Turkey Set to Invest in Better Relations With Kurds

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s government is planning a broad series of investments worth as much as $12 billion in the country’s largely Kurdish southeast, in a new economic effort intended to create jobs and draw young men away from militancy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The program is intended to drain support for the militant Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, by improving the lives of Turkey’s impoverished Kurdish minority, Mr. Erdogan said in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday.

As part of the push, the government will dedicate a state television channel to Kurdish language broadcasting, a measure that Kurds in Turkey have sought for years. The Turkish state has imposed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, arguing that allowing that freedom would strengthen the Kurds’ desire to form a separate state.

Turkey, a vibrant Muslim democracy and a strong American ally, has for years fought the militant group, known as the P.K.K., which hides in Turkey and Iraq and seeks greater autonomy for Kurds in Turkey.

That fight has put it at odds with the United States, whose strongest allies in the war in Iraq are Kurds. But after an ambush of Turkish troops last fall, and subsequent lobbying by Mr. Erdogan and the Turkish military, the Bush administration agreed to let Turkey strike at the group inside Iraq, opening up airspace there and even offering intelligence.

“Turkey is not a guest,” said Mr. Erdogan, 54, sitting in a cream-colored high-backed chair in his official residence in Ankara, Turkey’s capital. “Everyone who has entered Iraq until now will stay for a while and go away, but we will stay.”

“We are the most important door for northern Iraq to open up to the world,” he added. “We are the healthiest door.”

Last month, Turkey conducted an eight-day ground offensive into Iraq, and Mr. Erdogan said that the United States had been fully behind it.

“I can openly and freely say that this short process has been done with the total understanding of Turkey, the United States and the central government of Iraq,” he said.

“But the fight against terrorism is not only this,” he added. “It also has a socioeconomic part, a psychological part, a cultural part.”

Mr. Erdogan was the first public figure to speak openly about Turkey’s troubles with its Kurdish population in a speech several years ago that won him a measure of respect among Turkey’s approximately 12 million Kurds, about a sixth of its population. Kurds voted in large numbers for his political party in a national election last July. Since then, many say his efforts have stalled, replaced by frequent military operations just over the border.

Mr. Erdogan sought to allay Kurds’ fears Tuesday, emphasizing Turkey’s efforts to engage them on both sides of the border. Turkey has chosen not to negotiate directly with the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, led by Massoud Barzani, despite the fact that many of the militants it is chasing hide in that territory. Mr. Erdogan added, however, that informal contacts had been made with the area’s representatives.

“We have relatives in northern Iraq,” he said. “And people living there have relatives in our southeastern region. With whom will we have good relations other than with ourselves?”

Efforts to improve relations with Iraq include plans to open a consulate in the southern city of Basra, Mr. Erdogan said. Turkey has an embassy in Baghdad and a consulate in Mosul, a major city in the north.

Mr. Erdogan is still identifying funds for the economic effort, which was started years ago by a previous administration but languished. The state will invest between $11 billion and $12 billion over five years to build two large dams and a system of water canals, complete paved roads and remove land mines from the fields along the Syrian border, he said.

Plans for the project will be completed within two months, he said, at which point construction on the two dams will begin. He said he had dedicated one of his deputy prime ministers to visit cities across the largely Kurdish southeast to work on it.

“Everything we can see in the western part of the country we can see in the east,” he said.

The television channel will also include Persian and Arabic, Mr. Erdogan said, and should be running in several months. “This will be the most important step providing cultural rights to the region,” he said.

Turkey, a member of NATO, has ambitions to join the European Union, though Mr. Erdogan has recently come under criticism for allowing the required democratic and economic retooling needed for membership to drop from the agenda.

“There is no stalling or slowing down,” he said. “We are determined.”

A social security law required to meet European standards will be submitted to Parliament in the next two to three weeks, he said, and a long-awaited revision of a law that limits freedom of speech is nearly ready. At every weekly cabinet meeting, one of the topics is Turkey’s European bid, and each ministry is working on it.

“There is no alternative for us other than full membership,” Mr. Erdogan said.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

A Kurdish Society of Soldiers

In Rugged N. Iraq, Guerrillas Forge a Unity Based on Hardship and Defiance

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 8, 2008; A01

ZAP VALLEY, Iraq -- On the day the Turkish soldiers withdrew from Iraq, 40 Kurdish guerrillas convened to bury five of their dead.

The corpses were wrapped in black plastic and camouflage tarp, lashed to stretchers fashioned from branches, and draped in the flag of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. In silence the guerrillas stacked large rocks into five piles, resting the stretchers end-to-end on the cairns. They stood in two rows with machine guns pointed above the mountains that surrounded them and waited for their leader to speak.

"The Turkish army could not capture any of our territory, could not get one of our bases, our weapons or even a scrap of nylon," Bahoz Erdal, the 39-year-old military commander of the Kurdish guerrillas, told his serried ranks. "The Turkish army didn't have any chance to rest. When they attacked, we hit them. When they made camp, we hit them. Even when they pulled back, we hit them."

The conclusion of the eight-day battle last Friday along Iraq's northern border was described by Turkey's government as the scheduled end to a successful incursion that crippled its enemies, destroying hundreds of their caves and hideouts. But ultimately the battle ended where it had begun, with the intractable guerrillas in sole control of hundreds of miles of mountainous terrain.

At the funeral, the quiet ending to their latest war, some guerrillas bowed their heads but no tears were shed.

"In the last 10 days in Zap, our fighters displayed their historic heroism," Erdal told his soldiers. "In this defense, you brought back again the fighting spirit of the PKK."

A Washington Post correspondent and staff photographer who spent five days inside rebel territory during and after the battle -- the only reporters allowed to accompany the guerrillas through this period -- observed a self-sufficient society, with its own rituals and traditions, that bears no resemblance to the rest of Iraq. Access, however, was limited to the people and places the guerrillas chose to reveal, and it was difficult to verify details of the battle because of the vast distances between locations.

What was clear was that years in these snowcapped mountains have forged the fighters into rugged ascetics. Although they have based themselves in northern Iraq, they are oriented elsewhere, choosing even to live on Turkish time, an hour behind Iraq's. They are based in the heart of the Islamic Middle East but are largely uninterested in religion or the cultures they abandoned in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. They relate their struggle to those of the American revolutionaries who fought the British crown, and the Cuban guerrillas who followed Fidel Castro down from the Sierra Maestra mountains.

"We are fighting for democracy, for freedom," said Osman Delbrine, a 32-year-old guerrilla with eight years in the mountains. "We are fighting for peace and for all Kurds in all nations."

Their tactics can be ruthless. They slip over the border to blow up Turkish soldiers and retreat back to Iraq. It is more unusual for them to be on the defensive, protecting their territory from Turkish attack. The PKK, with 4,000 to 5,000 fighters, according to the U.S. State Department, represents less of a threat than it once did to the Turkish government. But the group is benefiting from a resurgence of nationalist feeling among the 25 million Kurds dispersed throughout the region.

The PKK leaders say they are no longer fighting for an independent Kurdish state, or even to replicate or expand the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. Rather, they say, they want their people to speak Kurdish in schools, to receive national identification cards, to have equal rights for women, to avoid persecution by state security forces, and to gain respect and political influence wherever they live. To walk among the guerrillas, however, is to feel some are also fighting to prolong their communal, socialist experiment and to be left alone.

"In society, in the cities, I feel like someone is choking me," said Berivan, a 27-year-old female guerrilla. "In the mountains I feel free."

The guerrillas receive no salaries. They sew their olive-drab wool uniforms and treat their wounded. They have no homes and live in peripatetic motion, walking goat trails and dry creek beds, through mossy boulder fields and across slabs of brindled rock. The small villages that dot this territory are abandoned now, the lone paved road deserted. The guerrillas sleep on bedrolls in caves or under the stars, drink spring water and eat what they can forage or smuggle in from civilization.

"Our life is totally different than yours," one guerrilla said.

Although the PKK welcomes visitors, the Kurdistan Regional Government of northern Iraq has tried to bar outsiders, particularly journalists, from entering the area where the authorities effectively tolerate the guerrillas. After receiving an invitation to tour the area, The Post's journalists hiked for eight hours, first up a rocky path for herders to the top of a mountain overlooking Kurdish towns to the south, then down a precipitous slope a local guide said was littered with land mines. Along the way, it was necessary to shimmy across a steel bridge mangled by Turkish bombs and crouch below boulders when warplanes flew overhead. The mountains rang with the spatter of gunfire and the discharge of distant bombs. At dusk, the first guerrilla -- wearing camouflage and carrying a Kalashnikov rifle -- appeared from behind a tree in a rock-strewn ravine. Others soon emerged, and one of them held out his hand.

"Welcome to our mountain," he said in English.

'He Was My Best Friend'

The Turkish military invasion, known as Operation Sun, began Feb. 21 with an aerial bombardment, followed by a push of a reported 2,000 ground troops in various passes across the 200-mile border Turkey shares with Iraq.

The thrust of the ground battle targeted the Zap Valley, a crucial region in the western portion of the guerrillas' territory, home to their headquarters, training camps, underground storage rooms, burial plots and fighters manning their Russian-made antiaircraft Dushka machine-gun positions on the snowy peaks. Erdal, the high-strung, fast-talking guerrilla commander, abandoned his medical school studies in Damascus, Syria, two decades ago to join the PKK. Since then, he has fixated on fighting Turkey.

