or state' ...

"In a federal system, residual power lies with the federal unit (that is, state or province); under an autonomy system it rests with the central government. The central government has no ability to revoke a federal status or power: it can revoke an autonomy arrangement ...

"The constitution should state that the constitution of Kurdistan, and laws made pursuant to the constitution, is the supreme law of Kurdistan. Any conflict between laws of Kurdistan and the laws of the constitution of Iraq shall be decided in favor of the former. These ideas eventually became the basis of Kurdistan's proposals for an Iraq constitution."

In short, Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq sought Galbraith's help in 2003 for structuring Iraq's federal system of government, but instead he convinced them about a confederal system of government! Turkey ought to worry now that Galbraith might proceed to convince a hopelessly distracted Bush administration, too, that the Iraqi state was an aberration of history.

Now, I have never read specifically where Peter Galbraith has said that "the Iraqi state was an aberration of history," but I would not be surprised if he actually does believe the statement to be true, which it is. It was constructed with no regard whatsoever for the various ethnicities carved up, shoved together, and ruled by centralized strongmen for most, if not all, of its existence. This was done purely to control energy resources and that's the same reason the US has refused to consider a confederal system of government or to try to negotiate such a an arrangement.

Americans still largely have no clue about the ethnicities of the region. Example, this headline: "Turkey Attacks Iraqi Kurds", the body of which post goes on to describe the ongoing Turkish Terrorist Forces' operations in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, not in South Kurdistan. Turkey did send over a few artillery rounds last Sunday, as always blasting a civilian Başûrî village near Zaxo, but that fact was not addressed in the post.

Those fun-loving fascists at PajamasMedia have posted a little chat one of them had with Ankara's ambassador to the US and if you're so inclined, you can head over there to read Nabi Sensoy's lies. Man, there's nothing I'd rather do than sit and chat over coffee with a genocider and genocide-denier . . . except maybe develop rectal cancer.

On the other hand, Rock the Truth gets an "A" for effort, for recognizing that the Ankara regime has "massacre(d) their Kurds," and for noting that the majority of the almost-proverbial "37,000 people" murdered during the current Kurdish freedom struggle have been Kurds.

Very well done. Maybe there's hope, however dim.

BUYUKANIT BRAYS

"Turkish repression of the Kurdish minority in the southeastern part of the country has been severe, with the Turkish armed forces using U.S. weapons in widespread attacks against civilian populations, destroying over 3,000 Kurdish villages in recent years. Turkish forces have periodically crossed into Iraq into the UN safe haven to attack Kurds as well, with the U.S. virtually alone in the international community in backing such illegal incursions."
~ Stephen Zunes, FPIF.

Well, you knew it was only a matter of time, didn't you? The real ruler of Turkey, Yasar Buyukanit, finally came out today in his first press conference since taking up his position as the Turkish chief of general staff and "asked" the government for permission to invade South Kurdistan. And that whole bit about "asking permission" is window-dressing for all those idiots in the West who believe that Turkey is a democracy. From Australia's The Age:

The head of Turkey's powerful military General Staff called for a military operation in northern Iraq to quash Turkish Kurdish rebels hiding there.

"From the military point of view, a (military) operation in northern Iraq must be made," General Yasar Buyukanit told a rare news conference, adding that a political decision from the government was first required to authorise such a step.

More on that from MSNBC and something from TDN.
Bianet gives a rundown on Turkey's Human Rights Foundation's reaction to Buyukanit's press conference:

Evaluating Gen. Büyükanıt's words to bianet, Turkey's Human Rights Foundation (TİHV) chair Yavuz Önen said: "He targeted everybody from academics, the government, the European Union to human rights activists but avoided to mention anything about the policies of United States".

Önen argues, overall, Büyükanıt's speech signals a period of increased pressure and control over the forces of democracy in the country as he aims to block any debate on increasing freedoms and rights, forcing people to self-censorship.

Referring to Büyükanıt's criticism on current legislation and how it scrutinizes the fight against terrorism, Önen voices fears of implementation of legislative changes resembling martial law, which in return would curb the freedoms in Turkey.

That means a virtual return to the State of Emergency. Pretty interesting that Buyukanit doesn't criticize the US. Think about that one long and hard.

Then there was something interesting in Zaman, too:

But there are also strong indications that keeping the Turkish cross-border operation as an option on the table -- despite the possible serious repercussions on Turkey's international image -- is aimed at intimidating the Iraqi Kurds for their plans to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to the Kurdish autonomous region through a planned referendum to be held this year; let alone aspirations to officially set up an independent Kurdish state. Ankara fears any such attempt could encourage its own Kurds to do the same.

In fact, retired Gen. Edip Başer, the appointed Turkish coordinator in the fight against the PKK, told news station CNN Turk on March 9 that Turkey's priority strategically has been to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq rather than the fight against PKK terror.

So Baser is expressing the view consistent with Henri Barkey's analysis from 2005 which was mentioned in yesterday's post. It's not only the prevention of an independent Kurdish state in South Kurdistan that the Ankara regime opposes, but control of Kerkuk is also a major issue:

US-Kurdish rift emerges on Kirkuk referendum's timing
Thursday, April 12, 2007

PKK problem cannot be resolved unless Turks, Iraqi Kurds talk, Kurdish official says

Ümit ENGİNSOY
WASHINGTON - Turkish Daily News

U.S. and Iraqi Kurdish officials on Tuesday appeared to be disagreeing on the timing of a controversial referendum for the future of the oil-rich and multi-ethnic northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, but it was not clear if the rift could eventually derail Kurdish plans to include the disputed area into their semi-autonomous region.

At an Iraq conference here, a senior Iraqi Kurdish official insisted that the referendum be held before the end of this year, as planned by the war-torn country's constitution, but a U.S. State Department official said Washington had no position on the polls' timing.

Turkish diplomats welcomed what they saw as a sign of a change in U.S. policy on Kirkuk, which so far had fully backed the Iraqi Kurdish position.

First of all, the Kurdish official quoted (Qubad Talabanî) is wrong; the PKK "problem" cannot be resolved unless Turks talk with the Kurds that they have been in the process of genociding for the last 80 years, and those Kurds are not the Kurds of South Kurdistan. They are the Kurds of North Kurdistan. Secondly, in reading through the entire article, it would appear that the title is misleading--not unusual--because there is no indication that the US opposes the timing of the Kerkuk referendum. Futhermore, if, as the article states, the US supports a resolution based on the Iraqi constitution, then there is no "rift." The US spokeswoman also remarks that "the outcome should be one that takes into account the worries of all parties." Turkey is not a party to the Iraqi constitution and therefore Turkey should butt out.

Again, the entire problem of Turkish meddling goes back to Henri Barkey's analysis and to the fact that the Turkish state is fascist in nature and is founded upon the premise that Kurds do not exist. To admit that Kurds exist, through the reality of either a de facto or actual independent Kurdish state in South Kurdistan, is to undermine the very foundation of Türkiye Cumhuriyeti--the Turkish Republic--and the entire question of identity within Turkey.

Well, okay, there's also the fact that since its beginning, the Ankara regime has viewed Kurds as untermenschen and now it sticks in their craw that Kurds may be equal enough human beings to make the attempt to govern themselves, to solve their own problems, and to create a democracy of their own liking. All of those are very dangerous ideas because if Kurds in the South can do it, Kurds in the North can do it and Kurds in the East and West can do it.

Dangerous, very dangerous.

There's a good read at Mother Jones on the Israelis in South Kurdistan, and there is a far different conclusion drawn than that which The New Yorker's resident moron, Seymour Hersh, came up with back in 2004. Teaser:

What I found was not the story I had expected. Instead of Michaels being part of a covert operation to set up anti-Iranian proxies in Kurdish Iraq, I discovered that Michaels and his associates were part of an effort by the Kurds and their allies to lobby the West for greater power in Iraq, and greater clout in Washington, and at the same time, by a group of Israeli ex security officials to rekindle good relations with their historical allies the Kurds through joint infrastructure, economic development, and security projects. It was, in other words, a story about influence-building, buying, and profit, albeit with subplots that were equal parts John le Carre and Keystone Kops, and a cast of characters ranging from ex-Mossad head Yatom to a former German superspy, with Israeli counterterrorism commandos, Kurdish political dynasties, powerful American lobbyists, Turkish business tycoons thrown in—not to mention millions of dollars stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

[ . . . ]

In the end, Yatom and Michaels’ business activities may well be evidence, as much as any covert U.S. interests, of the Kurds’ superb gamesmanship, pragmatism, and sense of opportunity—instincts honed to a fine art by a people that, lacking durable proximate allies, has learned how to cultivate the enemies of its enemies. The Mossad’s former Irbil station chief, Eliezer Geizi Tsafrir, told me that like the Israelis, the Kurds regard themselves as an historically stateless people surrounded by hostile nations. Back when Tsafrir served in Irbil, he even helped set up a Kurdish intelligence service, in cooperation with the Barzani patriarch, Mustafa Barzani. “They [the Kurds] approached us, saying they had nobody to help them in the world, and our people had suffered too,” he said. “We supplied them with cannons, guns, anti-air equipment, all sorts of equipment, and even lobbying. The contacts between us, and the sympathy, will last for generations to come.”

Use them if you can.

If you've read Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, and are familiar with the "propaganda model" proposed in the book, take a look at an analysis of the American media's coverage of the British hostages, from ZNet. You'll find it interesting.

Also, check out the scandal over World Bank chief, Paul Wolfowitz, and how he's helped his girlfriend get a World Bank tax-free salary--significantly greater than Condoleeza Rice's salary--in addition to a State Department salary, at the NYTimes, the BBC, or the Guardian. Another, longer, article from The New Yorker is available from Truthout, and that one also suggests that the Wolfowitz World Bank appointment was made in an attempt to further US interests in Iraq.

MORE ON TURKISH MEDDLING

"Compared to Iran, which has had a long relationship with Iraq's largest community, the Sh'ia, Turkey cannot claim any influence over any of the groups in Iraq except for a segment of the Turkmen, specifically the ITF."
~ Henri Barkey.

There's another blog by a Kurd in the US that I came across today. It appears to be written by a Bakûrî, and can be checked out at Kurdistan.

NPR has report today on the situation between the Ankara regime and the Southern Kurds. Runtime almost 5 minutes.

