Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ozeti
families. If they are guilty, they will face a
proportionate penalty, serve it and that's
all... What's being done to these soldiers
and their families now is nothing less than
summary execution.
Without knowing the conditions of the
Oct. 21 night when the PKK ambushed
their unit; without having any idea of the
psychological condition of these eight sons
and in total ignorance of the threat they
faced while they were in the hands of the
PKK, people are accusing them of not
behaving properly while they were hosta
TODAYS ZAMAW
November 8 . 2007
ges.
How sad it is for a deputy prime minister
or a justice minister and even a president
to express doubt about the loyalty of our
people under arms towards our state?
How sad it is to see a justice minister
saying "I could not feel happy with the
release of them (soldiers)?"
Or, how said it is to see a party leader
who himself had once traveled to the
Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, inspected a
"guard of honor" of the separatist gang,
shook hands with the chieftain of the
group and than claimed he did all those
things as a "journalist" and "for news" can
now say that he would prefer the eight
soldiers were killed by the PKK?
Whereas, instead of making such lofty
accusations against the released soldiers,
we must be able to develop an understan¬
ding that should aim to win back even
those on the mountains engaged in terro¬
rism. After all, though criminal and must
be punished, they are sons of mothers of
this country as well..
Evren regrets ban on public use of
Kurdish language
Leader of the coup d'état in September 1980 and seventh President of Turkey Kenan Evren has said it was a mistake to
ban the public use of the Kurdish language in schools, official settings and non-music broadcasts.
In an interview on Wednesday with Milliyet
daily's columnist Fikret Bila, Evren
said he regrets imposing a ban on public
use of the Kurdish language through Arti¬
cle 26 of the 1982 Constitution, which
stated that no language prohibited by law
shall be used in the expression and dis¬
semination of thought and that any writ¬
ten or printed documents, phonograph
record s, magnetic or video tapes and
other means of expression used in contra¬
vention of this provision shall be seized.
Evren said his observations during a visit
to the eastern provinces triggered his
decision to ban the use of Kurdish in pu¬
blic places. "Once I paid a visit to an ele¬
mentary school in a village in one of the
eastern provinces. I asked one of the
students to read a text aloud, but both her
reading and pronunciation was very bad.
Then we figured it out that many teachers
in the East and Southeast carried out
schooling in Kurdish language."
Christian Science Monitor^***^
November 08. 2007
Confessing that banning the Kurdish lan¬
guage was not a proper step to be taken
on the path toward modernization and
democratization, Evren added: "This ban
was removed in 2002 through reforms
implemented for Turkey's accession to the
European Union. Anyway, we should have
never imposed such bans."
The former general also contended that
civil servants serving in the eastern and
southeastern regions should speak Kur¬
dish besides Turkish with the objective of
developing closer ties with locals and
furnishing better service to residents.
Upon a question as to whether it would be
necessary to permit education in Kurdish
to help civil servants learn this language,
Evren said: "Schooling in the Kurdish
language cannot be permitted; yet there
are language courses where Kurdish is
taught freely. Those who wish to learn this
language can apply to such courses."
Despite the soft stance he seems to have
adopted towards the Kurds, Evren expres¬
sed, on the other hand, that it was Tur¬
key's mistake not to execute the leader of
the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK) Abdullah Ôcalan. "I am in favor of
the execution of those who deserve it,"
he said.
Turkish-Kurd tensions spill into Europe's streets
Protests across the continent have turned violent in some cities, including Berlin, where more
demonstrations are planned for this weekend.
By Rantv Islam I Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
Berlin - The simmering tensions
in Turkey's Kurdish southeast
are not only playing out along the
country's border with Iraq, where the
military has amassed tens of thou¬
sands of troops following renewed
clashes with Kurdish rebels holed up
in Iraq's mountainous north. They're
also spilling onto the streets of Euro¬
pean cities from Berlin to Brussels to
Innsbruck, Austria.
This weekend, authorities are braced
for another round of protests in the
62
German capital, where two weeks
ago Turkish ultranationalists attacked
a Kurdish cultural center, wielding
machetes and injuring dozens of
people. Last weekend, some 600
mainly Kurdish protesters returned to
Hermannplatz - a square in Berlin's
heavily immigrant Neukôlln district -
to inform the public of their view: that
Turkey is still repressing the Kurdish
people.
"It's been going on for years. The
recent threat of Turkish military
incursions into northern Iraq to attack
us is just the last straw," says Ah¬
med, a young man handing out pro-
Kurdish leaflets.
With 2.5 million residents of Turkish
origin, including an estimated 400,000
who identify themselves as Kurdish,
Germany is home to the largest
expatriate community from Turkey
and is perhaps the most visible Euro¬
pean arena for Turkish-Kurd tensions.
The expat violence has prompted
politicians including the German
interior minister to warn against the
Kurdish conflict spilling over to Ger¬
many and other European countries.
So far there has been no indication
that the clashes were planned. But
that does not mean that no group has
an interest in using them for their
purposes, says Suleyman Bag, Berlin
correspondent for Zaman, a conser¬
vative daily newspaper in Turkey. In
particular he refers to the Kurdish
Workers Party (PKK), an organiza¬
tion outlawed in Turkey and Germany