"It's not random that they are attacking this area," he said. "The army that they brought is enough to capture an area like Zap. But when you use a very big army, it's difficult to organize, and your movements will be slow."

In the end, Erdal said, his guerrillas drove Turkey back down from the mountains after killing more than 120 of its soldiers; Turkey claimed to have lost 24. The disparity was larger on the guerrilla side: Erdal and several others insisted that just 10 of their own were killed, while Turkey put the number at more than 230.

One of the corpses lashed to the branches on the day of the funeral belonged to Ayhan Eruh. During preparations for the funeral, the names of the dead were written on scraps of white paper tied to their chests. This was a scene Roshat Sarhat, a 30-year-old guerrilla who once was a journalist in Istanbul, had no interest in seeing. He stayed in an abandoned stone hut on a hillside far from the service. The bare single room was silent but for the crackle of his radio and the buzz of a surveillance drone high overhead.

"He was my best friend," Sarhat said. Eruh had died on the first day of the battle.

'The Mountain Teaches Us'

Throughout the fighting, the hundreds of guerrillas used the same battle-tested tactics they have relied on for years: Move quickly, hit and retreat, harass and confuse the more-powerful enemy. They carry AK-47s, sniper rifles, shoulder-fired rockets and hand grenades.

"Some of our attacks required only five guerrillas, and others used 50 or 60," Erdal said. "For example, you send five guerrillas to a huge army at night, they attack them and leave the area; then these soldiers cannot sleep until the morning. In a different situation, you use 50 or 60 guerrillas to hold a mountain."

After President Bush met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in November to discuss the PKK problem, the guerrillas rushed to make arrangements for battle. They stashed ammunition, weapons, food and water in caves and crags throughout the mountains, for quick resupply. Inside one such cave, they installed a cylindrical, metal wood-burning stove and chimney to heat a room constructed of army green cloth and plastic tarp.

"The mountain is a school for us," said Elif, a 32-year-old commander who dropped out of interior design school in Turkey 10 years ago to join the PKK. "The mountain teaches us how to walk, it taught us how to live in cold weather, how to go without eating for a long time," she said. "The Turkish soldiers have huge bodies, but they can't stay in the snow for more than a couple hours."

In the mountains they communicate using cellphone text messages or speak in code over hand-held Yaesu radios on ever-changing frequencies. If they occupy an abandoned home, they blanket the windows to hide the light and build fires at night to hide the smoke. "We are not scared," Sarhat said. "But we are always careful."

Sarhat, a somber, serious man, joined the PKK a decade ago after working as a television reporter in Turkey. He was born to Kurdish parents in the city of Van but did not learn his ancestral language because teaching it in the schools was forbidden. As he grew older and studied Kurdish history, he felt increasingly angry that his culture was suppressed.

"Anywhere the Kurds live in Turkey, you can't act like a Kurd. You can't have your own identification, you can't have your own history or culture," he said. "I realized that they took my nation's rights, our education, our identity. Then I decided to join the PKK."

In wartime the guerrillas fill various roles. There are medics with UNICEF first-aid kits, cooks and videographers, frontline fighters and logisticians. Yet they are also uniform down to the smallest details. They smoke one brand of cigarettes, Business Royales, and nearly all wear peach-colored Turkish Mekap sneakers with orange laces.

The guerrillas are not a people's army or ad hoc insurgency, but a trained paramilitary force that requires every new recruit to attend a three-month camp to study military tactics and become indoctrinated in the ideology of the imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The PKK's separatist war against Turkish authorities, which began in 1984 and lasted for a decade and a half, claimed the lives of about 35,000 people, mostly Kurds in southeastern Turkey.

In the PKK enclave in northern Iraq, Ocalan's chubby, mustachioed face is emblazoned on hillsides, flags and small pins the fighters wear on their vests. The reverence they exhibit toward Ocalan, captured in 1999 in Nairobi and now in a Turkish prison, borders on cultish. After assassination attempts against Ocalan in the 1990s, guerrillas immolated themselves and some became suicide bombers. To the governments of Turkey, Iraq and the United States, those tactics solidified the PKK's reputation as a terrorist organization.

"We don't want any mother in the world to have to receive the body of her dead son," said Hadar Afreen, a 26-year-old guerrilla who grew up outside Aleppo, Syria. "We don't want to fight; we want to be peaceful. But if they attack us, we will defend ourselves."

The PKK recruits many of its fighters when they are teenagers or college students and has been criticized for exploiting young people and effectively trapping them in the guerrilla force. But more than a dozen people interviewed last week said they came to the fight willingly. Some said they joined because their villages had been attacked or relatives slain by Turkish soldiers.

Afreen came to the mountains as an 18-year-old after she was told by Arab teachers she must join Syria's ruling Baath Party while in high school or face expulsion. She was familiar with the books of Ocalan and considered him a hero. She left a note for her parents saying she was joining the PKK, sneaked out of the house and has not spoken to them since.

"What I'm doing here is more important than my parents," she said.

After Erdal's speech at the funeral, the guerrillas, in solemn procession, marched the corpses up the mountainside, through wild grass meadows and over footbridges spanning two rushing creeks, until they reached their stone-walled cemetery surrounded by craters from Turkish bombs. With shovels and picks, they dug five spaces in the rows of cinder-block graves. They pushed the scraps of paper bearing names inside clear plastic bottles and placed them in the graves. Then they covered their dead with dirt and blank stone slabs and dispersed without ceremony back into the mountains.

Staff photographer Andrea Bruce and special correspondent Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report.

Turkey Resumes Strikes in Iraq's North

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 6, 2008; A18

BAGHDAD, March 5 -- Five days after withdrawing its troops from northern Iraq, Turkey launched another round of air and artillery strikes on Kurdish guerrilla territory there, a sign that the offensive against the rebels will continue, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

Turkish warplanes and artillery pounded the Zap area, according to the officials, the same mountainous region in Iraq in which Turkish ground troops fought guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in an eight-day offensive that ended Friday. The area, which civilians have largely evacuated, is the PKK's main base in northern Iraq.

Staff Gen. Omar Sharif of the Iraqi border forces said no casualties were reported in the latest Turkish strikes. The PKK guerrillas are skilled at moving quickly and hiding in the mountains, making it difficult to disrupt their activities.

Abdullah Ahmed, a spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdish Pesh Merga military forces in Amadiyah, a Kurdish town near the area that was bombed, said the barrage lasted about 2 1/2 hours.

After months of sporadic bombing and shelling, Turkey sent ground troops into Iraq late last month to confront the Kurdish guerrillas. Many people in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq saw the incursion as a violation of their sovereignty. Iraqi Kurdish officials also feared that Turkey had designs beyond quelling the PKK, such as damaging the region's economy.

Turkish officials, who did not immediately confirm Wednesday's bombing, said their target was exclusively the guerrillas, who have fought the Turkish government for decades in the name of securing more rights for the millions of Kurds who live in Turkey and neighboring countries.

Also Wednesday, the U.S. military released from custody two former high-ranking Shiite government officials who had been accused of kidnapping and killing Sunnis. They were freed after Iraqi prosecutors decided Monday to drop the charges against them.

The Iraqi judicial system's handling of the cases against the two former Health Ministry officials -- Hakim al-Zamili, who was deputy minister, and Brig. Gen. Hamid Hamza Alwan Abbas al-Shamari, who led the agency's security force -- drew wide criticism from Sunnis and Americans on the grounds that it showed a sectarian bias in the government in favor of the two defendants because they are Shiites.

The men, followers of Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, were accused of helping murder Sunni doctors, using ambulances to run guns for militiamen and torturing and kidnapping Sunni hospital patients. An Iraqi prosecutor asked that the case be dropped for lack of evidence, though American legal advisers had said there was ample evidence.

Zamili was greeted at his Sadr City home by a large, joyful crowd, according to the Associated Press. Many of the people joined him for lunch in a tent erected in his honor to celebrate his release.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni political group, issued a statement Wednesday calling the men's release "a black mark and a grave setback in the history of the Iraqi judicial system" that could draw the country "into disaster."

Special correspondents Dlovan Brwari and Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.

Turkey continues raids in northern Iraq

Talks between Turkish and Iraqi officials yield nothing, as Pentagon chief Gates arrives in Ankara for talks. He says he'll urge a quick end to the operation.
By Borzou Daragahi and Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

February 28, 2008

BAGHDAD — A sixth day of fighting continued Wednesday between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels in Iraq as U.S., Turkish and Iraqi officials clashed over terms for ending the conflict.

Iraqi officials have demanded that Turkey halt the operation in the northeastern mountains of Iraq and withdraw immediately.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who arrived in Ankara, the Turkish capital, Wednesday night, told reporters he intended to advise Turkish leaders that their incursion into northern Iraq must last no more than a few weeks. He also planned to tell them that the military operation should be complemented by political efforts to resolve the grievances of the Kurdish minority in eastern Turkey.

But Turkey ruled out specifying a timetable for an end to the offensive.