The height of absurdity is that the Ankara regime is complaining about the deaths of 10 Mehmetciks in the last few days and the absurdity is that if the Ankara regime stopped its operations against the HPG, no one would die. Naturally, the continued sacrifice of Turkish youth is the least of Buyukanit's concerns and we know for a fact it's the least of Erdogan's concerns, as reported last September here and here. Specifically, Buyukanit responded, before the fact, to protests by mothers of dead Mehmetciks by insisting "that there would be no change to the system of military service."

Erdogan's attitude is summed up thusly:

Turkish media on Tuesday attacked the prime minister for comments he made about soldiers killed in battle with Kurdish rebels that commentators considered flippant.

"It's not okay, Mr. Tayyip," the daily Vatan said.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the comments Monday during a speech in the western town of Balikesir, during which he was interrupted by a member of the audience who screamed "We don't want any more martyrs!"

Erdogan heard the shout and stopped his speech to respond. "Military service isn't the place to lay down and unwind," he said. "Military service has risks. It is not a touristic place."

Prior to Turkish frustration reaching critical mass, PKK offered a democratic, political solution to end the fighting, including the following points:

The framework for the steps that need to be developed mutually in the second phase for a permanent solution:

1- The acknowledgement of the Kurdish identity and the constitutional guarantee of all identities under the identity of a Citizen of Turkey as the main identity,

2- The lifting of obstacles on the development of the Kurdish language and culture, the acknowledgement of education in the mother tongue and Kurdish acknowledged as the official second language alongside Turkish in the Kurdistan region, and with this to show respect to other minority cultures,

3- The acknowledgement, on the basis of freely practicing politics and organizing, of the right to thought, belief and freedom of expression, the lifting of all social inequalities in the constitution and laws, firstly being those of gender discrimination,

4- A social reconciliation project with the aim of mutual forgiveness of both people’s for the development of a peace and freedom union, on this basis the release of political prisoners including the PKK Leadership, and no obstacles to them participating in politics and social life,

5- The removal of forces in Kurdistan there for the purposes of special war, the abolition of the village guard system and the necessary social and political projects to be developed for the return of displaced villagers,

6- In parallel to the realization of the above articles, the initiation, with a timetable determined by both parties, of the gradual disarmament and legal participation into the democratic social life.

Note also that any continued talk of "separatism" is a function of Turkish propaganda, as the statement concludes with the following:

We would like as a movement to emphasize once again that the right solution is a democratic autonomy within the borders of Turkey. We believe that a solution in the unity of Turkey will be for the benefit of firstly the Kurdish people and all the people of the region.

Emphasizing "once again," meaning that this statement is a repetition of PKK's position. How does a search for a political solution "in the unity of Turkey" equate to separatism? Unless you're a Turkish fascist or you're stupid enough to believe Turkish propaganda. This is the solution that both the Ankara and Washington regimes rejected, along with the fifth unilateral PKK ceasefire, and all this for one very cynical reason: to continue to make money off a very long-running low-intensity conflict, as the appointment of Lockheed Martin's Joseph Ralston proved.

If the Southern Kurdish leadership were serious about the situation of Kurds under Turkish occupation, if they were truly concerned about the genocide that the Ankara regime, with the assistance of the Washington regime, has carried out against the Kurdish people in the North, they would have taken every opportunity to press both issues--that of the democratic resolution and that of the ceasefire. They would have demanded the resignation of Lockheed's Ralston and they would have clamored for an honest broker to be appointed as "special envoy" to coordinate a peace process, instead of coordinating Turkish procurement of more Lockheed Martin hardware.

On the other hand, it might be bit difficult, not to mention embarrassing, to cut Lockheed Martin out of the loop, since it is the corporation that is involved in the US foreign policy decision-making process.

Even Qubad Talabanî is busily trying to usurp the leadership of Northern Kurds by ignoring and bypassing them while speaking of his "Turkish brothers" and pledging his undying love for them:

Kubad Talabani, who is Iraqi President Jelal Talabani's son, also noted the importance of economic relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds: “All we seek is a reciprocation of our affection, reciprocation of that brotherly relationship where Turkey continues to help Kurdistan's economic development. Hundreds of Turkish companies have been party to Kurdistan's development. We have seen what a good and solid relationship can do for your economy and for ours.”

He sounds exactly like every other ulusalci on the planet and it is despicable. Throughout that entire article, there is not one mention of the PKK's democratic resolution, no pointing out the fact of total rejection of the ceasefire, not a hint that Qubad knows anything of the recent severe repression of the only legal Kurdish party in Turkey--the DTP.

Yet another opportunity to press the reality of the Kurdish situation under Turkish repression wasted--and all for filthy lucre.

More absurdity lies in the fact that the Ankara regime has been meddling in Kerkuk since their first opportunity to do so, in April, 2003. They meddled again, in July, 2003. Turkish meddling in Kerkuk began during the period of the so-called safe haven, when the Southern Kurds began to govern themselves, from Henri Barkey:

As part of its campaign to contain the contagion effects of the Iraqi Kurds, Ankara increasingly came to rely on Iraq's Turkmen minority. The Turkmen issue is relatively new to Turkey; it was not until the 1990s that Ankara began to articulate demands for Turkmen minority rights in Iraq. Arguing that the Turkmen represent the third largest ethnic group in Iraq, Ankara has taken up the banner for their defense, especially their claims to control the city of Kirkuk.8 As part of this effort, Turkey has been instrumental in the creation of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), an organization it wants the Turkmen to rally around. Yet the Turkmen are divided: Not only are there those who oppose Ankara's interference and the ITF's heavy hand, but there are also sectarian Sunni-Shiite differences that divide the community.9 Perhaps as many as half of the Iraqi Turkmen are Shiite.

[ . . . ]

Previous governments in Ankara were the primary instigators behind the creation of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, but it is unclear how much influence the government now has over the ITF. Two developments have contributed to the current uncertainty.

First, the ITF and its leaders have succeeded in capturing the imagination of many Turks; they are increasingly perceived in Turkey as an Iraqi Turkish minority deserving of official help, and by making claims similar to those of the Turkish Cypriots, ITF leaders are insinuating themselves into the Turkish mainstream. For the ITF leaders, the current chaos in Iraq is the best possible opportunity to stake their claims and try to improve their status as a separate and important ethnic minority; the ITF is no different than any other ethnopolitical entrepreneur. Hence, when the U.S. assault on the mostly Turkmen city of Tel Afer occurred in September 2004, the ITF launched an information campaign in Turkey that accused the U.S. of committing "massacres and ethnic cleansing" against the Turkmen in the city. Accounts of massive civilian casualties were widely reported in Turkish media outlets and forced the Turkish government to adopt a hard stance against Washington.14 Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul even cautioned that, should the U.S. military operation continue, Turkey's relations with Washington would have to be reviewed.15

[ . . . ]

Whereas the government was on solid ground with the country's political mainstream when it pursued the EU accession negotiations, the war in Iraq and the Turkmen question have revealed the deep nationalistic bent of the party. The Erdogan government has been forced to cater to hard-line elements by increasing the level of the rhetoric over Kirkuk, the Turkmen' demands, and Iraq's January 30 elections.18 The ITF fared poorly in the elections, however, thereby diminishing both its influence and Turkey's room to maneuver in Iraq. The ITF garnered 0.87 percent of the 8.5 million votes cast, managing to get only three of its members elected into the 275-person National Assembly. The ITF's poor showing sparked severe criticism in Turkey, and both Erdogan and Gul criticized the ITF leadership for failing to bring its voters to the polls.19

[ . . . ]


The second reason for the uncertainty surrounding the Turkish government's influence over Iraq's Turkmen is the relationship between the Turkish military and the ITF, which is ambiguous. As a result, the extent to which the Turkish government can exercise operational control over the ITF is unclear. The ITF operates in tandem with Turkish Special Forces in Iraq, which are there with U.S. cognizance.20 The Turkish Special Forces have been operating under a 1996 National Security Council Special Political Document that gives the chief of the Turkish General Staff (TGS) the authority to coordinate all of Turkey's activities relating to Iraq and northern Iraq, including the Special Forces. Accordingly, the Turkish Foreign Minsitry also has its representatives assigned to the TGS headquarters in Silopi, southeastern Turkey.

[ . . . ]

Compared to Iran, which has had a long relationship with Iraq's largest community, the Sh'ia, Turkey cannot claim any influence over any of the groups in Iraq except for a segment of the Turkmen, specifically the ITF.

These are the two points that should be brought up by the Southern Kurdish leadership at every opportunity, including media opportunities: First, the Ankara regime's repression of its internal colony Kurdistan, its rejection of PKK's democratic solution and ceasefire, and its continued repression and refusal to engage in dialog with DTP; second, the specifics of the Ankara regime's meddling in Iraqi internal affairs--something Turkey would never tolerate for itself--especially over the Kerkuk issue, since it is the real issue.

By the way, if the former Turkish ambassador speaking in the NPR report thinks that his claim to invade "Iraq" to pursue "terrorists" at will would be an imitation of US policy and, therefore, legitimate, he should consider that the rest of the world views Operation Iraqi Freedom as illegal according to international law.

Hell, even Richard Perle, the Darth Vadar of the neocon movement, admitted as much way back in November, 2003.

RISING VIOLENCE IN INDIA AND THE KURDISH SITUATION

"I’ve always felt that it’s ironic that hunger strikes are used as a political weapon in a land where most people go hungry anyway."
~ Arundhati Roy.

Kurdish Aspect is carrying Serdar Sengul's remarks from the KNCNA conference last month. While I agree with him that the subject of education is a critical one for the Kurdish people, and that the history of the destruction of the Kurdish educational system by the Turkish state is a subject worthy of study, and that the creation of a new Kurdish educational system is absolutely necessary, what intrigued me was the fact that Heval Serdar's master's degree study was on "the changing perceptions of security in India in the post-Cold War Era."


The reason that this intrigued me was that last week, some nice person sent me a link to an interview with famed Indian writer Arundhati Roy, suggesting that her remarks might be fruitful for Kurds to reflect upon. Having read through the interview several times now, and keeping in mind the recent history of repression--at least from Semdinli, through the Amed Serhildan, to the Koma Komalên Kurdistan's offer of a democratic resolution and the rejected unilateral ceasefire, to the attacks against the Kurdish leadership in Europe in February, the poisoning of Ocalan, and the crackdown on DTP--I feel that Arundhati Roy's comments on the current situation in India are compelling for the Kurdish people as well as for the Indian people.

