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SENSING A SIEGE, KURDS HIT BACK
The International Herald Tribune
March 21, 2012 Wednesday
France
Clashes in Turkey flare as more officials arrested and communities
falter
ABSTRACT Tensions with Turkey's large Kurdish population have risen
in recent days as activists have intensified their calls for greater
autonomy after dozens of officials have been arrested or jailed.
FULL TEXT In this town on the Tigris, a dozen men huddled in a corner
of city hall's assembly chamber earlier this month, forgoing the empty
rows of leather seats for a few chairs pulled up in an informal group.
"We're keeping things going here," Mustafa Goren, the acting mayor
of Cizre, said, glancing up from zoning maps and applications for
building permits. "We're not going to be intimidated."
The group is all that remains of the municipal council of this city,
population 105,000, after successive waves of arrests have swept
mayors, council members and staff into jail over the past couple
of years.
Mr. Goren is the third mayor Cizre has seen since his party, the Peace
and Democracy Party, won office in some 98 towns, including this one,
across the Kurdish southeast of Turkey in elections in March 2009. The
results horrified the political establishment in the Turkish capital,
Ankara, where the party is suspected of ties to the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers' Party, or P.K.K.
Since then, some 630 Peace and Democracy Party officials, including at
least 24 mayors and dozens of city council members, have been jailed
on terrorism and separatism charges, according to a count kept by
the party at its headquarters in Ankara.
Tensions with Turkey's large Kurdish population have risen in recent
days as Kurdish activists have intensified their calls for greater
autonomy, hoping to pressure the Turkish government, which has backed
the Arab revolts but has shown limited patience for opposition or
street protests in its own country.
Over the weekend, the Turkish police used water cannons and tear
gas to put down Kurdish demonstrations across the country before
the Kurdish New Year, Newroz, which begins Wednesday. On Sunday,
one local politician died in the protests in Istanbul.
Thousands also gathered in Diyarbakir, the regional capital in the
predominantly Kurdish southeast, waving Kurdish flags and holding up
portraits of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed P.K.K. leader.
Following escalating P.K.K. violence in recent months, the government
in November ordered an intense air and artillery operation against the
group's bases across the border in northern Iraq. It has also arrested
dozens of prominent Kurdish journalists, intellectuals and academics.
The government has made changes aimed at better relations with Kurds,
including the introduction of private Kurdish language courses. But
these have been greeted as insufficient by Kurdish activists, who
want a new constitution to enshrine the rights of the country's 15
million Kurds.
Here in Cizre, the elected mayor, Aydin Budak, has been in jail for
more than two years, arrested on charges of membership in a terrorist
organization. His successor, Mehmet Saci, elected by the city council
to replace him, fled the country when a warrant was issued for his
arrest on similar charges in October.
The acting mayor, Mr. Goren, is now trying to hold things together
with what is left of the city council, more than half of whose 25
members are behind bars or on the run from arrest warrants.
He is also having to make do without the head of the sanitation
department, the municipal health clinic's doctor, a fire chief and
several other administrators, all of whom have been arrested over
the past months.
Among the hardest-hit municipalities is Kiziltepe, population 140,000,
where the acting mayor, Serife Alp, herself only two weeks out of jail,
returned from a prison visit to Mayor Ferhan Turk this month to find
her deputy, Leyla Salman, had been released after a month behind bars.
"My deputies are continually changing, they are arrested almost as
fast we can replace them," Ms. Alp said as she greeted Ms. Salman in
her office.
Ms. Alp, 34, has been running the town for most of the time since Mr.
Turk, the mayor, was arrested in a predawn raid on his home on Dec.
24, 2009, along with Mr. Budak in Cizre and six other mayors across
the region.
Both Mr. Turk and Mr. Budak are now on trial together with 150
other Peace and Democracy Party officials and Kurdish politicians in
Diyarbakir, facing terrorism and separatism charges.
According to the 7,578-page indictment issued in June 2010, they stand
accused of taking orders from the P.K.K. and conspiring to create a
separate Kurdish administration system in Turkey's southeast.
Led by the judiciary, the clampdown has been vigorously defended by
the Turkish government.
"Yes, mayors and other officials are being arrested," Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in November, according to the Anatolian
news agency. "But, brothers, they are no innocents. They have all
been up to something. They are doing illegal work under the guise
of legality, and this illegal organizing is basically just another
version of the P.K.K."
In Diyarbakir, Serdar Celebi, a lawyer and board member of the local
Human Rights Association, disagreed. "Mayors are being put on trial
for sending out invitations in Kurdish," he said.
In many of the cases before the courts, the charge of membership in a
terrorist organization is backed by no more than the accused having
made a public speech in Kurdish or participated in a protest rally,
he said.
This complaint was echoed in municipalities around the region.