"Our objective is clear, our mission is clear and there is no timetable until . . . those terrorist bases are eliminated," Turkish envoy Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters after talks in Baghdad with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

Turkish troops, artillery and fighter planes pushed into the northern Iraqi mountain stronghold of the Kurdistan Workers Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, which has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkish government for a quarter-century.

Kurds, spread out over Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, constitute the world's largest ethnic group without a nation. They have periodically clashed with the region's Arab, Iranian and Turkish governments. And Turkey has long complained that PKK fighters have used the semiautonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq as a base to launch attacks.

Gates is scheduled to meet with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan, as well as the country's military leadership, today. He said he would use the meetings to caution the government that the Bush administration expected Turkish troops to return to their side of the border quickly.

"Making this operation as quick and as precisely targeted as possible and then getting out is important," Gates told a small group of reporters in New Delhi before departing Wednesday for Ankara. "I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that, not months."

The incursion has become increasingly awkward for the U.S. as the Iraqi Cabinet and the Kurdish regional government have condemned the move, calling it a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

Both Turkey and Iraq are U.S. allies, and Washington has been providing intelligence to Ankara on operations of the PKK, which has been carrying out attacks on Turkish military and civilian targets in the border regions.

Gates declined to comment on what the United States would do about the growing tensions between Turkey and Iraq, saying he would wait for discussions with Turkish leaders before making any assessments.

The Pentagon chief said the military action by Turkey would not solve the problem of Kurdish insurgency unless it was accompanied by economic development in Kurdish territories and the political will to address the community's grievances.

"There certainly is a place for security operations, but these also need to be accompanied with economic and political initiatives that begin to deal with some of the issues that provide a favorable local environment where the PKK can operate," Gates said. "They need to address some of the issues and complaints that some of the Kurds have."

The latest Turkish offensive began after months of efforts by Turkish officials failed to convince Iraqi and U.S. security officials to crack down on the PKK.

Reports on casualty figures differed. Turkish officials said 77 Kurdish fighters were "neutralized," but did not elaborate, and five Turkish soldiers and three village guards were killed in the fighting. A PKK official said five of the group's fighters had been killed in the last round of clashes.

Witnesses said 50 families were displaced amid heavy artillery bombardment. Kurds said the Turks destroyed several bridges and planted mines around new encampments deep inside Iraqi territory.

A PKK spokesman said the group's fighters were succeeding.

"We have the Turkish forces trapped," said Ahmed Denis, a PKK spokesman reached by telephone.

Since the 1990s, Turkey has launched dozens of offensives against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq, often with the tacit or explicit permission of Iraqi Kurds. But the latest operation comes at a time of heightened Kurdish nationalism and clout in Iraq and has sparked angry protests among Kurds as well as vehement denunciations by Iraqi officials.

The Kurdistan regional government's parliament, based in Irbil, on Tuesday authorized its troops to attack Turkish forces if they expanded their offensive beyond the PKK's forbidding mountain hide-outs.

The Turkish delegation that arrived Wednesday in Baghdad was met with icy comments. The diplomats emerged for a media appearance after 2 1/2 hours of talks. Foreign Minister Zebari, a Kurd, described the latest incursion as "unprecedented" and "not acceptable."

"Our message to the Turks is to cease the military operation immediately and to withdraw the Turkish military troops as soon as possible and to negotiate with Iraq to solve this problem," he said.

For his part, Turkish diplomat Davutoglu extended an invitation to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, to travel to Ankara on an official state visit. "The invitation is accepted," Zebari said, "provided the timing is convenient and there are no Turkish troops on Iraqi territory."

daragahi@latimes.com

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

Daragahi reported from Baghdad and Spiegel from Ankara. Special correspondents Asso Ahmed in Irbil, Yesim Comert in Istanbul, Turkey, and others in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Iraq Sounds Alarm on Clashes in North

Turkey Warned Not to Expand Offensive Against Kurdish Rebels

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A12

BAGHDAD, Feb. 25 -- Turkish troops and Kurdish guerrillas clashed Monday for the fifth consecutive day in two areas of northern Iraq, the Turkish military said, as senior Iraqi officials warned that a widened and prolonged incursion could lead to serious repercussions for the region.

In a statement, Turkey's general staff said its forces killed 41 Kurdish guerrillas in fighting Monday, bringing the total killed to 153 since the launch of the biggest Turkish offensive into Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The military also reported two more Turkish troops killed Monday, bringing the total to 17.

"Close combat with the terrorists is continuing in two separate zones," the Turkish military said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK. "The troops in the critical zones of the operation were reinforced and some of the troops were replaced by fresh forces."

PKK leaders in northern Iraq reported casualty numbers that diverged sharply from the Turkish figures. Mizgin Ahmed, of the party's 31-member governing council, said that a total of four guerrillas had been killed and two wounded since the incursion began and that PKK forces had killed 81 Turkish soldiers.

Ahmed said Turkish forces had not been able to advance into Iraq beyond their initial push of about three miles. "We have enough numbers to be able to fight their forces," she said in an interview in PKK-controlled territory near the town of Raniyah in northern Iraq. "We have a right to defend ourselves and we will defend ourselves to the end."

The guerrillas have long used Iraq's forbidding mountains to stage attacks in Turkey, first in an attempt to carve a Kurdish state out of Turkey but now largely in the pursuit of Kurdish autonomy. Turkish forces launched the incursion last Thursday following a series of PKK attacks on Turkish soldiers and civilians. For years, Turkey's government has complained that Iraq's government was unwilling to contain the PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the United States.

In Baghdad, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie declared at a news conference Monday that the fighting could have "very serious consequences."

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani warned Turkey against any expansion.

"The operations are still limited operations, and the government has expressed its concern," Bolani said. "If the operation is widened, definitely Iraq will defend its sovereignty and territory."

He said the United States should do more to encourage the Turks to withdraw. U.S. troops "are the greatest force on the ground. They have certain obligations," Bolani said. "They could do more."

Contradicting statements by other Iraqi officials, he said Turkey did not consult with Iraq before launching the operation. "No Iraqi official would agree to an incursion across his borders," Bolani said.

When asked whether he was concerned that forces of the Kurdish regional government would ignore Iraq's central government and take unilateral action against the Turkish troops, Bolani replied that Iraq's constitution would not allow such a confrontation. "But if the targeting was expanded, definitely no one can keep silent," he added.

In Ankara, the Turkish capital, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek stressed that the operation was against only PKK guerrillas, not Iraqi civilians or Iraq's government.

"When this operation has hit its targets, our units will return home," he said, without elaborating.

Funerals for three Turkish soldiers drew thousands in Ankara on Monday, bringing traffic in the center of the city to a standstill. Some Turkish soldiers wore puffy white winter camouflage uniforms to show solidarity with their comrades fighting in Iraq. Meanwhile, Turkish forces in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's eastern Kurdish region, broke up a fiery protest against the offensive in northern Iraq. It was the largest opposition protest since the incursion began.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed four Shiite pilgrims and injured 15, the third incident to target thousands of worshipers traveling to the southern holy city of Karbala to commemorate one of Shiite Islam's most sacred days -- the end of the 40th day of mourning after the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad who was killed in a 7th-century battle.

Meanwhile, the death toll from a suicide bombing near the southern city of Iskandariyah targeting pilgrims on Sunday rose to 56, making it one of the deadliest assaults this year.

In the town of Samarra on Monday, a man in a wheelchair detonated explosives he was carrying, killing deputy police commander Abdul Jabbar Rabei Salih al-Jubori in his office, police said. In the city of Buhriz, in Diyala province, gunmen ambushed and killed eight Iraqi soldiers, police said.

Correspondents Joshua Partlow in northern Iraq and Ellen Knickmeyer in Ankara and special correspondent Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Iraq calls on U.S. to intervene in Turkish incursion

The fighting between its ally and a Kurdish separatist group it considers a terrorist organization puts the Bush administration in a bind. 'They could do more,' an Iraqi official says.
By Asso Ahmed and Tina Susman
Special to The Times

February 26, 2008

SHILADEZAH, IRAQ — Artillery and gunfire echoed through the mountains of northern Iraq on Monday during continued clashes between invading Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels, with Turkey saying that 153 guerrillas had been killed in four days.

Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Bolani suggested that the United States should do more to stop the fighting, which has left villagers stranded by bombed-out bridges.

"They are the greatest force on the ground. They have certain obligations," Bolani said Monday of the U.S. military, which has neither intervened in nor commented on the Turkish incursion. "They could do more."

The conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has put American officials in an uncomfortable position. Turkey is a NATO ally, and the U.S. government considers the PKK to be a terrorist organization. The rebels are seeking a separate Kurdish state.

The White House has confirmed that it knew in advance of Turkey's latest military operation, which began Thursday night. American officials have said Turkey has the right to defend itself against the PKK, which has bases in northern Iraq.

But the U.S. also has an allegiance to Iraq's government, which has protested the Turkish incursion.

"Iraq has requested that the Turkish troops go back to Turkey and respect Iraq's sovereignty," Bolani said at a meeting with foreign journalists.

In Washington, Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview that he could not say how long the military operation would last but promised it would be "limited in size, scope and duration."

"This is only targeted at the PKK," he said. "We have no other agenda."

Sensoy said that Turkish media reports that 10,000 troops were involved in the operation were "greatly exaggerated," but he would not say how large a force was taking part.