What does a people do, when playing the democracy "game" by the West's chameleon rules only results in more repression, more imprisonment, more torture, more offensive military operations? What does a people do, when faced with repeated, gross injustices and the hypocrisy of servile, corporate-controlled democracies?

The interview with Ms. Roy focuses on the rising violence in India, a subject about which not much is heard at all in the American media. There have been articles about the Maoist/government peace process in India, and the articles in the American media on that subject have had a bitter flavor to them, for two reasons I suspect: because "Maoists" have actually entered a dialog with a government and have worked out a solution and because peace means a loss of revenue for the American war industry. However, the rise of "Maoists" and other dissenters willing to use violence in India is completely off the mainstream American radar. Why is that?

Upon being asked about her reluctance to condemn violence, Ms. Roy replies:

What I feel is this: non-violent movements have knocked at the door of every democratic institution in this country for decades, and have been spurned and humiliated. Look at the Bhopal gas victims, the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The nba had a lot going for it — high-profile leadership, media coverage, more resources than any other mass movement. What went wrong? People are bound to want to rethink strategy. When Sonia Gandhi begins to promote satyagraha at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it’s time for us to sit up and think. For example, is mass civil disobedience possible within the structure of a democratic nation state? Is it possible in the age of disinformation and corporate-controlled mass media?

[ . . . ]

There was a time when mass movements looked to the courts for justice. The courts have rained down a series of judgments that are so unjust, so insulting to the poor in the language they use, they take your breath away. A recent Supreme Court judgment, allowing the Vasant Kunj Mall to resume construction though it didn’t have the requisite clearances, said in so many words that the questions of corporations indulging in malpractice does not arise! In the era of corporate globalization, corporate land-grab, in the era of Enron and Monsanto, Halliburton and Bechtel, that’s a loaded thing to say. It exposes the ideological heart of the most powerful institution in this country. The judiciary, along with the corporate press, is now seen as the lynchpin of the neo-liberal project.

In a climate like this, when people feel that they are being worn down, exhausted by these interminable ‘democratic’ processes, only to be eventually humiliated, what are they supposed to do? Of course it isn’t as though the only options are binary — violence versus non-violence. There are political parties that believe in armed struggle but only as one part of their overall political strategy. Political workers in these struggles have been dealt with brutally, killed, beaten, imprisoned under false charges. People are fully aware that to take to arms is to call down upon yourself the myriad forms of the violence of the Indian State. The minute armed struggle becomes a strategy, your whole world shrinks and the colors fade to black and white. But when people decide to take that step because every other option has ended in despair, should we condemn them? Does anyone believe that if the people of Nandigram had held a dharna and sung songs, the West Bengal government would have backed down? We are living in times when to be ineffective is to support the status quo (which no doubt suits some of us). And being effective comes at a terrible price. I find it hard to condemn people who are prepared to pay that price.

When asked if "rebels are only the flip side of the State:"

How can the rebels be the flip side of the State? Would anybody say that those who fought against apartheid — however brutal their methods — were the flip side of the State? What about those who fought the French in Algeria? Or those who fought the Nazis? Or those who fought colonial regimes? Or those who are fighting the US occupation of Iraq? Are they the flip side of the State? This facile new report-driven ‘human rights’ discourse, this meaningless condemnation game that we are all forced to play, makes politicians of us all and leaches the real politics out of everything. However pristine we would like to be, however hard we polish our halos, the tragedy is that we have run out of pristine choices. There is a civil war in Chhattisgarh sponsored, created by the Chhattisgarh government, which is publicly pursing the Bush doctrine: if you’re not with us, you are with the terrorists. The lynchpin of this war, apart from the formal security forces, is the Salva Judum — a government-backed militia of ordinary people forced to take up arms, forced to become SPOs (special police officers). The Indian State has tried this in Kashmir, in Manipur, in Nagaland. Tens of thousands have been killed, hundreds of thousands tortured, thousands have disappeared. Any banana republic would be proud of this record. Now the government wants to import these failed strategies into the heartland.

[ . . . ]

But to equate a resistance movement fighting against enormous injustice with the government which enforces that injustice is absurd. The government has slammed the door in the face of every attempt at non-violent resistance. When people take to arms, there is going to be all kinds of violence — revolutionary, lumpen and outright criminal. The government is responsible for the monstrous situations it creates.

When asked if the Maoists might also usher in an "exploitive, autocratic, violent" regime:

. . . the Maoists in Nepal have waged a brave and successful struggle against the monarchy. Right now, in India, the Maoists and the various Marxist-Leninist groups are leading the fight against immense injustice here. They are fighting not just the State, but feudal landlords and their armed militias. They are the only people who are making a dent. And I admire that. It may well be that when they come to power, they will, as you say, be brutal, unjust and autocratic, or even worse than the present government. Maybe, but I’m not prepared to assume that in advance. If they are, we’ll have to fight them too. And most likely someone like myself will be the first person they’ll string up from the nearest tree — but right now, it is important to acknowledge that they are bearing the brunt of being at the forefront of resistance. Many of us are in a position where we are beginning to align ourselves on the side of those who we know have no place for us in their religious or ideological imagination.

Ominous words, those last. How well do they apply to the Kurdish situation?

The entire interview is available at ZNet and it's worth at least one read; maybe more. Ms. Roy's comments on globalization are also compelling for Kurds under Turkish occupation, particularly as regards the Ilisu Dam exploitation project, as well as for South Kurdistan with its free-for-all investment law and the mad scramble for control of wider Iraqi oil resources by Western corporations.

ANKARA REACTS

“Any attack on Kirkuk would be considered an attack on Diyarbakir."
~ Hilmi Aydogdu, DTP Amed Provincial Chairman.

It would appear that the main players in the Ankara regime have their panties in knots over Masûd Barzanî's remarks over the weekend that Turkish intervention in Kerkuk would lead to Southern Kurdish intervention in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan.

Here's a list of the more hysterical reactions . . .

Zaman's headline reads: "Ankara tells Barzani to 'know his place:'"

The Turkish capital’s anger was obvious early on Sunday, with diplomatic sources immediately responding to Barzani’s remarks, although to date Turkish diplomats have refrained from accepting Barzani as a counterpart and responding to similar remarks.

[ . . . ]

“Turkey has never assumed a policy or even a wording that would harm brotherhood of Turks and Kurds. Now the sole reason for Barzani to make such an inappropriate statement is his panic due to the rising awareness of the international community of what is going on in Kirkuk, of the fact that there is a fait accompli that is desired to take place. But we have always said that Kirkuk is an Iraqi city,” diplomatic sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Today’s Zaman.

Newsflash: There is no brotherhood between Turks and Kurds.

Second Newsflash: The international community can't even find Kerkuk on a map let alone know what's going on there. The only thing they may vaguely remember was when Ozel Timler were caught and bagged by the US Marines way back in 2003, thanks to Kurtler Vadisi Irak, that is.

By the way, the Ankara regime has so far refrained from accepting the Iraqi president, Celal Talabanî, as a counterpart as well. Notice any similarity with the Ankara regime's refusal to accept Barzanî as a counterpart? Hint: Both are Kurds.

The AP, from USAToday:

The Turkish prime minister on Monday warned Iraqi Kurds against interfering in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast, saying "the price for them will be very high."

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was reacting to comments by Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, who said Iraqi Kurds would retaliate to any Turkish interference in northern Iraq by stirring up trouble in Turkey's southeast.

"He's out of place. He'll be crushed under his words," Erdogan said of Barzani Monday.

Yes, that's how an Islamofascist Turkish Fuhrer deals with every problem that arises from Turkish repression of Kurds--They'll be crushed! Just like during the Amed Serhildan, eh Tayyip old boy, when you confirmed the Turkish state's will to massacre Kurdish women, children, elderly? Oh, my mistake! The Kurdish elderly were tortured to death by Turkish state security forces slightly before the Amed Serhildan, weren't they? Take that, all you Bakûrî Kurd activists in Diaspora!

But wait! The Fuhrer speaks again, from Sabah:

Turkish Prime Minster Erdoğan has commented on Kurdish leader Barzani's statements during opening ceremonies of 84 education centers in Ankara. Stating that Barzani has gone too far with his last statements, the PM said Barzani would soon pay for such behavior.

Erdoğan has answered the questions of the press as he was leaving the ceremony area.
"I suggest Mr. Barzani not to utter words which he would not carry out successfully," said PM.

"North Iraq is making serious mistakes which it will soon pay for. We are a 'state' with a history of thousands of years. Barzani should watch his words carefully," he added.

Sieg Heil, Herr Fuhrer! Meanwhile, why don't you brush up on your history? Selcuks arrived in the region permanently in 1071 CE, making them an even bigger group of latecomers than the Arabs and meaning that Turks haven't been a permanent fixture for even a thousand years yet, much less "thousands of years." Geez . . . I mean, the Persians are closer to being indigenous than the Turks.

More on the Turkish Fuhrer's stupidity at VOA and from Reuters, although you can read mini-Fuhrer Gul's comments, along with murderer Mehmet Agar's remarks, at Sabah.

The funniest thing is that the Turkish regime is true to form. Every time those damned Kurds get too uppity, Turkish political hacks like mini-Fuhrer Gul run to the US for help, and that's exactly what happened in this case. Little Abdullah had to phone home to Mama Condi because he's afraid the big, bad pêşmerge are going to kick his ass for being the biggest bully in the neighborhood, from AFP, via AINA:

Turkey has complained to the United States over Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani after he reportedly threatened to interfere in Ankara's affairs if it continued to oppose Kurdish claims on the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, officials said Monday.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul "conveyed our sensitivities" to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a telephone conversation at the weekend, a senior diplomat told AFP.

Cry me a freakin' river, Abdullah, baby.

What's Condi gonna do anyway? Pat Gul on his fat butt, buy him an ice cream cone, and send him on his way? I guess the lobbing of artillery into South Kurdistan near Zaxo by Turkish Terrorist Forces was also part of the reaction to Barzanî's comments. I betcha Baby Gul didn't bother to mention that to Mama Condi.

Of course, all of this over-the-top overreaction on the part of a pack of thin-skinned genociders is nonsense. The Southern pêşmerge aren't going to intervene in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan because there's no need for them to intervene. The Ankara regime has a much bigger worry which was expressed by DTP's Amed provincial chief, Hilmi Aydogdu, at the end of February:

“The two sides in this war would be Turkey and the Kurds in Iraq. There are some 20 million Kurds in Turkey, and the 20 million Kurds would regard such a war as an attack against them,” newspapers quoted Aydogdu as saying.

