Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

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REVUE DE PRESSE~PRESS REVIEW~BERHEVOKAÇAPÊ~RNISTA
PagcA2/Thursday. January 13. 1994 turkish daily news
STAMPA~DENTRO DE LA PRENSA~BASIN ÖZETi
Big-selling dailies cover NATO summit with sensational banners
Sabah: NATO sumnùt revealed Britaùz and France agreed to clwnge borders in Mideast to set up Kurdish state
. Milliyet: Papandreau blackmailed Turkey on Cyprus issue, Turkish Anny put on alert along border with Greece
Hürriyet: Çiller asked President Bill Clinton to deal with PKK, FM çetin frustrated by PM'Çiller's conduct
By Ruhican Tul
Turkish Daily News ,
AN KARA- Although NATO leaders
hailed their summit that ended Tuesday a
resounding. success, ma~nstrea~ Tur~lsh
dailies, which sent armies of Journahsts
to Brussels to rer.0rt on the summit, do
not share a similar opinion -- staying
faithful to the motto that good, readable
news must necessarily be sensational
even if it is lacking in substance.
Sabah unearths designs
for Kurdish state
"Kurdish-state trap set for Turkey,"
raged Sabah's banner on Wednesday.
"The NATO summit revealed that Britam
and Francehad
national borders
agreed to change inter-
in the Middle East and
pressured U.S. President Bill Clinton to
agree that an independent Kurdish state
should be established in northern Iraq,"
the mass circulation daily claimed.
Sabah also reported a 2ü-minute meeting
between Prime Minister Tansu Çiller
and President Clinton, quoting Çiller as
saying that although she could not reveal
the contents, the meeting was of "vital
im~rtance
Yet,"
for Turkey."
Sabah added, "it has been
learned that she cautioned Clinton that if
borders were tampered with in the Mid-
,dIe East, the West would lose Turkey's
support and that radical Islam would
threaten Europe.
, "The West has united
'
against terrorism.
The same thing should happen in ~he
Middle East. You should exert your m-
fluence over Syria in this regard," Sabah
said Çiller had told Clinton. "When I
pierced the foggy Brussels air, I came
across a horrify,mg trap," wrote.Sabah's
Fatih Çekirge, 'The West is playing with
a map of the Middle East. One marks
northern Iraq, the other doodles on lebanon.
It is as If oil-producing areas are bein&
assigned new borders."
'This Euro-Christian Club, acting in
collusion with Russia,
ain's Prime Minister
and led by Brit-
John Major and
French President Francois Mitterrand; are
biting at the borders in the Middle East.
This frightening trap was unearthed at the
NATO summit," he claimed.
"To cope with this, one needs do some
diplomatic maneuvering. And that was
what Çiller did, holding a meeting
unprecedented during NATO summits.
,Up in a room in Val Duchesse Çastle, she
talked to Clinton for 20 minutes. They
were alone," he said. "This move is to be
applauded. For the meeting
such a critical time."
was held at
Then Cekirge revealed that although
Ciller had refused to say anything else on
the contents of the meeting except that it
was of vital significance for Turkey, he
had, through indirect sources, estabhshed
that Çiller had warned against the tampering
of Mideast borders and had asked
for U.S. support
terrorism.
in Turkey's fight against
On the other hand, Güneri Civaoglu,
another Sabah columnist, maintained
that, following her meeting with Clinton,
Çiller had met Cekirge and Milliyet columnist
Yalçm Dogan and told them of
the contents of her conversation "on condition
that they would
or broadcast, though,"
not be published
he wrote. "Yet I
sense that Çiller is trying to change scenarios
suffused by ominous designs on
Turkey, authored by friend and foe
alike," Civaoglu added~
In a rare piece of self-criticism, however,
Sabah's Cengiz Çandar, known forhis
dislike of poliCies pursued by the Çiller
government, opted for a stance diametrically
opposed to his fellow columnists,
referring to press
"Çiller Impact on
headlines such
NATO summit"
as
as
"mere propaganda made by Turks for
Turks.
"As has been the case always, we've
been acting together to form a false ~ublic
opinion (as to the developments), , he
complained.
"To me, the article concerning the Final
Communique on cooperation against
terrorism -- attached especial importance
by Çiller -- is not as important as it has
been made out to be," he added.
"For it was mentioned in previous
communiques and there already exists a
consensus in the international community
on cooperation against international terrorism.
It remains to be seen whether the
PKK (outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party)
will be affected by it," Çandar wrote.
ish troops had been put on alert along the
border.
MiIliyet's continuation of its report on
page 16, said Foreign Minister Hikmet
çetin had warned Papandreau against
provocative action against Turkey.
But then it quoted Çetin as saymg there
would surely arise no problems between
Greece and Turkey regarding Greece's oil
exploration in the Aegean since it was
conducting such research within its own
territorial waters.
The paper added that Papandreau had
told çetin that relations between the two
countries wouldsurely improve with a
solution to the Cyprus Issue. .
It further quoted çetin as saying he believed
agreements on econonuc cooperation
between the two countries were
ready to be signed.
Further down in the story, the paper
said Prime Minister Çiller had disclosed
that Greece had reframed from bringing
up the Cyprus issue during the NATO
summit and that she had invited Papandreau
to Turkey.
The dichotomy between MiIliyet's
headline and the rest of its story, too obvious
to miss, goes to show that mainstream
Turkish newspapers tend to publish
sensational front-page items whose
main bodies lack hard facts to back the
claims mentioned in them.
Milliyet's claim that the Turkish Army
units stationed along the border with
Greece had been put on alert has not been
substantiated by military officials either.
The daily itself admitted, further down
in the report. that military officials had
merely said that, liThe Turkish Armed.
Forces were at all timesready for anything."
MiIliyet claims Greek
PM tried to blackmail Turkey
On Wednesday, MiIliyet's headline
said "Blackmail on Cyprus." The spot
added that Greek Prime Minister Papandreau
had "put the island on the agenda
in return for the Aegean" and that Turk-
Hürriyet: Ciller asked
Clinton to deal with PKK
A front page headline in Hürriyet said
Çiller had met with President Clmton to '
ask him to use his influence over Syrian
authorities at an upcoming meeting with
Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad. This
with the aim of cutting off Syrian support
to the PKK, fighting for an independent
state in the Turkish Southeast. It added
that the prime minister had also asked
President Clinton to keep Syria on the
United States' list of countries
terrorism.
that back
Hürriy~t also claimed that Çiller had
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