Even before his current trial, Mr. Budak, the Cizre mayor, was
convicted in December 2010 and sentenced to seven and a half years on
the grounds that he had been present at an unauthorized demonstration
against the prison conditions for the P.K.K. leader, Abdullah Ocalan,
a year earlier.
Mr. Budak argued that he had been trying to convince protesters to
disperse, and he has since been formally stripped of his office,
along with half a dozen other mayors from his party, several of whom
have not yet been sentenced.
Other towns have fared little better.
In Nusaybin, a town of 86,000, Mayor Ayse Gokkan noted this month
that she was the defendant in more than 100 court cases, most of them
for posting billboards in Kurdish, giving streets Kurdish names and
similar offenses.
While Kurdish is widely spoken throughout the region, Turkey's law
on political parties makes it illegal to use any language but Turkish
in meetings, brochures, billboards or any other public communications.
"I have to go to court to testify two to five times a week,"
Ms. Gokkan said.
Most recently, the Interior Ministry had opened proceedings to
dissolve Nusaybin's city council because, Ms. Gokkan said, it had
voted to put up signposts in all the languages spoken in the town -
Arabic, Armenian and Aramaic, as well as Turkish and Kurdish.
In Kiziltepe, Ms. Alp blames Turkey's governing party, Prime Minister
Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., for the crackdown.
"The A.K.P. wins elections everywhere, but not here in Kurdistan,"
she said. "Now that they have taken over the state apparatus, they
are ordering the judiciary to come after us."
As for the charges of attempting to build a parallel administration
system in southeastern Turkey, Ms. Alp refutes them.
"We've been elected to serve our people, to collect the trash, to build
sewers, to pipe water - that is what we are here to do," she said.
But this work has been severely hampered by the crackdown, she said,
with 24 of the Peace and Democracy Party's 29 council members in
Kiziltepe arrested over the past six months and 4 others on the run
from arrest warrants.
The council has called up its reserve members, but the new members
have to be allocated to the various committees and to learn the ropes,
effectively slowing municipal services, Ms. Alp said. In the meantime,
five reserve members have already been arrested as well.
Work has also been hampered by police raids on city hall, she added.
Twice this year the building has been cordoned off by hundreds of
police officers for searches taking up to 12 hours.
To reassure intimidated residents, Ms. Alp had billboards posted around
the town, advising citizens that municipal services continued despite
the raids. "But the prosecutor's office had them taken down," she said.
The International Herald Tribune
March 21, 2012 Wednesday
France
Clashes in Turkey flare as more officials arrested and communities
falter
ABSTRACT Tensions with Turkey's large Kurdish population have risen
in recent days as activists have intensified their calls for greater
autonomy after dozens of officials have been arrested or jailed.
FULL TEXT In this town on the Tigris, a dozen men huddled in a corner
of city hall's assembly chamber earlier this month, forgoing the empty
rows of leather seats for a few chairs pulled up in an informal group.
"We're keeping things going here," Mustafa Goren, the acting mayor
of Cizre, said, glancing up from zoning maps and applications for
building permits. "We're not going to be intimidated."
The group is all that remains of the municipal council of this city,
population 105,000, after successive waves of arrests have swept
mayors, council members and staff into jail over the past couple
of years.
Mr. Goren is the third mayor Cizre has seen since his party, the Peace
and Democracy Party, won office in some 98 towns, including this one,
across the Kurdish southeast of Turkey in elections in March 2009. The
results horrified the political establishment in the Turkish capital,
Ankara, where the party is suspected of ties to the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers' Party, or P.K.K.
Since then, some 630 Peace and Democracy Party officials, including at
least 24 mayors and dozens of city council members, have been jailed
on terrorism and separatism charges, according to a count kept by
the party at its headquarters in Ankara.
Tensions with Turkey's large Kurdish population have risen in recent
days as Kurdish activists have intensified their calls for greater
autonomy, hoping to pressure the Turkish government, which has backed
the Arab revolts but has shown limited patience for opposition or
street protests in its own country.
Over the weekend, the Turkish police used water cannons and tear
gas to put down Kurdish demonstrations across the country before
the Kurdish New Year, Newroz, which begins Wednesday. On Sunday,
one local politician died in the protests in Istanbul.
Thousands also gathered in Diyarbakir, the regional capital in the
predominantly Kurdish southeast, waving Kurdish flags and holding up
portraits of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed P.K.K. leader.
Following escalating P.K.K. violence in recent months, the government
in November ordered an intense air and artillery operation against the
group's bases across the border in northern Iraq. It has also arrested
dozens of prominent Kurdish journalists, intellectuals and academics.
The government has made changes aimed at better relations with Kurds,
including the introduction of private Kurdish language courses. But
these have been greeted as insufficient by Kurdish activists, who
want a new constitution to enshrine the rights of the country's 15
million Kurds.