“Any attack on Kirkuk would be considered an attack on Diyarbakir."

By extension, since Amed (Diyarbakir) is the capital of all of Kurdistan, any attack on it is an attack on the entire Kurdish people. Not only does Ankara need to worry about HPG attacks--or even TAK attacks in Western Turkey--it also needs to worry about a serhildan of 20 million Kurds in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan . . . or 30 million if you want to go with Barzanî's number. Remember, those 20 million are the relatives of the few thousand HPG gerîlas, who most likely be ending their ceasefire ( rejected by Ankara and Washington even before it became a formal order from Murat Karayilan) soon.

No, Barzanî doesn't need to intervene in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. He just needs to make sure his pêşmerge aren't fighting alongside Turkish Terrorist Forces this time around, against Kurdish gerîlas and against a Northern Kurdish serhildan.

Buyukanit and Basbug know this very well, too.

By the way, I have proof that Turkish agent Seymour Hersh is: 1. A hardcore drunkard; 2. A serious drug addict; 3. A total suck-up; 4. All of the previous. Check out an interview he did with an Iranian, in particular this incredible piece garbage:

Nobody knows what is in the president mind and Mr. Cheney. We don't know what they think. He attacked Iraq in 2003 in response to the Sunni Al- Qaeda in America. Why he would attack Iraq have never been clear because Saddam Hussein was secular. He was a Sunni but he did not like Jihadists. So it is unclear to me what Bush was doing. You could argue that the neo-cons want to get rid of any threat. They never liked Saddam. He was a threat to the other countries in the Middle East, to Israel. Perhaps what we are doing is for Israel and oil but I don’t think this president believes that he really thinks his mission is to spread democracy in the Middle East, even though, you could argue that Iran is probably the most democratic country. The elections there certainly indicate people vote what the way they believe but he believes to spreading democracy and right now we are working with some of the most undemocratic countries in the Middle East, you know Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that do so. It is very strange.

That should resolve any questions in anyone's mind about the credibility of the vastly overrated moron from The New Yorker.

Last, but not least, Bilal Wahab on NPR. Runtime a little over 5 minutes.

JOURNALISTS, DTP, HPG, AND MAXMUR KIDS

"The mission of the Gestapo expanded steadily as, from 1933 onward, “political criminality” was given a much broader definition than ever before and most forms of dissent and criticism were gradually criminalized. The result was that more “laws” or lawlike measures were put on the books than ever."
~ Sheila Fitzpatrick.

Now here's something you'll never read from Michael Totten: the abduction and beating of a Kurdish journalist in Hewler, from RSF:

Reporters Without Borders today joined the Kurdistan Journalists Union in condemning the abduction yesterday of Nabaz Goran in the northern city of Erbil and the beating he received for several hours before being set free. Goran contributes to several media in Iraq’s Kurdish region.

[ . . . ]

A freelance contributor to the Media and Halati newspapers and the kurdistanpost.com website, Goran was kidnapped outside the Hotel Dam Dam in Erbil at about 10 p.m. yesterday. His abductors, five men in military uniforms, drove him out of the city, beat him with clubs and hose-pipes and told him to “hold his tongue” before setting him free a few hours later.

Goran is known for being outspoken in his criticism of the authorities. Two lawsuits were brought against, but were withdrawn after mediation by the Kurdistan Journalists Union.

Photos at the link.

Nabaz Goran's experience is not the only report of intimidation and beating of Kurdish journalists in South Kurdistan. There was another, reported by KurdishAspect, which also took place in Hewlêr . . . And we know who owns Hewlêr, don't we? In the second case, it seems Asayish are targeting Rojhelatî activists as well as journalists.

From whom do the security forces in Hewlêr pick up these tricks, from the Turks, the mullahs, the Americans, or the Israelis? Why isn't everyone howling about this like they did with Kemal Seîd Qadir?

A round-up of news about DTP politicians from last week includes the arrest of Aydin Budak, mayor of Cizîr, for remarks he made during a Newroz speech. He'll be tried in a Turkish kangaroo court for "praising crime and criminals" and for "inciting hatred and emnity amongst the populace." Actually, most of the Turkish population should be arrested on the same charges. Notice, too, that the news at the link mentions another DTP politician, Medeni Kirici, who's been charged with "praising crime and criminals" for referring to Ocalan as "Sayin." Recently Ahmet Turk had been convicted of the same charge and for the same reason. However, last week also saw the exact same charges dropped against Erdogan. The charges were dropped in Erdogan's case because Erdogan is a Turk, while Kurds are found guilty.

See? It really pays to be a Turk in Turkey. You can get away with murder. Literally.

Anyway, Aydin Budak apparently sent greetings to Imrali during his Newroz speech and that appears to be the source of the arrest. Hurriyet reports thousands gathered in protest against the arrest, including Osman Baydemir, Osman Ozcelik, Orhan Dogan, and Selim Sadak.

The 56 DTP mayors in the Roj TV letter trial are being recommended to receive 15 years of imprisonment each. The letter to Danish PM Rasmussen can be read here, along with the names of the signatories, and the mayors' statement to the court can be read here, just so everyone can get an idea of what a bad bunch of dudes and dudettes these mayors are.

A number of DTP members in Dersim, including the party's provincial chief Hidir Aytac were convicted for "supporting a terrorist group." Funny . . . I didn't think they supported the Ankara regime. A number of DTP officials in Ankara have also been arrested for "organizing a demonstration for the PKK." Translation: they organized a Newroz celebration. A similar series of arrests took place in Izmir, but this time the DTP politicians were arrested for supporting Hilmi Aydogdu in his remarks about how the shit will hit the fan in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan if the Ankara regime sends its terrorist army to Kerkuk.

Eurasianet is carrying a decent article on the recent crackdown on DTP politicians as well as speculation on whether or not DTP will run as independents. There's a small discussion of the 10% threshold and the current "Kurds" in parliament:

But critics say that the Kurds currently in parliament are little more than window dressing, unable to promote Kurdish interests once they get to Ankara. "The Kurds want to have a party that will bring their needs to the national agenda," says Dilek Kurban, a researcher with the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, an Istanbul-based think tank. "The current system allows those who get very few votes to go to Ankara and ‘represent’ the Kurds, and that only widens the gulf between Ankara and the Kurds."

Adds Kurban: "It has a cost for Turkey’s democratization and pluralism and it serves to alienate a large segment of the population."

In the meantime, today, the hevals iced five Mehmetciks and one cehş in the Çewlik and Şirnex regions while a couple of Mehmetciks blew themselves up with landmines.

Everyone remembers when Turkey banned Youtube, right? A few days afterwards, the ban was revoked, most likely because the ban caused a global stir and wasn't good for Turkey's image. Meanwhile, working behind the scenes, a Turkish parliamentary commission is planning to block "insulting" websites:

A parliamentary commission approved a proposal Thursday allowing Turkey to block Web sites that are deemed insulting to the founder of modern Turkey, weeks after a Turkish court temporarily barred access to YouTube.

Parliament plans to vote on the proposal, though a date was not announced. The proposal indicates the discomfort that many Turks feel about Western-style freedom of expression, even though Turkey has been implementing widespread reforms in its bid to join the European Union.

On Thursday, lawmakers in the commission also debated whether the proposal should be widened to allow the Turkish Telecommunications Board to block access to any sites that question the principles of the Turkish secular system or the unity of the Turkish state -- a reference to Web sites with information on Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

How very Chinese of the Turkish regime and such a good example for Bush's "Model of Democracy" to follow. And that line referencing "widespread reforms" is pure BS. Good luck on the block, though; there are a lot of ways around that. But the reason the Turkish government is trying to do it quietly now is because it knows that it's fascist methods look bad. After all, image isn't everything; it's the only thing.

To round out your Sunday evening reading, I'd like to point out a blog written by a non-Kurd who's working in South Kurdistan for the time being. The most recent post is on the Maxmur Camp. There are some really nice photos there, too, so take a look. Here's a teaser with caption:

This is the guerilla Turkey is afraid of!

I really like the photo of the Maxmur kids learning Tae Kwon Do, too, but check out Kurdishwaves for all the photos. Count this witness as another one to verify the civilian nature of the camp and the reasons that the refugees fled their homes: Genocide and Turkish state terrorism.

No amount of propaganda from the Washington and Ankara regimes, nor the bold-faced lies of Lockheed Martin's Joseph Ralston, can change those facts.

STANDING TOGETHER OR HANGING SEPARATELY?

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
~ Benjamin Franklin.

Miguel is one of those who's been minding the store for Lukery over at Wot Is It Good 4, and he's posted a new article by John Stanton on Turkey and related Sibel Edmonds' matters. The piece is titled, aptly enough, "Turkey's Con Game":

“Turkey is not as politically stable or as secular domestically as they would have you believe,” said one long time observer of US-Turkish relations in Washington, DC. “The Turks do not have a large community across the United States like, say, the Armenians and the Greeks who have been here a long time. Because of this you see a very large Turkish presence inside Washington, DC.”

Lacking a legitimate national grassroots organization, Turkey has built a notable presence inside the corridors of power in Washington, by spreading cash around and buying direct access to key US decision makers in and out of the US government. It all seems legitimate enough: campaign donations and junkets for members & staff of the US Congress (FMOCs); consulting fees to former FMOCs, US military generals, US State Department employees; and promises of billions of dollars in contracts to US corporate representatives operating in Washington. With so much money chasing politicians, consultants and contractors of all stripes, there’s bound to be some corrupt and even criminal activity. No seasoned observer of politics anywhere is completely surprised at the occasional and well-timed conviction of a white collar criminal.

[ . . . ]

. . . if it is true that Turkey is not as secular or as politically stable as its proponents in Washington and Ankara say, then the whole Turkey-as-US strategic partner and would-be European Union partner would be one of the better smoke and mirrors acts sold to the US public, and the world, in recent memory.

Stanton notes something that is rarely noted: the fact of Turkish brutality of its own Kurdish population. He also mentions the fact of Turkish threats against South Kurdistan if there should be a declaration of Kurdish independence there, or if the outcome of a Kerkuk referendum is favorable to Kurds. Speaking of which, Masûd Barzanî had something to say about Kerkuk today, from the AP via the IHT:

Turkey must not interfere in the Kurds' bid to attach Iraq's oil-rich city of Kirkuk to the Kurdish semiautonomous zone, the top official in Iraqi Kurdistan said in remarks broadcast Saturday.

