02:TRKNWS-L Turkish Press Review
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Sun Mar 26 00:23:43 GMT 1995
From: newsdesk_aps_nl at apsf.aps.nl (newsdesk at aps.nl)
Subject: 02:TRKNWS-L Turkish Press Review
Refugees (UNHCR) that Turkish troops had rounded up Kurds
who had taken refuge in Iraq last year and transported them
back to Turkey, Ataman said such fears were unfounded. /All
papers/
WARREN CHRISTOPHER " TURKEY WILL TAKE CARE OF THE CIVILIANS"
US Secretary of State Warren Christopher, at a press
conference following his contacts with his French
counterpart Alain Juppe in Paris, said that the operation by
Turkish Armed Forces in Iraq was a limited one and that
civilians in the region would not be harmed. Christopher
noted that it was also the wish of the US administration
that Turkey should avoid harming civilians in the region.
Afterwards, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe noted that
the territorial integrity of all EU member countries should
be respected. US Defence Department Spokesman Dennis Box
added that the US described the Turkish operation in Iraq as
"an effort to protect territorial integrity and maintain
security." /Cumhuriyet/
TURKEY PLEDGES $12 MILLION FOR UN PROGRAMME IN N.IRAQ
Turkey has pledged to contribute $12 million to this year's
UN program for humanitarian aid to the people of northern
Iraq living in precarious conditions, the Foreign Ministry
said yesterday. Ministry Spokesman Ferhat Ataman told a
weekly press briefing yesterday that Turkey had announced
its decision to conribute to the fund at a UN meeting in
Geneva on Tuesday. The only other country to announce a
firm pledge to the UN fund was Japan, with $4 million. The
UN wants to raise $183 million for the program. Ataman said
the Turkish humanitarian aid will target 1.2 million
civilians in northern Iraq. Teams from the Turkish Red
Crescent will distribute aid materials to the needy in the
cities of Dohuk, Suleymaniye and Erbil. The Turkish aid
will include flour, rice, sugar, cooking oil and soap.
Turkey will also provide Dohuk with 10 MW electricity each
day. Turkey sent $13.5 million in aid to the region last
year. /All papers/
DEFENCE MINISTER GOLHAN FLIES TO FRANCE
Defence Minister Mehmet Golhan yesterday flew to Paris to
attend ministerial meetings of Western European Union (WEU)
member nations. Turkey is an associate member of the WEU.
Golhan is also due to attend a meeting of the Western
European Arms Group. He told reporters before leaving
Ankara that global security issues and regional wars and
tensions, like those in former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and
Transcaucasia, would be among the top issues on the agenda.
/All papers/
ALIYEV BACKS TURKEY'S OPERATION IN NORTHERN IRAQ
Azeri President Haydar Aliyev said yesterday that Baku fully
supports Turkey's military operation in northern Iraq to
wipe out the PKK terrorist organization there. Meeting with
Turkish Ambassador to Baku, Altan Karamanoglu, Aliyev said
Azerbaijan was deeply disturbed by the PKK's subversive
activities against Turkey. "I believe the Turkish Army will
be successful in this operation against the separatists" he
said. /All papers/
NEW ATTACKS REPORTED IN GERMANY
Munich police late Tuesday raided clandestine offices of the
PKK, which has been outlawed in Germany. In the raid,
police arrested a 29-year-old alleged PKK leader, her
husband and seven other Kurds and seized PKK propaganda, the
Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. Meanwhile,
arsonists set fire to a Turkish culture centre in the
northeastern city of Salzgitter in the latest attack on
Turkish property, police said yesterday. Bernd Schmidbauer,
intelligence aide to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, conceded for
the first time that along with Kurds, German right-wing
radicals have also likely been involved in the anti-Turkish
violence. Meanwhile, Turkish Ambassador to Bonn, Onur Oymen
stated that 83 attacks have been carried out since the
beginning of January. Attacks have mostly been against
travel agencies, mosques, culture centres and business
offices. Oymen said that most of the attacks had been
carried out by the PKK. /Milliyet/
OIL PIPELINE ESTABLISHED WITH UKRAINE
A new joint project is going ahead between Ukraine and
Turkey for the transportation of Ukraine petrol to the
Mediterranean. A commission chaired by General Yuriy
Gavrilov who is also the security adviser of Kuchman,
Ukrainian President Kuchman, visited President Demirel
yesterday and provided him with information about proposals
for a new oil pipeline. Samsun port is now seen as an
alternative route for the transportation of Caucasian
petrol. This idea will be realized with this project.