Turkey said 15 of its soldiers had been killed so far. However, PKK spokesman Ahmed Denis said the Turkish death toll was far higher.

There was no way to independently confirm the number of casualties on either side, but the frustration and anger of locals in the rugged region was clear.

"Why are the Turks doing this, in our land, our country?" said Aska Shazeen, who said she was unable to reach her home in the village of Rashya because the bridge she had to cross was destroyed. "Who is responsible?" she cried.

At a cafe in Shiladezah, about 20 miles south of the Turkish border in Iraq's Dahuk province, Nijrvan Khalil expressed the sentiments of many locals as he vowed to fight the Turks if the clashes caused any civilian casualties or targeted regions outside of PKK areas of operation.

"I'll be the first to take up arms against them," he said of the Turks.

Most Iraqi Kurds sympathize with the demands of Turkey's minority Kurds for their own homeland.

"They are Kurds like us," said Khalifa Qadir, another customer in the cafe, where a TV was showing news coverage of some Kurds in Turkey demonstrating for independence.

"This is a nation that won't vanish easily," said Qadir. "Their demands should be answered."

The latest fighting has raised concerns that the peshmerga, the fighting forces of Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan regional government, could become entangled in the clashes if the Turks are seen as violating their vow to hit only the PKK.

An official with the Kurdistan regional government, Mohammed Muhsin, said the local administration did not want to become part of the conflict but that there was a line over which Turkey must not cross.

"From our side, we have a red line: when our safe villages and the citizens are being attacked by the Turkish army," he said. "We will strike with all that we've got, and the people will participate with the peshmerga."

At the site of a bridge that once connected people from dozens of villages in the Amadiya district, about 15 miles from the Turkish border, the sounds of gunfire and artillery shells were clear. Jets flew over without opening fire, but a peshmerga soldier quickly ushered visiting journalists from the area.

"We must get back," he said. "It is possible the area will be bombarded."

tina.susman@latimes.com

Special correspondent Ahmed reported from Shiladezah and Times staff writer Susman from Baghdad. Staff writers Julian E. Barnes and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.

Turkey Says 127 Killed in Iraq Battles; U.S. Urges Restraint

By Ken Fireman and Mark Bentley

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Turkey said the death toll in three days of battles with Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq reached 127, as the U.S. urged a swift end to the incursion.

Turkey's armed forces have killed 112 militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, including 33 today, the military said on its Web site. Fifteen Turkish soldiers have also died in the conflict, it said.

``We will continue the operation with the same determination and heroism until planned targets are reached,'' the military said, adding that jets, artillery and helicopters had hit 63 suspected PKK targets since troops went over the border on Feb. 21.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Turkey should wrap up the military campaign, adding Turkey won't be able to solve the problem of cross-border Kurdish raids through purely military means.

``I would hope that it would be short, that it would be precise and avoid the loss of innocent life, and that they leave as quickly as they can accomplish their mission,'' Gates told reporters today in Canberra, Australia.

Turkey has fought the autonomy-seeking PKK for two decades at the cost of almost 40,000 lives, most of them Kurdish. The U.S. and the European Union brand the group as terrorists.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Canberra at kfireman1@bloomberg.net Mark Bentley in Ankara at mbentley3@bloomberg.net

Turkey Sends Soldiers Into N. Iraq

Offensive Against Kurdish Separatists Alarms Baghdad

By Joshua Partlow and Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 23, 2008; A11

DAHUK, Iraq, Feb. 22 -- After months of sporadic shelling targeting the mountain hideouts of Kurdish guerrilla fighters, Turkey sent tanks and ground troops into northern Iraq on Thursday afternoon in an incursion that escalated the tension between the neighboring countries.

The incursion marked the first time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that Turkish soldiers in large numbers have crossed onto Iraqi soil. The offensive alarmed Iraqi officials, who have condemned violence by the separatist Kurdish guerrillas in the past but do not want to see a large-scale Turkish invasion.

"This has been a serious escalation," Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said in an interview. "We hope that this will end as soon as possible for fear of escalation or any minor mistakes that would lead to a wider problem."

After hours of bombing and shelling by Turkish artillery and warplanes, Turkish soldiers crossed via the Habur mountain pass after dusk Thursday into a sparsely populated corner of northern Iraq that the separatist rebel group, known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, has used as a refuge and a base for attacks inside Turkey. The number of Turkish troops in Iraq remained unclear Friday, but U.S. and Iraqi officials estimated it at 500 to 1,000. Turkish television reported that the number was as high as 10,000.

Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said he was unaware whether Turkish soldiers had fought any battles in Iraq.

"I don't know how far they have advanced or precisely how deep they are going to go," he said. "They said they will work to avoid collateral damage against infrastructure and civilians. We all agree that they are going after a terrorist group."

But Ahmed Denize, a member of the PKK, said that small teams of guerrillas had fought the Turkish soldiers throughout the day Friday. Turkish soldiers destroyed three bridges during their movement into Iraq, he said. He also said PKK fighters had killed about 20 Turkish soldiers, but that claim could not be verified.

"We had information that they are coming, so we spread out in small groups and opened fire on them," he said. "The fight is still going on."

The Turkish military reported that 24 members of the PKK were killed, along with five Turkish soldiers, according to the semiofficial Anatolia news agency.

The soldiers of northern Iraq's Kurdish regional government were on high alert Friday, officials said. Kurdish news agencies reported that the soldiers, known as the pesh merga, were dispatched from the Kurdish capital of Irbil to the northern city of Dahuk. In mountain towns along the way such as Sarsank and Anishka, the camouflaged soldiers in maroon berets were abundant, filling fleets of white pickup trucks at gas stations, sitting in groups along the side of the road or taking photographs of themselves overlooking the vast mountain valleys.

At a pesh merga base in Skren, commanders declined to discuss the troop movements but confirmed that the soldiers in the streets were new arrivals.

The conflict between the PKK and Turkey dates back decades and has claimed thousands of lives. The Kurdish guerrillas want more rights for the large Kurdish population in Turkey and have also, at times, advocated an independent Kurdish state in the region. The smoldering tensions flared up in October when Kurdish rebels killed 12 Turkish soldiers near Turkey's border with northern Iraq. Turkish politicians threatened an invasion and have said they will do what is necessary to protect their people from rebel attacks. Throughout the fall and winter, Turkey bombed PKK positions along the border but until Thursday had stopped short of crossing into Iraqi territory.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul told reporters in Ankara, the capital, that the troops were making every effort to avoid civilian casualties. "We have always welcomed and extended a helping hand to the Iraqi people during their difficult times, and they are friends and family of Turkey," he said.

Turkey has long maintained several small military bases in northern Iraq. As Turkey was bombarding Iraqi territory Thursday, Turkish tanks rolled out of one of their bases but were blocked by the pesh merga, according to Iraqi officials. After a tense standoff, both sides retreated.

The incident reflects the fine line the Kurdistan Regional Government is walking in dealing with Turkey's efforts against the rebel group. Its public stance in recent months has been that its forces will try to isolate and weaken the PKK but that they do not have the capability to drive out the guerrillas, who live in rugged terrain with steep, rocky roads. The pesh merga has blocked journalists' access to PKK territory, and Iraqi officials say they have also made it more difficult for the guerrillas to move throughout northern Iraq.

By refusing to confront the PKK, the Kurdish regional government avoids the potentially incendiary step of starting an intra-Kurdish battle within Iraq. At the same time, the PKK has very little political clout in Iraq and has been publicly condemned by all sides.

"We have not been a threat, and we do not pose a threat to Turkey," said Falah Mustafa Bakir, head of the Kurdish government's foreign relations department. "We've done what we can in order to help the situation. We care about this. We understand that this is a problem. But this is not the right approach to solve it. It only brings more destruction and brings more problems."

The Bush administration has been an active partner in Turkey's fight against the Kurdish rebels. Turkey has grown more aggressive since President Bush called the PKK a common enemy of Turkey, Iraq and the United States recently. The U.S. military has been sharing intelligence to help target rebel positions and is kept informed of Turkey's military movements.

Gul called Bush early Thursday to tell him of the incursion, according to Turkey's military. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Turkey to keep the operation short and "keep in mind that while the terrorists need, obviously, to be stopped from doing what they're doing, that there really can't be a destabilization of the region."

"This is something that we were aware of in advance, and, as you know, the U.S. agrees with Turkey that the PKK is a terrorist organization and is an enemy of Turkey, Iraq and the United States," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters.

Kurdish officials said they have lived with the U.S.-sanctioned bombing campaign against the rebels but feel the incursion is a violation of their sovereignty; they have also said they will defend their territory, if necessary. Bakir, the Kurdish foreign relations official, said the Americans should halt the Turkish advance.

"We believe that they have a responsibility to stop this incursion, which is not in anybody's interest," he said.

Correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer in Cairo, special correspondent Dlovan Brwari in Dahuk and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.

Kurdish Soldiers in Iraq Caught Between Competing Allegiances

By Joshua Partlow and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 24, 2008; A18

BALINDA, Iraq, Feb. 23 -- The Iraqi Kurdish soldiers stood at the edge of the collapsed steel bridge and looked down into the teal waters rushing below. The last sign of the Iraqi government, a small border checkpoint, was far behind them down in the river valley.