Otherwise, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said, Iraq's Kurds will retaliate by intervening in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, where insurgents have battled for decades to establish their own autonomy.

[ . . . ]

"Turkey is not allowed to intervene in the Kirkuk issue and if it does, we will interfere in Diyarbakir's issues and other cities in Turkey," Barzani said. Diyarbakir is the largest city in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast.

[ . . . ]

When asked about the Turkmen minority in Kirkuk and Turkey's concern for its ethnic brethren, Barzani shot back:

"There are 30 million Kurds in Turkey and we don't interfere there. If they (the Turks) interfere in Kirkuk over just thousands of Turkmen then we will take action for the 30 million Kurds in Turkey."

"I hope we don't reach this point, but if the Turks insist on intervening in Kirkuk matter I am ready to take responsible for our response," Barzani said.

What a shame that "30 million Kurds in Turkey" are only viewed by the Southern Kurdish leadership as bargaining chips against Ankara, much in the same way the Israelis viewed the same Kurds when Ankara invited the Hamas leader for a visit. Nationhood transcends the phony boundaries drawn by colonialist oppressors, therefore the question that begs an answer is this: What is the responsibility of South Kurdistan to the rest of Kurdistan, bearing in mind that the rest of Kurdistan contains the vast majority of the world's Kurds? Perhaps one of the oldest questions in literature is apropos to this situation, that being, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

I have one word for the pêşmerge (Warning: Link to American propaganda)who want the US to stay: Montagnards . . . or as they call themselves, the Degar people. The Degar are a little piece of US military history that I'm willing to bet no one has mentioned to the pêşmerge, although the Degar are an appropriate subject for Kurdish reflection. The US abandoned these "allies" at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and now, 32 years later, the Degar still suffer gross human rights abuses from the Vietnamese government, while their population numbers have fallen from 3 million during French colonial rule to a few hundred thousand today.

Is that where you want to be in 30 years' time?

It would be far more prudent for the Southern Kurds to strengthen their ties with the rest of Kurdistan, while the pêşmerge work and train with PKK's gerîlas, than to rely on the backstabbing Americans for Kurdistan's future. After all, has Lockheed Martin's Joseph Ralston sold the KRG any tactical fighter aircraft--a job he's registered with the Senate to do--or has the US Air Force begun training Kurdish pilots on the use of the F-16? If not, you should ask yourself why not.

Whom is Kurdistan going to trust? An American pilot--given the attack against KDP pêşmerge that left a number of them dead and Wajee Barzanî in a permanent vegetative state, or the more recent American bombing of PUK pêşmerge . . . but only because they "looked" like al-Qaeda? Or perhaps American pilots will stand aside again in the future in order to allow Turkey to freely drop ordnance on Southern Kurdish villages just exactly as they did during Operation Northern Watch? As John Pilger reminded us in 2001:

While British government ministers have repeatedly described the no-fly-zones as "humanitarian cover" for the Kurds, the pilots' unease has become an open secret in the United States. Last October, the Washington Post reported: "On more than one occasion [US pilots who fly in tandem with the British] have received a radio message that 'there is a TSM inbound' - that is, a 'Turkish Special Mission' heading into Iraq.

Following standard orders, the Americans turned their planes around and flew back to Turkey. 'You'd see Turkish F-14s and F-16s inbound, loaded to the gills with munitions,'[pilot Mike Horn] said. 'Then they'd come out half an hour later with their munitions expended.' When the Americans flew back into Iraqi air space, he recalled, they would see 'burning villages, lots of smoke and fire'."

That was what the PR people dubbed the "safe haven" and that's why it would be much better to have no American "protection." It's time to grow up, Kurdistan; end dependency on patronage and let Kurds protect Kurds. Besides, the whining is "traumatizing" my nerves.

Or maybe everyone needs another reminder of American priorities, from the AEI's Michael Rubin? Then again it's always possible to continue to depend on patronage and end up fighting for American interests in places farther away from Kurdistan than Baghdad . . . like maybe Ethiopia or Somalia.

THE DEADLIEST ENEMY OF TYRANNY

“The Framers [of the Constitution] knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.”
~ Hugo Black.

Last September I posted what has become Appendix 2 of the "Report on Local Government and Local Democracy Dynamics concerning the DTP Municipalities in Turkey," which was the DTP mayors' letter to Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen on behalf of Roj TV.

What follows is Appendix 3 of the same report--the statement of the DTP mayors to the Diyarbakir court in defense of their letter (All emphasis in the original).

**********

26.09.2006

Dear President, Honorable Members of the Court:

The indictment submitted to the court by the Prosecutor is worth considering on many grounds. At the outset, we expect the honorable Court to evaluate our words within the framework of the inviolability of the right to defense. The indictment is far from being a document of law. It is a sensational product of the socio-political process in which it was prepared and carries rather the quality of a report of complaint concluded by Inspectors of the Ministry of Interior. Furthermore, it is full of internal contradictions. In brief, the indictment constitutes an unfortunate error.

Dear President, the demands for the closing-off of the Roj TV station, the necessity felt by 56 Mayors to write a letter to the Danish Prime Minister Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the tragicomic trial today of over 50 Mayors with the demand of fifteen-year-long imprisonment sentence for each is one consequence of the anti-democratic attitudes towards the Kurdish question. However, unlike what the office of the Prosecutor has done, we shall not raise details of the Kurdish question before the Court today.

The Prosecutor asks for a total of 840 year-long imprisonment sentence for crimes we allegedly have committed in our 405-word-long letter. With a rough calculation, each word corresponds to over two years of imprisonment sentence. The indictment associates our letter with the overall political process that has evolved since the foundation of the PKK Kongra-Gel, and claims that our act of writing the latter constitutes a “conscious and intentional support for the "Organization”. With such features, the indictment provides a fertile ground for political polemics. Without entering into any polemics, we reject the indictment and disclaim the accusations raised against us.

We, however, claim hereby each of the 405 words of our famous letter and repeat the opinions we thereby expressed. Serious consideration of our letter shows that rather than simply claiming a certain TV station, it advocates respect towards freedom of thought and expression for the institution of a democratic life and a matured tolerance towards voices of dissent. That opinions expressed within such a letter have been made the subject of a trial process is but tragicomic.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Abdullah Gul had stated the following on 25 December 2006: “Those who claim that prohibitions by law still exist shall see when the verdicts are released that this is not true. Journalists used to be imprisoned for what they would write, and mayors for their poems. These are now a thing of the past” (The Daily Radikal). We did not chant any poems, but penned a letter that expressed the demands of the people whom we represent. Therefore, we are brought before the Court today.

Dear President, Honorable Members of the Court,

We would like to draw your attention to the last months of the year 2005. We decided to appeal to the Danish Prime Minister Mr. Rasmussen by a letter at a critical juncture of the Turkish-European Union relations. On the one hand, those who oppose Turkey’s entry into the European Union had intensified their corresponding endeavors, on the other hand, the positive atmosphere that followed the speech the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan gave in Diyarbakir on the Kurdish question in August 2005 had completely dissipated. The Semdinli Events of November 2005 and the new Alti-Terror Bill had created intense contentions. In December, the Orhan Pamuk case intensified discussions within both the government ranks and between the government and the opposition parties over Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TPC). The National Security Council was expected to convene on 29 December within this context.

In addition, discussions over supra-identity/sub-identity put forward by Prime Minister Erdogan were heavily criticized by both the General Staff and the President of the Republic. All these processes increased and intensified concerns over a democratic and peaceful resolution of the Kurdish Question. Debates over the closing-off of the Roj TV station entered into the agenda amidst such tension and as a much discussed element of the cultural rights of Kurds. While the political atmosphere was getting ever tense countrywide, people in the region whom we represent as local governors were expressing their deep concerns and worries about the possible closing-off of the Roj TV. In response to such demands of our citizens to make use of their cultural and democratic rights and relying on the civic principles of freedom of expression and freedom, we decided to write a letter as local representatives.
Driving our action was to help Turkey to overcome the narrow-minded and prohibitive attitudes towards the issue of cultural rights in its progress towards universal principles of the democratic civilization, and to achieve responsiveness to the demands and expectations of the people whom we represent. As you may know, the Roj TV station has an extensive audience in our region.

The Roj TV trial process started when the central government chose to dismiss democratic demands and authorize the Ministry of Interior for investigation. The indictment is based on reports prepared by Inspectors with the Ministry of Interior beyond the powers and duties conferred onto them by law. That is why this trial lacks a legal ground. Moreover, the issues that we raised in the letter had been conveyed both to the government and to other relevant political and administrative authorities in written reports that we prepared in the recent past. The views that had not constituted any crime then are now evidenced as reasons for the indictment of dozens of mayors.

We deem this trial to be an unfortunate result of the political process that required us to pen it in the first place. As the indictment also concedes, our letter has a squarely democratic content and is free of any elements of crime. During the same week that we sent our letter, 169 intellectuals of Turkey issued a declaration in demand for the abolishment of Article 301 of the TPC. In the same days, the Public Prosecutor of Beyoglu initiated an investigation against Joost Lagendijk concerning articles 301 and 288 of the TPC. We would like to suggest that the tense political atmosphere that we briefly mentioned above forms the contextual background of demands for the closing-off of the Roj TV, our letter regarding the issue, and its criminalization through a trial process. We believe that our letter should have opened the way for the furthering of democratic debates and openings instead of being made the subject of a trial process. It should have facilitated a process of hope, trust and mutual understanding that our society needs urgently.

Dear President, Honorable Members of the Court,

Since the Prosecutor refers to cultural rights in the indictment, we find it necessary to briefly express our opinions on the issue of cultural rights in Turkey. Bans on the right to exercise one’s cultural rights for Turkish citizens of non-Turkish ethnicity are coeval with the foundation of the Republic. A review of the 1982 Constitution alone shows that the Kurdish citizens of the Turkish Republic have been constitutionally barred from exercising their many basic human and cultural rights during the last 25 years. The recognition of the “Kurdish reality” in 1991 by the then President Suleyman Demirel had relatively eased obstacles in front of the use of Kurdish language in daily interactions and in arts and cultural production. The Sixth and Seventh Harmonization Packages passed by the Parliament as part of Turkey’s accession to the EU facilitated broadcasting in two Kurdish dialects for the first time in the Republican history. We declared on several occasions our deep regard for and appreciation of such democratic openings within the realm of cultural rights, and emphasized that these efforts should be supported by further reforms that would make it possible for all citizens of the Turkish Republic to fully enjoy their cultural rights. Such reforms should have been realized in response to the sincere demands and expectations raised by Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin and not due to pressures from the EU. We believe that the path for the achievement of social peace and sustainable development in Turkey and the institution of a dignified Turkish foreign policy would be possible if only Turkish citizens of different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds who have heretofore been barred from enjoying their basic rights are guaranteed their rights and conditions are provided to facilitate their effective participation in the process of democratic governance.