Tankers will carry petrol from Ukraine to new facilities in
Turkey along the Black Sea. A new pipeline will connect the
Samsun's port facilities to Kirikkale Refinery with a new
pipeline. President Demirel said that he wanted Hayrettin
Uzun General Director of the Botas Pipeline Authority to
begin the project at once. /Hurriyet/
UNRESTRICTED TRAVEL FOR TURKISH WORKERS
According to the terms of the Schengen Agreement, Turkish
workers in Europe will be able to travel between seven
European Union (EU) member countries without a visa starting
from this Sunday. The agreement includes France, Belgium,
Germany, Holland, Portugal, Spain and Luxemburg, and means
that Turkish workers can travel between those countries, and
stay and work in them for up to three months without a visa.
Turkish workers wishing to stay longer will have to get
permits. /Hurriyet/
TURKISH FLOWERS FOR BRITISH MOMS
TURKEY COMBATS PKK TERRORISM IN NORTHERN IRAQ
=============================================
THE TIMES (March 22, 1995)
"...the PKK, a Stalinist terrorist movement which could
fairly be compared to Peru's Shining Path... The PKK is
poisoning Turkish democracy and even undermining Turkey's
secularism. Kurdish families...are being forced to take
sides. They are massacred by the PKK if they refuse to
fight for them..."
THE GUARDIAN (March 22, 1995)
"President Clinton - after a telephone talk with Turkey's
Prime Minister, Tansu Ciller - declared "his understanding
for Turkey's need to deal decisively with PKK terrorism"...
No one would defend the terrorist atrocities of the PKK..."
REUTER (March 21, 1995)
"Russia on Tuesday backed Turkey's military incursion into
Iraq to hunt for Kurdish separatists, describing it as an
internal affair for the countries concerned.
"We are talking about a one-off action, limited in time and
space, which has as its goal the destruction of bases and
strongholds of Kurdish extremists carrying out an armed
struggle against Turkey," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman
Grigory Karasin told a news briefing."
MAC NEIL/LEHRER NEWSHOUR (March 20, 1995)
Mr. HEATH LOWRY (Princeton University): I think first of
all the Kurds that are being attacked are Kurds who are
fighting a guerilla warfare against Turkey. And the
distinction we're making there is between the Kurdish forces
of Barzani and Talabani...
Mr. MAC NEIL: Those are the good Kurds?
Mr. LOWRY: That's right. They are our good Kurds. The
PKK, on the other hand, is a self-avowedly Marxist
organization, trained largely in the Bekaa, that uses Iraq,
Syria and on occasion Iran as staging areas for cross-border
attacks into Turkey.
Mr. MAC NEIL: The Kurdish Democratic Party said today
there are no PKK in the target areas, they're strictly
populated by Iraqi Kurds.
Mr. GRAHAM FULLER (Rand Corporation): I think that's
unlikely to be the case. There has unfortunately been a
fair amount of fighting in recent months between two of the
key Kurdish factions, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the
Popular Union of Kurdistan... In the interval, I think it's
probable that the PKK has been able to manage to establish a
few positions along the border with which to attack Turkey.
Mr. ROBERT KAPLAN (author): The problem is that Kurds
don't live in the Southeast of Turkey. They're everywhere.
They're in Izmir, Istanbul, Ankara, in the shanty towns.
Federalism, giving them some autonomy, will simply not work.
That will be a recipe for an even weaker Turkish state...
Mr. LOWRY: It's true well over half of the Kurds live in
the West of the country. But this is not a new phenomenon.
For 600 years, when the Ottoman Empire ruled all of that
region, there were no bars, no religious bars, to
intermarriages between Turks and Kurds, and for 600 years
you've had a lot of intermarriages...
Mr. MAC NEIL: You're saying a lot of Turks are as Kurdish
as they are Turkish.
Mr. LOWRY: That's right. And a lot of Kurds are as
Turkish - vice versa. And that, I think, is what makes this
a particularly complex problem. There's no question that
the three to four, four and a half million Kurds who are in
the Southeastern region have remained predominantly Kurdish
in identity. Kurdish, for many of them, is the first
language, their culture is Kurdish and so on. The further
West one goes, the less one sees that, and this is where the
real problem, I think, comes.
MARCH 22, 1995
TURKEY, ITALY TO BOOST MEDITERRANEAN COOPERATION
Turkey and Italy, two major Mediterranean countries, have
declared that they will work together to boost cooperation
in this region. "Turkish-Italian cooperation in the
Mediterranean is of vital importance as the developments in
this region effect both countries and Europe" Turkish
President Suleyman Demirel told his visiting Italian
counterpart Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.