Ahead were snow-dusted mountains, abandoned villages and more bridges bombed by Turkish warplanes. The soldiers were at least 15 miles from Turkey's border. They could go no farther.

It is in these rugged, largely inaccessible mountains along the border, an area inside Iraq but uncontrolled by any nation, that Turkish soldiers are fighting Kurdish guerrillas. For the third day, Turkish attack helicopters and artillery bombarded guerrilla bases inside Iraq, blasting cave hideouts, arms caches and antiaircraft positions, Turkey's military said Saturday.

Although the Turkish government is describing the military incursion as a limited operation that will end as quickly as possible, it is the first major ground incursion into Iraq since Saddam Hussein's government fell in April 2003. U.S. and Iraqi officials estimate that 500 to 1,000 Turkish soldiers are involved, but Turkish news reports put the number as high as 10,000. Turkey said it has killed at least 79 guerrillas and lost seven soldiers.

For the Kurdish soldiers who control most of northern Iraq, the violence along the border has put them in an increasingly uncomfortable position. They said the recent bombing campaigns have targeted Kurdish civilians in villages that are often far from the bases of the guerrilla group, known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. The group, which uses a corner of northern Iraq as a base, seeks greater autonomy for Kurds in Turkey.

Local officials in northern Iraq said thousands of farmers, shepherds and villagers fled south during the months of bombing that preceded this week's ground incursion. The Iraqi Kurdish soldiers, known as the pesh merga, have spread out across the northern region and are on high alert, awaiting orders from their commanders, soldiers said.

"The Turkish army doesn't have the right to come into our country. What they are doing is against the law," Maj. Hussein Jafar, a pesh merga officer, said at the edge of the destroyed Avamarke bridge, a roughly 40-yard span built in 2004 that was blasted by Turkish missiles on Thursday, according to residents and local officials. It was one of five bridges in the border region destroyed in the Turkish bombardments, Kurdish soldiers said.

"They bombed the bridge because they say there are PKK in this area, but actually the PKK are very far from here. They want to destroy the economy of our country," Jafar said.

Many pesh merga soldiers risked their lives defending Kurdish territory from Hussein's forces, and they say Turkey's offensive is a violation of their sovereignty. Several said that they are upset that the U.S. and Iraqi governments have largely condoned Turkey's attacks on the PKK and that they are prepared to defend their people if Turkey continues its advance. The United States and Turkey consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

"If Turkey comes farther than they are now, then 100 percent we will stop them," said Maj. Gen. Hashim Sitae, a pesh merga commander in the northern city of Dahuk.

In a statement on its Web site, the Kurdistan Regional Government offered no support for the PKK but condemned the Turkish military operations, saying it was "imperative that Turkey immediately withdraw its military forces from the Kurdistan Region in Iraq." The statement called on the United States to help stop the offensive.

"The Turkish army came into Iraq and hit our villages and hit our civilians, and we have to be ready to protect them," said Col. Humaid Muhammed Abdullah, a pesh merga officer in Dahuk. "We are waiting for the Americans to do something to solve this situation."

Turkey's military released few details of the fighting Saturday, saying only that Turkish forces were battling Kurdish guerrillas in four areas in Iraq's Kurdish north. The military said on its Web site that the guerrillas were trying to flee south in a "panicked state."

The news dominated Turkish television, which broadcast clip after clip of Turkish soldiers in white winter camouflage rolling up mountains in open-sided trucks. Crawls across television screens provided a running tally of the military's figure for guerrillas killed. Turkish news media said the country's jets were striking as far as 10 miles into northern Iraq.

A PKK spokesman, Ahmed Denize, said small teams of PKK fighters continued to strike the Turkish military in quick ambushes from multiple locations. He said that the fighters had taken the corpses of 15 Turkish soldiers, a claim that could not be verified.

Many of the mountain bases hit by Turkey's military were probably only sparsely populated by the guerrillas, who often leave their mountain camps to spend winters in lower-lying villages. Turkey's government approved a cross-border incursion last year, and an early spring offensive such as the one launched Thursday had been widely expected, giving rebels months to prepare. The Kurdish government has effectively allowed the PKK to create a mini-state along the border where they can live unchallenged.

Sardar Kakameen, the mayor of Deralouk, a Kurdish town in northern Iraq near the border, said that the bombing campaign in recent months has been the most intense he has seen and that more than 100 villages have emptied out as residents have moved in with relatives in his city and in neighboring areas.

"Because of the bombing, there is nobody left in the area," he said. "The civilian people are the ones who have suffered the most from this bombing."

Three days ago, mortar shells began to rain down on the tree farms and apple orchards in Hish, a predominantly Christian village along the border, residents said.

"The bombing came down directly in our area, it was very strong," said Fual Hoshaba Kashool, 43, a farmer from the village. Kashool and his family, 12 people in all, fled on foot at dawn to the nearby town of Sheladeze. The next day, the Avamarke bridge was destroyed, cutting off the one road to home.

"Fortunately, all the humans were safe; we ran away, but our lands were destroyed," Kashool said. "And now our problem is we left all our belongings on the other side of the bridge and we can't bring them back."

Another villager who fled, Abdul Rahman Piro, 50, said he believed that Turkey wanted to drive out all civilians from the area. "There is no difference between us and the PKK to them," he said. "We are all Kurds."

Knickmeyer reported from Istanbul. Special correspondent Dlovan Brwari in Balinda contributed to this report.

The Traps in Turkey’s Power Shift

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and SEBNEM ARSU

AFTER nearly a century of strictly secular rule, Turkey last week got a new president, Abdullah Gul, who is strongly disliked by the Turkish military because he is an observant Muslim with a background in Islamic politics. In his first speech as president, Mr. Gul, a 56-year-old economist, praised Turkey’s secular tradition, saying it guaranteed personal freedoms. But the officer corps, which considers itself the guardian of secularism and generally doesn’t trust political leaders like Mr. Gul, showed its dislike for him by skipping his appointment ceremony.

Whether the officers defy him, or try to overthrow him, as they have four elected governments since 1960, is another matter, and represents one of the largest unanswered questions hanging over Turkey’s politics.

Mr. Gul and his colleagues say that they abandoned religious politics long ago. They know, they say, that all but a small percentage of Turks are very happy with their secular state.

Still, even if religion in public life is not on the table now, questions of power and class are. Mr. Gul, like many observant Muslims, is from Kayseri, a working-class city in Turkey’s heartland. The urban secularists who were in power for so long are used to thinking of themselves as the elite.

Will there be a clash?

Five issues that will play out in coming weeks and months could begin to provide an answer.

THE CONSTITUTION: Turkey’s Constitution was written in 1982, at the time of a military coup, and most liberal Turks say it is out of date. It limits the authority of the constitutional court and takes an authoritarian view of individual freedoms and rights. The members of Mr. Gul’s party have made revising it a central project for their time in power. One change they want, according to Ergun Ozbudun, a constitutional law professor who worked on the draft, would limit the powers of the president over appointments.

THE EUROPEAN UNION: Mr. Gul was a leading actor in Turkey’s bid to join the E.U., and in his first speech as president, he reiterated his intent to continue to pursue it. Progress toward membership might inhibit any impulse for the army to interfere in government, since democracy is a prerequisite for union membership. But Turkey’s bid faces strong opposition from some countries like France, whose newly elected president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants new talks in which Turkey would be considered for “special status” as well as full membership.

APPOINTMENTS: As president, Mr. Gul has the final say over thousands of appointments to important official positions. The outgoing secularist president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, vetoed more than 400 appointments proposed by Mr. Gul’s party during its four and a half years in control of Parliament, according to the presidential Web site. Now, opposition parties can do little to stop Mr. Gul from approving any candidate his party nominates, and Turks in the secular establishment fear that a disproportionate number will come from religious backgrounds. In particular, watch for his decision on the head of TRT, the state-owned television network, and on the director of the Istanbul office of the Ministry of Education.

ARTICLE 301: Mr. Gul wants to ease a rule against “insulting Turkishness” that is known as Article 301 and has been invoked against journalists and writers, including the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. The two main opposition political parties — representing nationalists and the secular establishment — are expected to oppose changing the law, as are some leaders in Mr. Gul’s party. But the party is expected to amend it, in the face of strong criticism from the E.U.

KURDISH SEPARATISM: Mr. Gul’s party has taken a more conciliatory line toward Kurds in the country’s southeast than has Turkey’s military, but that point of friction between them may be easing. Many Kurdish politicians are known for their loyalty to Abdullah Ocalan, a Kurdish militant now in captivity, and Kurdish political leaders in Parliament did not sing along to the national anthem during Mr. Gul’s inauguration. That is sure to irritate many Turks and make it harder for Mr. Gul’s government to reconcile with the Kurds. Meanwhile, the military’s attitude may be moderating from the other direction. In June, it was advocating a large-scale push into northern Iraq, where it says many Kurdish militants hide, but that pressure has since quieted.

Kurds pin hopes on election bloc victory

By Laura King
Times Staff Writer

5:29 PM PDT, August 3, 2007

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- Mehmet Adiyaman's eyes filled with tears of joy as he watched newly elected Kurdish lawmakers clasp hands with villagers who had come from miles around to offer their congratulations.