In very recent past people were sued for having Kurdish names. Some were tried in these courtrooms for using the letter “W”. As the Prime Minister had also acknowledged in his Diyarbakir speech of August 2005, the state had committed errors due to certain taboo issues. Looking at the past, we can easily say that some taboos have been breached for good. We hope that this trial contributes to the overcoming of other taboos and fears.

Reforms passed within the framework of Turkey-EU relations are of partial nature. Yet the rights that they guarantee are circumscribed to an even narrower scope with administrative statues and in practice. Within the realm of cultural rights, democratic campaigns run and petitions signed in demand for elective Kurdish language classes and for the making of Kurdish an instruction language at primary schools were met with harsh reactions by the state and government bodies. Serious limits to radio and television broadcasting are still in force. Both the applications for broadcasting licenses and conditions of broadcasting are subject to seriously narrow conditionalities. While the limits on duration of programs in the cultural field such as music and cinema were abolished, those imposed on duration of news and discussion programs are still in force. Radio programs are limited to 5 hours per week with no more than one-hour-long daily broadcast, and television programs are limited to 4 hours per week with at most 45 minutes-long broadcasting per day. Serious limits are imposed on program contents. For example, only those programs that address adult audience are permitted, while programs that might contribute to language training, including cartoons, are administratively sanctioned. The general broadcasting statue requires that the programs should be broadcasted either with simultaneous Turkish subtitles or be followed immediately by Turkish versions. This arrangement makes live broadcasting in languages other than Turkish impossible and necessitates at least two days of preparation for a 45 minutes-long program. We hold that such practices that openly contravene the universal principles of democratic civilization and that may at best be described a tragicomic are illsuited for a Turkey in the 21st century.

Dear President, Honorable Members of the Court,

The indictment, using within the say of a contradiction between our letter and the initiatives of Mr.Prime Minister and government policies, violate legal terminology and the conventions of courtesy. The letter in question was penned so as to express the demands and opinions of our people and giving no base for any extremity. It was framed with a full consciousness of democratic responsibility, and, hence, has the quality to offer a framework for the solution of the problems related to the issue of cultural rights. In fact, within a democratic state of law, Mayors have the right, just like any other citizen or group of citizens, to deviate from the government policies. Where there is any such requirement that citizens have to submit to government policies, than that regime can be called anything but democracy. We do not have any aim other than expressing the thoughts that we deem right and fair. As responsible citizens and administrators, we shall continue to express our thoughts and share our opinions on matters that would facilitate the democratic and peaceful solution of the problems of the people whom we represent. We exercised our right to freedom of expression that has been expressed in universal human rights documents and the Turkish national Acquis. We are before the court for having exercised this right. While we intended by way of this letter to draw attention to the inviolability of the freedom of expression, to the impending necessity of promoting a culture of tolerance towards difference, in brief to the value of freedom of thought and democratic participation, we found ourselves criminals of expression. It is impossible in this regard to make sense of the confusions the indictment presents itself with. The indictment both states that the content of the text does not constitute a crime, and it wants 840-year-long imprisonment sentence for us, the defendants. As such the document pushes the limits of law to an extreme. We shall not ask the claimants be suspended or barred from duty, as it is sometimes the case with other trials. Yet we do ask this case be dropped. This case unfortunately shows that we have yet a lot to achieve for bringing our country to the consciousness of the rights and freedoms of the democratic civilization. Within this larger context, we see this indictment that raises unfair and baseless accusations against us as an instance of intolerance towards democratic rights and freedoms. We firmly believe that this honorable court shall restore justice by bringing this infringement on our rights to an end and protect the freedom of thought which forms the basis of all other rights and freedoms in a democratic country.

4. In conclusion;

As stated in our letter, we hold that the prohibitive and restrictive view towards cultural rights in general, and the Kurdish written and visual media in particular, should be superseded and that a more embracing and inclusive approach that listens to popular demands and claims fundamental rights and freedoms should prevail in our country.

The problem cannot be solved by the closing-off of the Roj TV station. As the indictment also mentions, other Kurdish broadcasting stations that operated abroad had been closed-off before the Roj TV was established. This means that darkening the screens is no solution. On the contrary, the solution of our problems requires that Kurdish-language programs be produced and disseminated within this ancient land that we inhabit without being hindered by law or by administrative measures. The solution of our problems would be enabled by the airing of such broadcasts from Istanbul, Ankara or Diyarbakir.

Our people sincerely demand that Kurdish language and culture which have long-been neglected and subjected to discriminatory practices be supported and encouraged by the State institutions. As the Prime Minister himself stated, this is the only way to redress the historical wrongs done to the Kurdish language and culture.

No television or radio station should be banned or shut down. No letters, no books, no poems, no cartoons, no movies should be punished. The punishment of peaceful products of humanity is the heaviest blow against democratic values.

Legal bans and administrative limits imposed upon the length and content of radio and television broadcasts should be abolished. One does not need to agree with the content of the programs. Yet the closing-off of an entire broadcasting station is something that we need to stand against according to the principles of democratic culture.

Enjoying the right to freely express one’s thoughts is a sine qua non of democratic deliberation. What we call democratic culture flourishes upon mutual understanding and tolerance. Bans on the freedom of expression constitute the biggest obstacles before establishing a culture of democracy and devising means for a peaceful solution of our problems. We have but to overcome this obstacle.

The labeling of our most democratic demands as “terrorism” and the criminalization of our democratic and peaceful demands and actions with purely political decisions deepens the crisis of trust between the State and citizens of Kurdish origin. The restoration of a bridge of trust between the two shall be possible only insofar as the State responds to people’s demands and takes necessary steps for their realization.

Albeit limited, the State institutions and Government authorities have so far realized significant reforms. Our endeavor is to integrate the demands of citizens for rights and freedoms into the ongoing process of democratization in our country, to complete the democratic reform process altogether and powerfully, and to take Turkey to the level of democratic civilization which it deserves.

We hope that the result of this trial that convened us here today beyond the limits of law and as a byproduct of the political atmosphere and the rising nationalist climate that surrounds our country shall in effect contribute to the democratic reform process.

Respectfully yours,

RALSTON, IRAN, PJAK

"The PJAK has proved to the people that it can successfully organize itself and fight for its rights based on its own strength."
~ Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi, President of PJAK.

First of all, I want to point out an excellent new article on the Ralston-Lockheed Martin conflict of interest vis-a-vis the PKK. First carried at Voices of Tomorrow, I noticed that the hevals at KurdishInfo have also picked it up. After noting Turkey's atrocious human rights record against the population of its internal Kurdish colony, and mentioning the assistance (military and otherwise) that the Southern Kurds have given the US in Iraq, Heval Goran comes to the point:

Despite these facts, the U.S. Administration remains curiously quiet in regards to their Turkish NATO ally and is only further arming an ever-growing conflict. The threats coming from Turkey have become a major cause of concern for Iraqi Kurds who have more to lose when considering their political achievements in Iraq.

With the PKK ceasefire, a chance for a political settlement between Turkey and the Kurds has never been so close. The U.S. could play a pivotal role in finding a peaceful solution. However, with current U.S. foreign policy, Iraqi Kurds may soon be forced to abandon the significant help they are providing the U.S. and the Iraqi army to engage in a long conflict of their own.

Very well done, so I urge a careful perusal of the entire article.

Britain's Independent had an article this morning citing the US raid on Hewlêr as the reason for Iran's seizing of some British sailors. Later in the day, the NYTimes reports that one of the Iranians, that "persons unknown" had seized, has suddenly been freed. Will the Americans now have to cough up the Iranians they took in Hewlêr, after totally disregarding their Kurdish "allies" and trespassing in Kurdish territory?

The NYTimes explains that the American activity in Iraq with regard to Iranian officials, who are in the country with the knowledge and permission of either the Kurds or the Baghdad government, has made life even more difficult for Baghdad in its dealings with the neighbors. The US is purposely making the situation worse for the Iraqis.

About those "persons unknown," the NYTimes reports that those involved with the investigation believe the "persons unknown" to be affiliated with the CIA:

The Iraqi police stopped a car with four passengers that was following the car in which the kidnappers had placed Mr. Sharafi. The four men were taken to the police station. They said they worked for an Iraqi security service, but when pressed, the security services denied that the men worked for them in any official capacity, Mr. Zebari said.

“We went to our security services and said, ‘Do they work for you, do you have him?’ They denied it,” Mr. Zebari said. “We went to the American military, the intelligence services — they all denied they had him. But my advice to my government was to keep the four in detention, until the diplomat was released,” Mr. Zebari said.

The four men remain detained in a Ministry of Interior facility, Mr. Zebari said. Although Mr. Zebari was uncertain who kidnapped the man, others familiar with the case said they believe those responsible work for the Iraqi Intelligence Service, which is affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency.

IraqSlogger reports that Kurdish pêşmerge have clashed with the Mahdi Army in Baghdad:

On Saturday, Kurdish forces clashed with member of the Mahdi Army, in the al-Amin area of Baghdad, Slogger sources report. The clashes reportedly resulted in a number of civilian deaths.

Kurdish forces, known as the Pesh Merga, operating under the aegis of the security plan, captured captured a hig-ranking Sadrist, and three of his assistants in the area near Baghdad al-Jadida, eyewitnesses say. In response, Mahdi Army forces attacked the Pesh Merga, sources relate, and the Pesh Merga responded harshly.

Eyewitnesses report that the Pesh Merga are also reported to be deploying in the Western areas of Baghdad (Karkh) within Sunni areas like Ghazaliya and Saidiya.

The Pesh Merga are operating under orders to act only on two conditions: if they are ordered to raid certain houses, or if they were attacked. Eyewitnesses report that when Iraqis approach them with a tip about militant activity, the Kurdish forces decline to act, saying that they do not have any orders to do so.