Here in Cizre, the elected mayor, Aydin Budak, has been in jail for
more than two years, arrested on charges of membership in a terrorist
organization. His successor, Mehmet Saci, elected by the city council
to replace him, fled the country when a warrant was issued for his
arrest on similar charges in October.
The acting mayor, Mr. Goren, is now trying to hold things together
with what is left of the city council, more than half of whose 25
members are behind bars or on the run from arrest warrants.
He is also having to make do without the head of the sanitation
department, the municipal health clinic's doctor, a fire chief and
several other administrators, all of whom have been arrested over
the past months.
Among the hardest-hit municipalities is Kiziltepe, population 140,000,
where the acting mayor, Serife Alp, herself only two weeks out of jail,
returned from a prison visit to Mayor Ferhan Turk this month to find
her deputy, Leyla Salman, had been released after a month behind bars.
"My deputies are continually changing, they are arrested almost as
fast we can replace them," Ms. Alp said as she greeted Ms. Salman in
her office.
Ms. Alp, 34, has been running the town for most of the time since Mr.
Turk, the mayor, was arrested in a predawn raid on his home on Dec.
24, 2009, along with Mr. Budak in Cizre and six other mayors across
the region.
Both Mr. Turk and Mr. Budak are now on trial together with 150
other Peace and Democracy Party officials and Kurdish politicians in
Diyarbakir, facing terrorism and separatism charges.
According to the 7,578-page indictment issued in June 2010, they stand
accused of taking orders from the P.K.K. and conspiring to create a
separate Kurdish administration system in Turkey's southeast.
Led by the judiciary, the clampdown has been vigorously defended by
the Turkish government.
"Yes, mayors and other officials are being arrested," Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in November, according to the Anatolian
news agency. "But, brothers, they are no innocents. They have all
been up to something. They are doing illegal work under the guise
of legality, and this illegal organizing is basically just another
version of the P.K.K."
In Diyarbakir, Serdar Celebi, a lawyer and board member of the local
Human Rights Association, disagreed. "Mayors are being put on trial
for sending out invitations in Kurdish," he said.
In many of the cases before the courts, the charge of membership in a
terrorist organization is backed by no more than the accused having
made a public speech in Kurdish or participated in a protest rally,
he said.
This complaint was echoed in municipalities around the region.
Even before his current trial, Mr. Budak, the Cizre mayor, was
convicted in December 2010 and sentenced to seven and a half years on
the grounds that he had been present at an unauthorized demonstration
against the prison conditions for the P.K.K. leader, Abdullah Ocalan,
a year earlier.
Mr. Budak argued that he had been trying to convince protesters to
disperse, and he has since been formally stripped of his office,
along with half a dozen other mayors from his party, several of whom
have not yet been sentenced.
Other towns have fared little better.
In Nusaybin, a town of 86,000, Mayor Ayse Gokkan noted this month
that she was the defendant in more than 100 court cases, most of them
for posting billboards in Kurdish, giving streets Kurdish names and
similar offenses.
While Kurdish is widely spoken throughout the region, Turkey's law
on political parties makes it illegal to use any language but Turkish
in meetings, brochures, billboards or any other public communications.
"I have to go to court to testify two to five times a week,"
Ms. Gokkan said.
Most recently, the Interior Ministry had opened proceedings to
dissolve Nusaybin's city council because, Ms. Gokkan said, it had
voted to put up signposts in all the languages spoken in the town -
Arabic, Armenian and Aramaic, as well as Turkish and Kurdish.
In Kiziltepe, Ms. Alp blames Turkey's governing party, Prime Minister
Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., for the crackdown.
"The A.K.P. wins elections everywhere, but not here in Kurdistan,"
she said. "Now that they have taken over the state apparatus, they
are ordering the judiciary to come after us."
As for the charges of attempting to build a parallel administration
system in southeastern Turkey, Ms. Alp refutes them.
"We've been elected to serve our people, to collect the trash, to build
sewers, to pipe water - that is what we are here to do," she said.
But this work has been severely hampered by the crackdown, she said,
with 24 of the Peace and Democracy Party's 29 council members in
Kiziltepe arrested over the past six months and 4 others on the run
from arrest warrants.
The council has called up its reserve members, but the new members
have to be allocated to the various committees and to learn the ropes,
effectively slowing municipal services, Ms. Alp said. In the meantime,
five reserve members have already been arrested as well.
Work has also been hampered by police raids on city hall, she added.
Twice this year the building has been cordoned off by hundreds of
police officers for searches taking up to 12 hours.
To reassure intimidated residents, Ms. Alp had billboards posted around
the town, advising citizens that municipal services continued despite
the raids. "But the prosecutor's office had them taken down," she said.