For more than a decade, Kurds, who make up roughly one-fifth of Turkey's population, have had no bloc of representatives in the nation's legislature. But when the new parliament convenes Saturday, 23 members of the Kurdish-rights Democratic Society Party are scheduled to take their seats.

That prospect has caused rejoicing here, along with hopes for reduced tensions, both within Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast and across the border with Iraq, where Kurds control a quasi-independent region.

"I feel that my happiness has given me wings," said Adiyaman, who lost several family members to Turkey's bloody 23-year conflict with Kurdish rebels. Virtually every family in his village, he said, had suffered the loss of land, or loved ones, or both.

For years, Turkey's Kurdish region has been the scene of violent clashes between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish military. Thousands have died on both sides. This year, alone, the military has lost more than 225 troops to skirmishes with Kurdish guerrillas based in the mountains of Southern Turkey and Northern Iraq. In recent months, senior Turkish army generals have been pushing hard for a major incursion into Northern Iraq to chase them down.

Kurdish hopes were buoyed not just by the success of their elected representatives, but by the overall results of the July 22 balloting, which was widely viewed as a rebuke to the military establishment.

Many Kurds believe Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is now in a better position to keep the powerful army in check. Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials, AKP, was the big winner in the vote. The party, an offshoot of the nation's Islamist movements, has tense relations with the military leadership, which is secular.

Kurds believe Erdogan views their cause with sympathy. Nearly two years ago, the prime minister traveled to Diyarbakir and delivered a groundbreaking speech saying Turkey needed to "face up to its past" regarding the Kurds.

"More democracy, not more repression, is the answer to the Kurds' long-running grievances," he said in the first such declaration ever by a Turkish leader.

Firat Anli, mayor of a district of Diyarbakir, the principal city in the southeast, said he thought the election results would strengthen Erdogan's hand.

"A big cross-border action seems less likely now -- the military was putting so much pressure on the government, but then the government got the people's vote of confidence," he said.

The United States, too, has been pressing Turkey to refrain from a major incursion. But Turkish public sentiment is inflamed by each new casualty report -- three more soldiers died this week -- and funerals occasionally turn into anti-U.S. rallies.

For the moment, the military tensions appear to have eased. Driving east out of Diyarbakir, in the direction of the Iraqi border, motorists encounter almost no checkpoints over the course of several hours -- a barometer of the threat level perceived by the army.

Local officials also disputed reports of a major buildup in recent weeks. Turkey keeps about 50,000 soldiers in the border region, but officials here say the comings and goings at area military bases, including tank convoys and air traffic, have appeared routine.

For Kurds, the military situation is not the only concern. Many are hoping that the election results will heighten external pressure on Turkey to ease repressive measures against them, including restrictions against use of the Kurdish language in public forums and in broadcasting.

Erdogan's party has been the prime mover behind Turkey's efforts to join the European Union, and the Europeans have made clear that the bid cannot move forward without the Kurds being granted greater cultural and political rights. Turkey's checkered human-rights record, another red flag for the Europeans, is deeply entwined with the Kurdish conflict.

But the newly altered political landscape holds peril as well as promise for the Kurds. Also to be represented in the parliament after a one-term absence is the far-right National Action Party, which won almost 15 percent of the vote.

The Kurdish cause is anathema to the nationalists, who believe the Kurds' insistence on a separate cultural identity threatens the foundations of the Turkish republic.

Some fear that when the new parliament holds its inaugural session, there could be a replay of the disastrous swearing-in of 1991. As that session opened, a Kurdish parliamentarian, Leyla Zana, caused an uproar by speaking Kurdish in the chambers -- forbidden under Turkish law -- and by wearing a hair ornament with the Kurdish colors of red, green and yellow. She and several other Kurdish lawmakers were accused of aiding the guerrillas of the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, lost their parliamentary immunity and served long jail terms. By 1994, their party had been outlawed and the Kurdish parliamentary foothold had been lost.

This time, the incoming Kurdish parliamentarians have signaled they will take a more conciliatory stance, and some have said they welcome the presence of nationalists alongside them.

"We believe it is possible for different political views to co-exist," said Gultan Kisanak, a former journalist who will take her seat with the Kurdish contingent. "It's part of democracy."

But nationalists are likely to be inflamed by the mere presence of Kurdish lawmakers like Aysel Tugluk. She was a member of the defense team of Abdullah Ocalan, who is considered the architect of the Kurdish armed struggle and blamed by Turkey for tens of thousands of deaths. Captured in 1999, Ocalan was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to a life term.

Another incoming Kurdish lawmaker has charges of aiding the PKK pending against her, but was freed from prison in order to take her seat.

Among the Kurds, many leading figures believe that unless Turkey makes a fundamental decision to accept pluralism in its society, the conflict will rage on.

Abdullah Demirbas, a district mayor in Diyarbakir, recently was fired from his position by Turkish authorities for printing Kurdish-language brochures and organizing Kurdish-language public forums on such topics as domestic abuse. His entire local council was dismissed as well when they protested his firing.

"There is a notion that any kind of different culture is a threat to the state," said Demirbas. "They are ruling by fear, and it can't work -- in the long run people will insist on their own identity."

State news agency says Turkey's ruling party won parliamentary majority

From the Associated Press

11:55 AM PDT, July 22, 2007

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey's Islamic-rooted ruling party won parliamentary elections today, taking at least 331 of 550 seats despite warnings from the secular opposition that the government was a threat to secular traditions.

The state-run Anatolia news agency said the ruling Justice and Development Party had won with 85 percent of the votes counted. Two secular parties, the Republican People's Party and the Nationalist Action Party, won 124 seats and 76 seats respectively, Anatolia said. Independents won 19 seats.

Ruling party supporters gathered in front of their Istanbul branch office, clapping, dancing and waving flags depicting the party symbol, a light bulb. In Ankara, the capital, a jubilant crowd of several hundred whooped as they watched election results on a big television screen erected outside party headquarters.

One of parliament's first jobs will be to elect a president. The post is largely ceremonial, but the incumbent has the power to veto legislative bills and government appointments.

In May, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul abandoned his presidential bid after opponents said Gul's election would remove the last obstacle to an Islamic takeover of government, and the military -- instigator of past coups -- threatened to intervene to safeguard secularism.

Ruling Party in Turkey Wins Broad Victory

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

ISTANBUL, July 22 — The ruling party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a broad victory in national parliamentary elections on Sunday, taking nearly half of the total vote in what became a referendum on the future of Turkish democracy.

Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development party took 47 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results, far more than the 34 percent the party received in the last election in 2002. The election result was a slap at the secular state establishment, which had predicted that voters would punish the party for trying to push an Islamic agenda.

But only a fifth of Turks seem to share that concern, with the Republican People’s Party, the main party of Turkey’s secular establishment, receiving 20 percent of the vote, up by 1 percentage point from the last election. The Nationalist Action Party, which that played on fears of ethnic Kurdish separatism, won 14 percent of the vote, election officials said.

Turkey is a NATO member and a strong American ally in a troubled region and its stability is crucial. Its current political soul-searching attempts to find answers to the questions that many Americans have been asking since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: Can an Islamic-oriented government that is popularly elected be democratic and Westward-looking?

It was unclear on Sunday night how Turkey’s powerful and secular military might react, if at all. It issued a sharp warning to Mr. Erdogan’s party in April, saying it had strayed too far from secularism. It has deposed elected governments four times since the Turkish state was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 and seemed to be threatening a fifth.

“I believe our democracy will emerge much stronger with this election,” said Mr. Erdogan, voting with his wife Emine in Istanbul, the Anatolian News Agency of Turkey reported. “This isn’t just a message to our country, but a message to the world.”

The struggle in Turkey is essentially one of power. Mr. Erdogan’s party, known in Turkish by its initials, A.K., derives its base in part from a religious, merchant class in rural Turkey. It has pushed hard to gain membership for Turkey in the European Union, rewriting laws to meet European standards and meeting requirements in an International Monetary Fund economic program. It has strengthened economic ties with Israel, and has broached the topic of Turkey’s long-festering problems with its Kurdish minority.

Still, secular, urban Turks are suspicious. The worldview of much of the senior leadership of Mr. Erdogan’s party differs substantially from their own. They recall Mr. Erdogan’s beginnings as an Islamist and say it is impossible to trust his party no matter what their current record is.

“The community that made Tayyip Erdogan who he is is the Islamic community,” said Nu Guvenmez, a gas industry employee who had cast his vote for the secular party in Istanbul. “He hasn’t broken ties. He can’t leave it.”

But some of that concern stems from a deep-rooted class divide. In an affluent neighborhood in Istanbul, members the A.K. party leadership, many of whose wives wear headscarves, were compared unfavorably to administrations in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan — countries with much less vibrant democracies than Turkey — because those wives were uncovered.

The election comes after three months of political uncertainty that followed a showdown over the nation’s presidency, leading to Sunday’s elections ahead of schedule.

Turkey’s secular state elite, backed by its military, used a legal maneuver in May to block Mr. Erdogan’s candidate from becoming president. Their objection was that the wife of the candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, wears a Muslim headscarf.