With little experience in the kind of warfare practiced under the security plan, and orders not to act unless attacked, another source reports that the Pesh Merga are the brunt of many jokes in the capital, and that some residents taunt them directly. A month ago, Slogger sources reported that residents of the Karrada district pelted Kurdish forces with rocks.

Here's something I've been wanting to get to . . . Last week, Democracy Now interviewed another Seymour Hersh-wannabe about PJAK. Although this wannabe, Reese Erlich, admits that PJAK and PKK are parts of the same organization. Anyone who knows anything about PKK already knows that. In fact HRK, the armed wing of PJAK, is commanded by many Kurds from Turkish-occupied Kurdistan who are long-time veterans of the liberation struggle. However, Erlich is at a loss to explain the US relationship with PJAK. The reason for that would be that there isn't one, much less is there any relationship between PJAK and Israel, as Erlich asserts. Remember what Heval Cuma said late last year:

American authorities want to have contact with PJAK, and as a matter of fact they do have contact with PJAK. But to say that the United States is supporting the PJAK is not right. PJAK is until now continuing their struggle just with the support of the Kurdish people and the PKK. If the US is interested in PJAK, then it has to be interested in the PKK as well. The PKK is the one who formed PJAK, who established PJAK and supports PJAK.

Translation: If the US is interested in supporting PJAK, it must be interested in supporting PKK. If the US is interested in assisting the Kurdish cause under Iranian occupation, it must be interested in assisting the Kurdish cause under Turkish occupation. The fact is, the US does neither.

It's interesting that Erlich notes, after a discussion of PKK/PJAK, that KDP-I and Komala "have Peshmurga guerrilla groups, but they are not engaged in armed activity against the United States." The implication that Mr. Wannabe makes is that PKK/PJAK are engaged in armed activity against the US. I challenge anyone to find an incident in which either PKK or PJAK has ever "engaged in armed activity against the US." There is no such incident, unlike other organizations such as, oh, I don't know. . . . MEK?

Of course, we can never forget who it is that has armed and trained the fascist Turkish regime in its genocide against the Kurdish people, can we?

Erlich tries to gloss over the support for PKK by Kurds under Turkish occupation:

There have been horrendous crimes committed by the Turkish government against the Kurdish population and for some, the P.K.K. is seen as a legitimate resistance organization.

Some? Try "most," pal. Nice try too, with the "cult" accusation plucked straight out of Turkish and American propaganda.

Basically, what Erlich, Hersh, and every other American "progressive" is trying to do is use the Kurdish people and their legitimate political and armed resistance for their own anti-Bush, anti-American agenda. These so-called people care as much for the Kurdish people as the US-backed fascist Turkish regime, the fascist mullah regime, the formerly US-backed Iraqi Ba'athist regime, or the current Syrian Ba'athist regime.

(Speaking of the Syrian Ba'athi, Erlich sounds more like a Ba'athi Syrian apologist on the Paşas' payroll--sort of like Sami Moubayed--than anything else.)

The bottom line is, for those who are too dense to figure it out, that these "progressives" don't give a damn at all about the Kurdish people. The same goes for right-winger propagandist Michael Totten and his ilk, who consistently push the KDC and DC view of South Kurdistan with never a mention of the very serious problems the ordinary people of South Kurdistan face. Serious problems like severely limited basic services, corruption, nepotism, destruction of the agricultural sector, lack of housing, lack of jobs--and all of this in the face of "Dream Cities," malls that no one but the elites can afford to shop in, and predatory foreign "investment" that is more accurately described by the term "exploitation."

Erlich's propaganda totally disregards the statement of PJAK's President, Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi, published one week before the Democracy Now interview:

The people of Kurdistan deserve a fair settlement, which allows all of them to live together on a basis of freedom and equality. As it seems now, however, there is a contradiction in the policies of the USA and its allies towards Kurdish movements in the respective parts of Kurdistan; the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan are regarded as allies in the war on terror, whereas the political demands of the Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan are being ignored. And there is, furthermore, the attempt to de-legitimize the Kurdish movement in Turkey.

Nowhere in the world is peace more necessary than in our region. In particular, the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran want, finally, a basic resolution of the Kurdish conflict. Democratic rights for the Kurds could positively effect the peace process in the Middle East. Military aggression against the Kurds however would intensify the already unstable political and social situation.

There you have it from Heval Abdul Rahman Haji: US policies are opposed to legitimate political demands of the Kurdish people still under occupation. Note that he mentions that not all Kurds "want the intervention of outside powers." This brings us back to Goran Sadjadi's article, the point of which also highlights US opposition to a political solution for the Kurdish people--at least those under Turkish occupation--through the Ralston/Lockheed Martin conflict of interest and the continued rejection of the PKK's democratic solution and its fifth unilateral ceasefire by the US and its regional lapdog, Turkey.

Good try, but not good enough.

PLOT AGAINST TURKISH GENERAL STAFF IN UTAH, AND OTHER ITEMS OF NOTE

"The root of the conflict unquestionably lies in Turkey's insistent refusal to give ear to Kurdish demands for equal political, social and cultural representation as well as an end to economic disparity between the Kurdish regions of Turkey and more prosperous areas of western Turkey."
~ Ismet Imset.

Ah, about those British sailors the mullahs are holding . . . I think the UK simply needs to acquiesce in the treatment it's getting from Iran.

Al-Maliki is not cooperating with the two big bullies of the region--Turkey and the US--when it comes to holding a meeting about Iraq in Istanbul. I have to agree with al-Maliki's position, from the Washington Post:

Washington has focused intense pressure on Maliki, who may yet agree to send Zebari to Istanbul rather than see the conference aborted. The reasons for his resistance were explained in these terms by an Iraqi official who requested anonymity in order to speak frankly:

"Why should we go to a meeting to be ganged up on by European and Arab countries that were against the liberation of Iraq to begin with? Why should it be held on the soil of a country that threatens and slights Iraqis instead of helping them?"

Turkey's military stands prepared to invade northern Iraq to destroy Kurdish guerrilla camps or to take control of the disputed city of Kirkuk, if circumstances warrant. Ankara has also pointedly refused to deal with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd who asserts that his home town of Kirkuk is Kurdish, or with the regional Kurdish government of Massoud Barzani. Ankara's non-dialogue policy has led to interruptions of the movement of petroleum supplies across the Turkish border in recent weeks.

Turkey is merely an instigator. Remember, it was Turkey that had sent JITEM into South Kurdistan in 2003, to instigate the Turkmen population of Kerkuk. It appears that a US-based Turkish mercenary company will be taking over in that department so that the Ankara regime can claim plausible deniability in the event of any more "bagging" incidents.

NEWSFLASH: Kurdish politician delivers political speech in Kurdish! How long before he faces charges? Don't hold your breath; it's only Serafettin Elci. They'll never charge him for violating the law.

Let's see . . . who was it last week who was shooting off his big mouth about "financing terrorism?" Oh, yeah, it was Joseph Ralston's bosom buddy, Edip Baser! What exactly did he say?

Underlining that terrorism should not be considered only in terms of armed actions, Baser said that it has also financial and political dimensions. Thus, he said, cooperation with other countries is essential in the fight against terrorism.

"We cannot manage to eliminate financial sources of terrorism such as illicit drug trafficking and human smuggling without cooperating with the other countries since those sources are most present in Western Europe and NATO-allied countries," he said. "We cannot fight terrorism by rendering armed militants ineffective unless we drain financial resources."

Hmm. . . in light of the US State Department's recent report on drug-trafficking, it seems to me that Baser needs to take his own advice:

Turkey is an important regional financial center, particularly for Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as for the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It continues to be a major transit route for Southwest Asian opiates moving to Europe. However, local narcotics trafficking organizations are reportedly responsible for only a small portion of the total funds laundered in Turkey.

[ . . . ]

Money laundering takes place in both banks and non-bank financial institutions. Money laundering methods in Turkey include: the cross-border smuggling of currency; bank transfers into and out of the country; and the purchase of high value items such as real estate, gold, and luxury automobiles. It is believed that Turkish-based traffickers transfer money to pay narcotics suppliers in Pakistan and Afghanistan, reportedly through alternative remittance systems. The funds are transferred to accounts in the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and other Middle Eastern countries. The money is then paid to the Pakistani and Afghan traffickers.

[ . . . ]

With the passage of several new pieces of legislation, the Government of Turkey took positive steps in 2005 to strengthen its anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing regime. It now faces the challenge of decisively implementing these laws and of securing final passage of the MASAK law that will, among other provisions, specifically criminalize terrorist financing in support of international terrorist groups. Turkey should improve its coordination among the various entities charged with responsibility in its anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing regime, including the various courts with responsibilities for these issues, in order to increase the number of successful investigations and prosecutions. Turkey should also regulate and investigate alternative remittance networks to thwart their potential misuse by terrorist organizations or their supporters. It should also strengthen its oversight of charities.

I wonder how much OYAK makes off of all that money laundering? Say, what a stroke of luck it is that TSK is getting ready to take over the NATO command in Kabul. They'll be able to use military transports to transfer all those funds around. How convenient!

Shame, shame, Edip Paşa. Seems that you're cut from the same cloth as Ralston. Or at least, Edip Paşa is the same kind of liar as Ralston, again from TNA:

Baser said the closure of the [Maxmur] camp was a long process, stating that it has turned into a PKK camp rather than a refugee camp.

But let's reiterate what the UN says about Maxmur:

Çorabatır explained that a census conducted in the camp revealed that of the 12,000 people living there, 51 percent were women and 49 percent were children. Arguing that the inhabitants of the camp have no connections with the terrorist organization, he said, "The people living in the camp are civilians; they are not terrorists."

Noting that this was the first comprehensive study undertaken by the UN pertaining to the camp, he revealed that despite remarks by the US military to the contrary, no weapons were being kept in the camp and that measures had been taken to this end.

"In all our searches, we found no weapons," said Çorabatır, who maintained that almost all the inhabitants of the camp had gone there from Turkey and that a significant number of them were eager to return.

When he stated that the inhabitants of the camp had no connections with terrorist organizations, the deputies asked him about contradictory statements made by US commanders. In a speech delivered at the Turkish Parliament, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül claimed that a significant portion of the camp had begun to support the PKK due to propaganda disseminated by the group's members.