Demirel welcomed Scalfaro at the Presidency Palace with a
ceremony. Scalfaro called his visit to Turkey "a much
delayed one", and said his visit primarily at aimed
friendship. The Italian president, for his part, also
stressed the Mediterranean dimension: "Our geostrategic
location gives us a special mission in the Mediterranean for
establishing peace and cooperation in this region" he said.
"We support Turkey's integration with the EU, toward which
the customs union is an important step" he added. Demirel
stressed that Turkey was ready for customs union. "You will
see this during your visit here" Demirel said. "Scalfaro's
visit will open a new era in our relations" Demirel added.
He also noted that the volume of trade between the two
countries was $3 billion. "In our talks we will see how we
can improve the balance of trade, which is presently in
favour of Italy. I believe we have the potential to
diversify our trade. Both countries have the political will
for that" Demirel added. Scalfaro also visited Parliament
Speaker Husamettin Cindoruk and Prime Minister Tansu Ciller.
An accord of protection and encouragement of investment is
expected to be signed today. The two presidents will also
hold a press conference this morning to sum up their talks.
Scalfaro will leave Turkey today. /All papers/
CRITICISM FROM CILLER TO PROVIDE COMFORT
Prime Minister Tansu Ciller stated that the "Provide
Comfort" mandate could not fill the lack of authority in
northern Iraq and that the PKK terrorist organization had
infiltrated Turkey from there. While replying to the
questions of journalists, Ciller said that allegations
claiming that during the operation of the Turkish Armed
Forces in northern Iraq, civilians had been killed, were not
correct. Noting that they knew where the PKK were located,
Ciller pointed out that a delegation from the Foreign
Ministry had gone to northern Iraq to make sure that
civilians were not killed. Since the operation in northern
Iraq, for the first time Ciller made a statement to a
foreign TV channel, indicating that the operation aimed to
prevent the infiltration of the outlawed PKK separatist
organization and had not targeted civilians. The Anatolia
news agency, quoting the AFP, reported that Ciller, in her
statement on British BBC Channel 4, said: "We already had
the information that the PKK intended to infiltrate Turkey
to carry out terrorist activities during the Nevruz holiday.
Nevruz was celebrated all around the country in peace
yesterday. This proves that the Turkish army's operation
was right". /Milliyet/
KARAYALCIN CALLS FOR SPECIAL SECURITY MEASURES IN GERMANY
Foreign Minister Murat Karayalcin said yesterday that the
German government should take special security measures to
protect potential Turkish targets in that country, the
Anatolia news agency reported. He noted that there had been
80 attacks on Turkish targets in Germany since January,
adding that Turkey trusted the German government in security
matters and was sure it would do its best to protect
potential Turkish targets and people in Germany.
TURKISH TROOPS SURROUND PKK CAMPS
Reports by military representatives about the incursion of
Turkish armed forces into northern Iraq say that PKK
terrorist camps in the region have been surrounded.
According to Defence Minister Mehmet Gol- han, 200
terrorists have been killed and a large num- ber of others
have given themselves up.
Military officials say that the armed forces, including
planes, tanks, helicopters and 35,000 troops on the ground
will stay in the region "until all traces of the terrorists
have been wiped out." On the other hand, Prime Minister
Ciller has said that Turkey is filling the power vacuum that
the "hammer"strike force deployed at Incirlik base near
Adana has been unable to fill in northern Iraq.
Deploying Cobra and Super Cobra helicopters, F-16 fighter
planes and large numbers of ground forces, Turkish troops
have carried out massive strikes against PKK strongholds in
what is described as the largest Turkish military op-
eration ever. Reports from the region say that strikes are
continuing at the same high intensity.
Reaction from abroad has been mixed, but US officials have
described the action as being taken against "violent
terrorists." /All papers/
NO EXTRADITION FROM GERMANY AFTER ALL
Although the German government has recently suggested that
it would extradite to Turkey political extremists arrested
in Germany for acts of violence directed against Turkey and
Turkish citizens in Germany, it now seems as though this
will be unlikely.
German officials say that although they have long lists of
foreign offenders, none of them merit being returned to
Turkey for trial as terrorists guilty of acts of terrorism.
Commenting on the situation prevailing in Germany and
Turkey, Turkish Ambassador to Bonn, Onur Oymen said in an
interview with the "Berliner Zeitung" newspaper that Turkey
would never deal with terrorists or yield to their demands.
He also noted that in the current situation he feared that
those acting against the in- terests of Turkey would not be
dealt with according to the full strength of the law. /All
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