The episode brought out strong emotions in Turks and deeply divided the nation.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

On Iraqi mountain fortress, anti-Turkish fighters rule

Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:14AM EDT

By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

QANDIL MOUNTAIN, Iraq (Reuters) - On the way to the Qandil mountains, a potential flashpoint for yet another Middle East war, Kurdish officials give blunt assessments of the limits of their sovereignty and power to curb anti-Turkish guerrillas.

"The problem with the border region is that we have no authority over it," said police major Abu Bakr Abdul Rahman Hussein in the town of Qalat Dizah in northern Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.

"We can't go there. The mountains are full of PKK," he added, referring to guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party.

A few miles east, at a base of the Iraqi Frontier Guard, Colonel Ahmed Sabr sternly warned of the dangers lurking ahead: "From here on, you are on your own. We can't help if anything happens to you. The area is full of people with guns -- PKK, Iranians, armed shepherds."

The Qandil mountain is on the border with Iran, part of a range that stretches north to the border with Turkey, whose army has launched several major anti-guerrilla operations into Iraq since the PKK began fighting the Turkish state in 1984 in a struggle for autonomy that has killed more than 30,000 people.

During a bitterly contested campaign for July 22 parliamentary elections in Turkey, the Turkish armed forces urged the government to allow it to strike across the border to crush the estimated 4,000 PKK guerrillas who use the mountains as their base of operations.

The PKK is outlawed in Turkey and considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

Turkish officials have accused the United States of failing to pressure the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq to crack down on the PKK to defuse tension along the border of the Kurdistan region, which has been an oasis of relative peace in war-torn Iraq.

Iraqi Kurds, in general, sympathize with the PKK owing to their ethnic kinship.

The fragility of that peace was highlighted on July 18 when the Turkish army fired around 100 shells into the vicinity of the northern border town of Zakho, according to the KRG's deputy minister for security forces, Jabar Yawer. No-one was hurt but scores of residents fled the area.

"YOUR CELLPHONES PLEASE"

Driving into PKK territory -- the "border" is a cement bridge not far from Colonel Sabr's frontier fort -- explains why the Kurdish government considers the Qandil mountain a no-go zone and why the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas appear supremely confident they could withstand a Turkish invasion or a crackdown by the KRG's forces.

This is ideal guerrilla country, where fighters intimately familiar with the soaring peaks and deep valleys of the region have a natural advantage over any attacker. Even Saddam Hussein's army, waging ruthless and repeated campaigns, failed to dislodge them.

Neither did large-scale Turkish incursions in 1995 and 1997 involving an estimated 35,000 and 50,000 troops, respectively.

Climbing up towards a guerrilla encampment at the hamlet of Marado, on the flank of the mountain, the track is so rutted that a jeep negotiates it at crawling pace, wheels inches from the edge and a drop of hundreds of feet.

The first sign of PKK presence -- and a degree of nervousness about possible attacks -- comes at a guard post manned by two fighters carrying Kalashnikov rifles and serious expressions. Before allowing the visitors to travel on, they have to surrender their passports.

"And your cellphones please," said one. "Satellite phones, too. All means of communications."

This is a new regulation, according to people familiar with the area, part of ever-more elaborate security precautions and fears that visitors could communicate the coordinates of guerrilla outposts, including the PKK "guesthouse" even higher up the flank of the mountain and so well camouflaged it is difficult to see.

The area around the camp is lined with steep hillsides and dotted with trees. There is no sign of life except for the odd flock of sheep and a shepherd.

The guesthouse is in the shade of an ancient oak tree, next to a large satellite dish. At the guesthouse, three woman PKK fighters in uniform in their early 30s served tea. They did not carry weapons.

None of the PKK leaders who occasionally receive visitors here are available but in a telephone interview, Abdul Rahman Chaderchi, the official in charge of the PKK's foreign relations, said a Turkish cross-border attack now would have no better chance of success than previous incursions.

"We are well prepared, all along the mountains," he said, adding that a Turkish attack would be a "strategic mistake" that would unite Kurds on both sides of the borders and elsewhere in the Middle East.

REGIONAL STABILITY

There are Kurdish minorities in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria who make up the world's largest ethnic group without an independent state -- more than 30 million people in all. A fully independent Iraqi Kurdistan would be a threat to the stability of each of the countries where they live.

Turkey has the largest Kurdish population and the election campaign prompted a surge of nationalist feeling that has made some Kurdish politicians fear election rhetoric might be transformed into military action after Sunday's vote.

In Washington, conservatives place the onus for defusing the potentially explosive border tension on Masoud Barzani, the president of the KRG.

A few days before the Turkish vote, Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told a session of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee that Barzani "should expel PKK terrorists" from their strongholds.

Judging from a day in their natural fortress of the Qandil range, this seems much easier said than done.

Turks Cast Ballots for New Parliament

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:19 a.m. ET

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turks voted for a new Parliament on Sunday in a contest viewed as pivotal in determining the balance between Islam and secularism in this nation of more than 70 million.

Many people cut short vacations to head home to cast their ballots, and lines at some polling stations were long as people voted early to avoid the summer midday heat. In Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, traffic jammed some main roads and police officers stood guard outside the gates of schools serving as polling stations.

''My biggest concern is security. I voted for a party which, I believe, will end terrorism and provide security for our citizens,'' said Remzi Ekinci, a civil servant. He declined to identify his choice because he works for the government.

The new Parliament will face a host of challenges, including a presidential election, violence by Kurdish rebels and a growing divide over the role of Islam in society.

The election was called early to defuse a political crisis over the Islamic-oriented ruling party's choice of presidential candidate, and the three-month campaign was peaceful. Turkey has made big strides after the economic and political chaos of past decades, but some feared the vote could deepen divisions in the mostly Muslim nation.

Fourteen parties and 700 independent candidates were competing for a total of 42.5 million eligible voters. Campaigning was prohibited on Sunday.

Parties must win at least 10 percent of the votes in order to have representation in Parliament, a high threshold that has drawn some criticism as being undemocratic.

The country has an emboldened class of devout Muslims, led by a ruling party with a willingness to pursue Western-style reforms in order to strengthen the economy and join the European Union. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has presided over strong economic results, including reduced inflation, more foreign investment and average annual growth of 7 percent.

''Things are going well, there's stability in the economy,'' said Kadem Diner, a catering company owner. ''I think it would be insane to ruin stability by voting for someone else.''

The success of the ruling Justice and Development Party has often been touted as proof that Islam and democracy can coexist, although its detractors accuse Erdogan and his allies of plotting to scrap Turkey's secular traditions despite their openness to the West.

Many of these government opponents constitute a traditional elite and have roots in state institutions such as the courts and the military, guardians of the secular legacy of national founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

They argue that personal freedoms -- such as the right to drink alcohol or a woman's choice of clothing -- are in peril, but they have more of an authoritarian background and less of a reformist record than the government.

Voter surveys suggest the ruling party will retain a majority in the 550-member Parliament, although its winning margin is likely to be smaller than when it came to power in 2002 elections.

The Republican People's Party is expected to remain the main opposition group, railing against a government it says is intent on imposing religion on politics. The hardline Nationalist Action Party, which seems to share some policies with both the ruling party and the opposition, also appears poised to enter Parliament.

''I want our government to protect secularism,'' said banker Burcin Atalay, who voted for the Republican People's Party.

One of the first jobs of the new Parliament will be to elect a president. The post is largely ceremonial, but the incumbent has the power to veto legislative bills and government appointments.

In May, Erdogan's ally, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, abandoned his presidential bid after fierce opposition from the secular establishment. Opponents said Gul's election would remove the last obstacle to an Islamic takeover of the government, and the military -- instigator of coups in the past -- threatened to intervene to safeguard secularism.

Another task for the new government will be to decide whether Turkey, a NATO member, should stage an offensive into northern Iraq to thwart rebels of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, who have bases there. The United States, beset by problems elsewhere in Iraq, opposes such a move, but Turkey is frustrated by escalating rebel violence, and says Washington has reneged on promises to help it fight terrorism.

Erdogan has said Turkey could stage an incursion into Iraq if talks on the security situation fail. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has received an invitation from Erdogan to visit Turkey, but no date has been set, the Iraqi government said.

In predominantly Kurdish areas in southeast Turkey, security forces patrolled near some polling stations to prevent possible attacks by Kurdish rebels seeking to disrupt the elections. There were no reports of violence.

Voters in two southeastern villages with a total of 2,200 eligible voters boycotted the election, citing local grievances. In Sinan village, voters said their landlord had confiscated their lands and lawmakers had not resolved the situation despite their appeals. In Uzungecit, people said they would not vote because the road to their village had not been repaired in decades.

------

Associated Press reporter C. Onur Ant contributed to this report.

General Seeks Troop Cut in Northern Iraq

By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
Sunday, July 22, 2007; 11:03 AM

BAGHDAD -- In a move that could portend a strategy change, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said Sunday he has proposed reducing his troop levels and shifting next year to missions focused less on direct combat.

Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon told The Associated Press that if current trends hold, he would like to begin this troop reduction and change in mission in Ninevah province, where he said Iraqi army forces already are operating nearly independently. He has proposed shifting the province to Iraqi government control as early as August.

Ninevah's capital is Mosul, the country's third largest city.

If put in place, Mixon's approach would not necessarily mean an overall reduction in U.S. troops early next year. It could mean shifting several thousand troops from Mixon's area to other parts of Iraq for some months.

