Bulletin de liaison etd'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-BerhevokaÇapê-Rivista
Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
• seem to have failed to sway the authorities,
who still appear bent on pursuing the decades-old
policy of forcing the Kurds to
assimilate with the Thrkish majority. SecuritY"forceùn
the-eastern city-of Van recently
rounded up some 500 students for
signing a petition calling for the right to be
educated in Kurdish. Elsewhere across Turkey,
hundreds of other Kurdish students
and their parents have been arrested, and
sometimes beaten and jailed, for airing
similar demands in a new campaign
which the éiuthorities insist, probably
rightly, is orchestrated by the PKK.Despite
legislation in October that was meant to
loosell the curbs on Kurdish broadcastiIi.g,
local radio stations that dare to air Kurdish
tunes are still heavily fined.
Worse, killings of suspected Kurdish
nationalists,' which had fizzled out after
the PKK'Sceasefire, are once' again on the
rise,' according to the Thrkish Human
Rights Association. Osman Baydemir, a'
young lawyer who rims its Diyarbakir
branch,lists a string of alarming incidents.
What has prompted this apparently
harsher behaviour by the security forces
towards the Kurds? Some say that the West
is turning a bli,nd eye to official brutality
because it is grateful to Thrkey for being
foremost among Muslim countries in
backing the campaign against al-Qaeda.
-"The government believes that itcan do
whatever it wants now and the West will
look the other way," sighs Mr Baydemir.
Isthe West being too kind?
Moreover, the EU does not want to upset
the Thrks over some other matters. Lately
they have been helpful over two particular
issues: Cyprus, and the :EU'S.planned
rapid-reaction force. The l\.u'kish government
is considered at least partly responsible
for persuading Rauf Denktash, leader
of the breakaway ethnic Thrks in Cyprus,
to hold face-ta-face meetings' with his
Greek-Cypriot counterpart after years of
non-speaking. And Thrkey has pleased
both its European allies and the Americans
by dropping its objections to a European
force that would have access to
equipment and other assets belonging to
NATO, of which Thrkey is a keen member.
But some of the EU'Sleaders will want
to tell Thrkey that it stands no chance of
joining their club if Thrkey's constitutional
court bans Hadep on the ground that it is
the PKK'Spolitical arm. Hadep, for its part,
would help itself if it were to drop its refusA!Jo
label the l'!