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“TURKEY LOOKS OUTSIDE ITS BORDERS TO SOLVE ITS KURDISH QUESTION, WHEN THE PROBLEM CLEARLY RESTS WITHIN” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E2251-E2252 on Nov. 8, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TURKEY LOOKS OUTSIDE ITS BORDERS TO SOLVE ITS KURDISH QUESTION, WHEN
THE PROBLEM CLEARLY RESTS WITHIN
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HON. STENY H. HOYER
of maryland
in the house of representatives
Friday, November 7, 1997
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, over the past several years, Turkey, a NATO ally and United States friend, has made repeated incursions into Iraq. The invasions, which violate international law, are undertaken ostensibly against Kurdish guerillas waging a violent insurgency in Turkey. In reality, these military campaigns result in countless civilian casualties, widespread population displacement, severe economic hardship, and if anything, encourage local support for the guerrillas. While the Turkish military declares the guerrillas eradicated after each incursion, repeated cross-border attacks expose this as a fiction.
The latest invasion raises new cause for concern. For more than three weeks, Turkish forces have actively supported the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which has been engaged in years of bloody fighting with its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Widespread reports indicate Turkey is using napalm and cluster bombs, despite international covenants banning their use. The PUK receives significant United States funding, so in effect, our ally Turkey is attacking a party which receives funds from the United States Government. I question why our Government refuses to acknowledge this inconsistency. And even more importantly, I question our Government's silence when a United States-supplied ally violates a United States-imposed `no-fly zone' to kill Kurdish civilians and destroy their villages in the so-
called safe haven.
Mr. Speaker, Turkey along with the United States and Great Britain, had been participating in the ``Ankara Process'' in an effort to bring the two feuding Kurdish factions to the negotiating table. Turkey's military support for the KDP ends any hope that it can serve as a neutral regional peace-broker. Furthermore, Turkish plans to establish a ``buffer zone'' in Iraqi Kurdistan, with at least 8,000 troops, will destabilize the entire region and invite intervention by Iraq, Iran and Syria. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit for the record an editorial by Jim Hoagland from last Sunday's Washington Post that further questions the logic of U.S. policy in this area.
It is tragic and ironic that Turkey seeks answers to its ``Kurdish question'' outside its borders, when in reality it should be working these issues out at home. Turkey's 15 million Kurds have faced oppression since modern Turkey was forged in 1923. Since then, there have been 28 major Kurdish uprisings. The most recent, underway since 1984, has claimed almost 30,000 lives. According to Turkish Government sources 3,185 Kurdish villages have been evacuated and up to three million people have been internally displaced from southeast Turkey. Dispite the severity of the conflict, Turkey refuses access by the International Red Cross to the stricken region. The conflict costs billions of dollars each year and destroys hopes of economic development that is greatly needed in the region.
Mr. Speaker, the Turkish regime must put flesh on its skeletal democracy, or the Kurdish problem and other pressing issues will fester and continue to prevent Turkey from moving closer to Europe. Turkey's civilian and military leaders have repeatedly stated their intentions to address human rights problems, yet the problems persist and reform efforts seem little more than public relations exercises. Meanwhile, our Government continues business as usual, sending billions of dollars worth of security assistance to Ankara while refusing to acknowledge increasing signs of political instability. Such unequivocal support is unwise because it reinforces the military and other non-democratic forces in Turkey, and sends a message that the United States Government will support the Turkish Government no matter how deficient it remains in human rights areas.
Mr. Speaker, as I stand before this distinguished body, a group of Kurds and Americans, including Kathryn Cameron Porter, are fasting in front of this building to protest human rights violations in Turkey. They too believe our Government has remained silent in the face of growing threats to democracy in Turkey. A major impetus for their protest is the continued imprisonment of four Kurdish parliamentarians, including Leyla Zana, whose indictment included charges related to her appearance at a Helsinki commission briefing. All Kurdish-based political parties in Turkey are suppressed, even though Kurdish political opinions must be considered if political institutions are to be truly representative. Non-violent Kurdish parties must be allowed to participate in political life. Individuals should not be jailed for expressing opinions deemed harmful by the Government. Open debate and dialogue is imperative.
Mr. Speaker, another democratic measure is freedom of the media. On October 21, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued a report entitled ``The Anatolian Archipelago'' which details the fate of 78 journalists jailed for speech crimes in Turkey. CPJ, which does meticulous research and seeks Turkish Government input before publishing, has concluded in each of the last 3 years that more journalists are jailed in Turkey than in any other country.
Human rights defenders and Kurdish peace activists are also subject to harassment, imprisonment or worse. This past week, Yavuz Onen and Akin Birdal, two internationally recognized rights leaders, and Ahmet Turk, a Kurd, were charged for reading in public a report detailing the ongoing scandal linking officials to death squads and face up to 3 years in prison. On October 20, well-known peace activist, Esber Yagmurdereli, was jailed for 22 years. On October 21, the president and 7 other Human Rights Association (HRA) executives were sentenced to between 1 and 2 years in prison for speeches made during human rights week in 1996. In recent years, 20 HRA branches have been closed, including all that serve Kurdish communities in Southeast Turkey.