Of course, Abdullah Gul's claim is ridiculous. The best possible pro-PKK "propaganda" comes directly from Ankara itself, through its policy of genocide and its twenty military "pacification operations" against the Kurdish people. I mean, you can't buy "propaganda" like that. I also like how Baser claims that "Turkey has 'undeniable' information that some Kurdish groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq are involved in efforts to support the PKK." Baser should be more worried about the fact that 20 million Kurds in Turkey's colony Kurdistan definitely support the PKK.

But it certainly looks like the entire US military is nothing more than a pack of dirty liars. Kinda makes you wonder what else they're lying about.

Yusuf Kanli has a pretty funny opinion piece today about Fethullah Gulen. It's hilarious how he describes Gulen bawling about not being able to return to Turkey--which may be an indication that Gulen is off his meds. What's even more interesting about Kanli's piece is his suspicion that an Islamist "mole" in the Turkish General Staff is leaking worse than a puppy with a small bladder:

Interesting enough, we are learning that despite all the expulsions from the Turkish Armed Forces over the past decades in a bid to prevent infiltration by Islamists into the senior ranks of the military there might still be some loyal deep-throat messengers loyal to political Islam who are e-mailing top secret military documents to Utah, where the Gülen brotherhood is active. Why Utah and to which address in Utah? A military statement on the recent sensitive electronic leakage to Utah unfortunately did not elaborate on such questions except underlining that investigations have shown that a draft prepared to be used in renewal of media accreditation to military events was illegally e-mailed to an address in the United States and was then made available excluding the section on Islamist media from that source to various news people in the country.

Lawyers of the Gülen brotherhood organization immediately issued a statement stressing that Fethullah Gülen was not related at all with any such thing and efforts by some quarters in Turkey to implicate Gülen with the electronic theft of the military document lacked any legal basis and were the product of some ulterior motives and legally constituted denigration.

Who said Gülen was involved in that electronic theft? Gülen is not living in Utah anyhow. Or, did anyone try to implicate the Gülen brotherhood with the so-called memoirs of the former Navy commander, Özden Örnek, which are being distributed electronically from a Utah-registered Web domain? Or, is there a Utah-based campaign to harm the prestige of the Turkish military. If so, of course, the Gülen brotherhood is not involved in any way with such dirty games...

Oddly enough, in a discussion with a friend from Amed yesterday, we came to the same conclusion. The coup plans of the Turkish General Staff was the big news all through the weekend, and some general idea of that scoop can be read at Zaman, or in Turkish at Radikal, if you're so inclined.

Yusuf Kanli opined about this leakage on Saturday, as well. However, if anyone thinks it's time to "re-affirm our commitment to democracy," then they'd better understand that it's long past time to boot out the ruling elites at the Turkish General Staff.

RESISTANCE TO THE "MODEL OF DEMOCRACY"

“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”
~ Thomas Jefferson.

What follows are a press release from Osman Baydemir during the Amed Serhildan (March 29, 2006) and a transcript of the press conference Osman Baydemir gave during the serhildan (March 31, 2006). In the press conference, Heval Osman recounts the attack on his convoy by Turkish special teams (Ozel Timler) during the height of the serhildan.

These two items comprise Appendix 5 and 6 of the "Report on Local Government and Local Democracy Dynamics concerning the DTP Municipalities in Turkey."

**********

29.03. 2006—Press Release by Mr. Osman Baydemir

Dear Press Members,

Dear People of Diyarbakir,

The incidents that has taken place in the region during the last week and in our city for the last two days reached to a point that would seriously harm both the future of democracy and the will and demand of our people to live together. The city is tense, and worries are high. In the current situation, a democratic and prudent approach is what we need urgently more than ever before.

We believe that all of these stem from the inability to find a sustainable and peaceful solution for the Kurdish problem. Unfortunately, the current oppressive approaches heavily marked with a security perspective are drawing the chance for democratization and peaceful solution of the Kurdish problem into a big politics of solution-less-ness. Many people were injured by fire-arms, and, as of now, two people lost their lives because of the intervention of security forces into the protests. There are some injured who still have death risk. Again, many offices, shops and public areas were destroyed. First and foremost the government, all should approach to the problem in a civilian and prudent manner, and take responsibility urgently in this regard.

It is necessary to carry out an inclusive, widespread and civilian democratic struggle against this politics of solution-less-ness that we are exposed to. However, the methods to be used in raising demands for democratic rights and freedoms and in struggling to frustrate the increasing oppressive wave should also be democratic. Each and every activity to be carried out in this regard should have the quality to contribute to the democratic and peaceful solution of the problems.

As the city our pain is big, and we are face in face with risks that may increase this pain every passing second. We understand the worries of our people and share their pain and suffering. In the current situation, we invite once again everybody to act with prudence and steadiness and contribute to the normalization of life in order to prevent further pain and destruction.


Transcript of Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Osman Baydemir’s Press Conference

Diyarbakir, 03-31-2006

Our city, Diyarbakir, has gone through great pain and suffering. On March 28th, our city had 70 injured persons. On March 29th, the number of persons injured rose up to more than a hundred, and 3 persons’ right to live was taken away. On March 30th, 20 more persons were wounded—mostly by gunfire— and two more persons’ right to live was violated. As of March 31st, we have lost another of our injured. Looking at the general picture, there are more than 200 injured persons, and we have lost 6 lives. It is maybe easier for many of us to talk and count in numbers only; however, seeing through our hearts, understanding and feeling empathy with and putting ourselves in place of those persons’ mothers and fathers is not only a matter of responsibility but of conscience as well.

Dear Press Representatives,

All tradesmen in our city, our citizens of all ages, from infants to our elderly citizens, have been wounded deeply, we all suffered deeply. Had I shared with you the troubles that I have been through, only those, maybe then imagining an understanding the suffering of the civilians could be a little easier for you. Yet, we kept silent; we refrained from sharing and publicizing all those details for the city to calm down, for the tension not to further flare up. I can say, based on my strong belief in the bright future lying ahead of this country, that this pain should be regarded as belonging to all of us. We should wait no longer; from this day on, we should claim all of this as our shared, common suffering. (Our city needs to move forward with prudence and steadiness now.) Prudence and steadiness are what our city needs at the moment. Everyone should claim responsibility, along with an equally strong conscience, to prevent this deep trauma, this great suffering, from getting deeper and more painful. Events should come to an end. I invite all civilian citizens to stop protests and to retreat to their homes. I invite all public officers, especially the security forces, to stop gunfire, not to recourse to firearms under any condition. I invite everyone to move forward with prudence and steadiness. I believe we cannot endure to lose yet another human being, we should not be in such a position.

I will gladly answer any of your questions.

Q: Is it true that your car was attacked, sir?

BAYDEMIR: Yes, it is true that my official car was attacked; it is true that I was threatened with death; it is true that my bodyguard was attacked and injured in his eye, but I did not share these with the public. I was always under pressure, anxious not to provoke rise in tension. Given my situation, can you imagine how the civilians in the streets might have felt, the emotional turmoil they were experiencing? We were exposed to gas bombs yesterday, but we did not share these with the people in our city. However, there should not be a single more incident. We should not suffer any more deaths.

Q: How would you interpret the Prime Minister’s comments?

BAYDEMIR: From the first day of the events till this hour, together with my colleagues at the district municipalities, my Mayor friends, we have paid great efforts trying not to lose a single life; we have acted with utmost prudence, taking great risks. Carrying the future of each and every of my fellow citizens on my shoulders, feeling great respect for my fellow citizens, for democracy and for the right to live, I acted with utmost responsibility. Yet, along with carrying out my responsibility, I also tried to act conscientiously. All of us have responsibilities. We have to act in accordance with our responsibilities. Yet, our actions should also bear on our conscience. I invite everyone to be conscientious.

Q: How would you interpret the Prime Minister’s comments on your conversation with the protestors?

BAYDEMIR: Dear press representatives, looking at the picture as a whole, I am thinking, if for the democratization process to be effective, for the social peace and stability to take place, for the 6 and 7 year old children not to die any more, if for all those, Osman Baydemir needs to be sacrificed, if that would be a means, I am ready, let me be sacrificed. I do not care at all for losing my seat, but I am concerned about my people, about the future of this country, about hurting the will of these two peoples trying to live together. Bearing these concerns on mind and in my heart, together with the Chair of the Diyarbakir DPT Center and with my Mayor colleagues, I visited many locations where incidents have occurred. I tried to convince them to retreat to their homes. Maybe this was my mistake, convincing the civilians to retreat to their homes in case of danger and protecting their lives is indeed primarily the state security forces’ responsibility. Yet, amidst a very complex social situation in which the civilians found themselves faced violently by the state security forces, amidst a social situation in which the lines have blurred, we, the local authorities in the city, tried to do all that we can to reinstate social stability.) Vice-Governor was also with me at many occasions. Now, isolate a sentence out of all those that said in front of the public, and try to trace for a sacrifice. No, the social situation is different; this problem cannot solely be regarded as a matter of provocation. We are bearing the results of a 70 years long historical period, last 20 years of which were especially crucial as regards the subject. The young people I talked to at the locations of incident, the generation we have to face now is a completely new generation. We do not know them well, they are different. Now, we have to think very carefully about Turkey’s future, our common future; we are wounded deeply and we need to heal ourselves. According to our cultural traditions, condolences, pain and suffering do not allow any other protests to take place. No more stones can be thrown, no more shutters can be pulled down in a social environment in which people share their pain with their families, wish strength to each other and feel for each others’ suffering. I wish and desire that every one of us can share and feel for this pain. I am expecting that Mr. Prime Minister will also say that he shares and feels for this pain.

Q: You talked to the protestors and made a call for prudence, but it seems that this call was not effective, incidents continued to occur, what do you think about this situation?

BAYDEMIR: As I have just tried to explain, we have witnessed a social upheaval. This was a scenery unknown to us, a completely new one. This city has never gone through such an extended and continuous period of upheaval before. This is where we stand in the end of those recent 20 years. We are facing a social situation caused by a political strategy aiming at no solution. I am afraid that this strategy of no solution, accompanied by the perspective of security, will bury our wounds deeper, will make them even harder to heal. I am repeating once again, together will all my friends, I will keep on paying the utmost effort, I will do all that I can, for my people not to be hurt at all, not to bleed a single drop of blood. I will keep on acting with all my responsibility, and with all my conscience.

Thank you.

**********

We do not forget.