Free expression is only one area where Turkey is deficient in meeting its stated human rights commitments. Local NGOS, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and our own State Department conclude that torture remains widespread and few accused of torture are brought to justice. Last week, a panel of judges presiding over an internationally publicized trial, refused to make police accused of torturing 14 young people, some as young as 13, appear in court. Also pending is the legal appeal of the human rights foundation doctor who refused to turn over to the government information on victims of torture.
Mr. Speaker, I have joined more than 160 of our colleagues in signing a letter calling for the release of imprisoned parliamentarians in Turkey. At the very least, as Members of an elected legislature, we should demand that our colleagues in Turkey be freed, for it is unthinkable that legislators in a democratic society would be jailed for speaking out on behalf of democratic society would be jailed for speaking out on behalf of their constituents. I urge my colleagues to sign the ``Dear Colleague'' letter and to visit those fasting on the steps of this building.
I have also joined my colleagues on the Helsinki Commission in introducing a resolution expressing the sense of the Congress that Turkey should not be chosen as the host of the next summit meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. As long as Turkey continues to violate international law and its own commitments to OSCE principles, Turkey should not be considered an appropriate venue for a human rights summit. Such a privilege, Mr. Speaker, should be reserved for participating States that have demonstrated, in word and in deed, steadfast support for Helsinki principles and standards, particularly respect for basic human rights.
Before Turkey Joins Europe
(By Jim Hoagland)
Friend and ally to Turkey for half a century, the United States today plays a new role: pusher. The drug of choice is unrealistic ambition, fed by Washington to Ankara to keep the Turks cooperative.
The Clinton administration has correctly identified Turkey as the new ``front-line state'' in global conflict. It is the major crossroads of the religious, social and nationalist fractures of new-era politics, and gateway to the oil fields of Central Asia, Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Turkey counts.
But Washington is as weak at remedy as it is strong on diagnosis. In no other region of the post-Cold War world is the imbalance greater between a region's declared importance to U.S. interests and active, sustained U.S. involvement.
Instead the Clinton administration offers diplomatic opium to the Turks, suggesting that the answer to their problems is quick membership in the European Union, and then presses the Europeans to admit the Turks and overlook a few flaws here and there.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the U.S. goal of Turkish membership in the 15-member club of Europe's most affluent nations. A Turkey that fits into Europe economically and socially would be a more stable nation, as U.S. diplomats argue at international conferences and in increasingly acrimonious private exchanges with their European counterparts.
But Washington turns a blind eye to the self-destructive, addictive behavior of the Turkish military that makes EU membership in the near future a pipe dream. Worse: Washington denies its own responsibility for conditions that feed that behavior.
The Turkish military, which dominates the weak coalition government in Ankara, is not interested in harmonizing value added taxes, a perennial hot topic in the EU. The Turkish military expends its energies persecuting dissidents at home--a new wave of arrests of human rights activists was launched last week--and plunging deeper into a nasty civil war in neighboring northern Iraq.
For several weeks Turkish warplanes have been strafing Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq on a near-daily basis. Turkey has moved U.S.-supplied artillery into Iraq to fire on one Kurdish faction, and is dropping napalm on them from U.S.-supplied warplanes, Kurdish spokesmen say.
Turkey's involvement in the Kurdish civil war demolishes the notion that this is a distant, small conflict with no consequence for the United States. The White House pretends otherwise in its misleading reports to Congress and in its anesthetizing public statements playing up the ``success'' of U.S. policy in northern Iraq and Turkey.
The confusion of American purposes and methods is made clear by this officially unacknowledged, bizarre reality: The main targets of Turkey's current attacks inside Iraq are the guerrillas of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, an organization that receives at least $500,000 a month in covert support from the Central Intelligence Agency.
Official American money intended to finance peacekeeping has also been flowing to the PUK's Kurdish opponents, led by Massoud Barzani, who has allied himself with the Baghdad regime of Saddam Hussein.
The Turks are now weary of the vacuum that the United States has let develop in northern Iraq, a U.S. protectorate after the gulf war. They are also understandably upset about the heavy financial sacrifices the long U.S.-led economic blockade on Saddam has imposed on them. Frustrated and confused about U.S. goals, the Turks follow policies that will result in both Kurdish groups reconciling with Saddam, who will resume operational control of the north.
On top of this disastrous scenario, the brutal Turkish campaign pushes further and further away the day when Ankara would be accepted by the European Union. U.S. abdication in northern Iraq, and its self-imposed blindness to the regional consequences of that abdication, undermine its proposed solution for Turkey's problems.
This large, developing Muslim nation already faces nearly insurmountable hurdles in gaining EU membership. Germany, with 2 million Turkish residents and 500,000 Kurds on its soil, is terrified of new waves of immigration. The Europeans are also keenly aware that they are being asked by the Americans to provide more financial support for Turkey so U.S. help can decline.
Washington needs to acknowledge the damage its vacillating policy on Iraq has caused Turkey and offer financial compensation to Ankara. The deal must include Turkey's ending its human rights abuses at home and the border war on the Kurds, as part of a self-help program to get ready to join Europe.
Friends challenge self-delusion. They do not feed it.
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