That, however, could mark the beginning of a phased move away from the heavy combat role that U.S. troops have played, at a cost of more than 3,600 U.S. deaths, for more than four years. That, in turn, could lead to the first substantial U.S. troop reductions beginning in the spring or summer _ a far slower timetable than many in Congress are demanding.

Mixon is not the only U.S. commander contemplating a repositioning or reduction of U.S. troops in the months ahead.

Col. John Charlton, commander of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, who leads a task force of 6,000 U.S. soldiers in a section of Anbar province that includes Ramadi, said in an interview Friday that by January he might be ready to take a 25 percent troop cut if the Iraqi police, numbering about 6,000 now, are made stronger by then.

"The police are the keys to maintaining security from al-Qaida," Charlton said.

Mixon acknowledged that a U.S. shift in northern Iraq meant risking gains made over recent years. But he said it would have important political benefits in Baghdad.

"To be perfectly frank with you, it puts the Iraqi central government in a position of having to assume responsibility for the security situation," Mixon said in a telephone interview from his headquarters at Camp Speicher, near the city of Tikrit.

It is not clear whether the government will be capable of fulfilling that responsibility as early as next year.

Mixon also has proposed allowing Ninevah province to hold elections either late this year or early in 2008. This would ease the transition from U.S. control, he said.

"It certainly would make sense to tie the two fairly closely together," Mixon said, because it would provide political reinforcement for an important shift in security responsibility.

The government in Baghdad has failed thus far to pass legislation enabling provincial elections nationwide. That is one of the benchmarks the government set for itself this year and one that Congress wants to see accomplished by September.

Mixon said he thinks individual provinces should hold elections when they are ready, rather than wait for all 18 provinces to do so at once.

Mixon said Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top day-to-day U.S. commander in Iraq, has agreed with his proposal, which he called a contingency plan subject to further approval.

There are nearly 24,000 U.S. troops in Mixon's area of responsibility. It stretches north from Baghdad to the Turkish border, including the semiautonomous Kurdish region where three provinces _ Dahuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniyah _ already have returned to Iraqi government control.

Mixon said he might be able to reduce that total by one-half in the 12 months to 18 months after beginning a transition in January.

U.S. commanders in Baghdad and areas south of the capital have said in recent days that it is too early to say how long the current U.S. troop buildup should be maintained. Yet many lawmakers in Washington are pressing for a change in direction as early as September. That is the month when Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are due to report to President Bush and Congress on how the troop buildup is working.

Mixon's plan suggests the possibility of a new direction for U.S. strategy. But it is not the first time that senior U.S. commanders have proposed troop reductions and shifts in mission, only to be stopped by an unforeseen surge in insurgent violence.

Last year, for example, the U.S. military was planning to reduce its forces from 15 brigades to 10 or 12 brigades. The idea was scrapped last summer. In January, Bush ordered a boost from 15 brigades to 20.

In the interview, Mixon said he is troubled by a political debate in Washington that appears to him to oversimplify the Iraq problem. He said the U.S. needs a strategy for protecting the gains it has made in Iraq, even as it transitions control to the Iraqi government.

"I don't want to stay here any longer than we absolutely have to," he said. "Neither does anybody else. But we understand the investment we've made in this place and how important it would be to have at least some type of stability in Iraq prior to us leaving in large numbers."

Northern Iraq is a diverse area with problems not felt elsewhere in the country. That includes the threat of a large-scale incursion by the Turkish military to drive out Kurdish separatists whom Turkey's government considers terrorists. Mixon said he does not foresee such a crisis.

"I'm not alarmed about it at all," he said. "I think that will be worked out in the long run."

The Kurdish rebel commander, in an AP interview Friday, said he believed the Turkish military will launch a long-anticipated offensive against separatist bases in northern Iraq shortly after Sunday's general elections in Turkey.

But Murat Karayilan, the leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, denied charges by Turkey's government that his group was using its bases in Iraq to launch attacks against Turkish forces.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has threatened to go into northern Iraq if talks with Iraq and the U.S. after the elections fail to produce effective measures against Kurdish guerrillas.

Erdogan's ruling party is likely to win a majority of seats in the parliamentary vote.

___

Associated Press writer Yahya Barzanji in Lewzhe, Iraq, contributed to this report.

Alliances Shift as Turks Weigh a Political Turn

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

ISTANBUL, July 19 — For 84 years, modern Turkey has been defined by a holy trinity — the army, the republic and its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Each was linked inextricably to the others and all were beyond reproach.

But a deep transformation is under way in this nation of 73 million, and elections this Sunday may prove a watershed: liberal Turks, once supporters of the ruling secular elite and its main backer, the military, are turning their backs on them and pledging votes to religious politicians as well as a new array of independents.

They say that the rigid rules of the last century, which prohibit women from wearing Muslim head scarves in public buildings and forbid ethnic minorities to express their identities, need to be left behind.

“This election is a power struggle between those who want change and those who don’t,” said Zafer Uskul, a prominent constitutional lawyer and human rights advocate who is a candidate from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-inspired party. “Religion is just an excuse.”

He and others say the rules served a purpose when Turkey was forging a national identity out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire. But now Turkey has outgrown them.

“In 50 years, people will write that this was the time Turkey started to come to terms with its own people,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, a foreign policy expert who is one of about 20 liberal Turks who recently joined Mr. Erdogan’s party as part of its effort to appeal more broadly to secular Turkish society.

The real threat to Turkish democracy, he and others argue, comes not from Islamic fundamentalism, as the military and the secular parties it backs contend, but from political meddling by the military. Commanders have deposed elected governments four times in Turkey’s history, and in April the military challenged the government in a written statement, precipitating elections.

Now, as the elections approach, pitting the nation’s secular elite against a group of religious politicians who draw their support from the lower and middle classes, educated liberals may just tip the balance.

The current shift has its roots in the dual nature of Turkish democracy. From its beginnings in the 1940s, a powerful chain of bureaucrats, judges and army generals from the secular upper classes has controlled the most important Turkish affairs, while the elected government, currently the Justice and Development Party of Mr. Erdogan, manages more mundane aspects, much like a municipality.

But Turkish society has significantly changed in recent decades, with religious Turks gaining wealth and status and moving into public view. Women in head scarves — precisely those whom early Turkish legislation singled out — are in shopping malls, on motor scooters and behind the wheels of cars, and rules against them seem woefully outdated.

Ilhan Dogus, a member of the Young Civilians, an association of young people who oppose the military’s role in politics, said mischievously that educated women in head scarves were more likely than their less religious counterparts to know that Marx refers to a German philosopher, not the British department store, Marks and Spencer.

“This narrow shirt of secularism has become a little too tight and choking for Turkish society,” said Volkan Aytar of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, a prominent policy research group.

He is referring to Kemalism, the fiercely secular ideology that sought to extinguish religious networks and ultimately religion itself from society.

The state elite “wanted society to fit their theory,” said Recep Senturk, a research fellow at the Center for Islamic Studies in Istanbul. “If religion doesn’t disappear, we’ll make it disappear because our theory says so.”

Liberals like Mr. Uskul are pioneers in joining political forces with Mr. Erdogan’s party, known by its Turkish initials, AK, and considered by many secular Turks to be too Islamic.

In Tarsus, an upper-middle-class town in southern Turkey that has supported secular parties, Mr. Uskul, 63, was talking to lawyers last week, asking for their votes.

“Some of you might be asking, ‘What is he doing in the AK Party?’ ” he said at the Tarsus Bar Association, peering earnestly through rimless glasses. “There was no other party to do what I wanted to do in Parliament. The people who should be defending democracy are holding onto military coups.”

A woman in a black T-shirt shot back: “I wonder whether you still have worries about AK as a threat to secularism?”

He replied: “My wife has no concerns. Nor does my daughter, and you shouldn’t either.”

The portion of Turkish society hanging onto the old order is shrinking, Mr. Aytar asserts, so when more than a million Turks gathered this spring to protest what they said was creeping Islamism, bizarre combinations were on display. People wore masks of Ataturk, who died more than 60 years ago. The music that played was from 1930s. “They have calcified,” said Baskin Oran, an opinionated professor running as an independent candidate in Istanbul.

Mr. Oran estimates that parties representing that order will get about a quarter of the vote, largely thanks to a campaign of fear that plays on secularism. An ad last week in Cumhuriyet, a staunchly pro-state daily, showed a black ballot box and a woman’s eyes behind the rectangular cut-out, evoking a facial veil. “Are you aware of the danger?” it said. Before the ill-fated presidential election this spring, a television ad flashed the years 1881 and 2007 on a black screen — the year of Ataturk’s birth and the year his secular reforms died.

The campaign was a final straw for some Turkish liberals, who say that it distracts from Turkey’s real problems: unemployment, insufficient social security benefits, poor relations with Kurds and Armenians and the efforts to gain membership in the European Union.

A troubling offshoot is nationalists, who play on fears by warning that the European Union wants to tear Turkey apart. The main nationalist party appears set to win enough votes to make it into the Parliament, supported by Turks who are overwhelmed by the sharp changes in the country over the past five years.

When a liberal newspaper asked for a response to the ads, Ferhat Tumer, a 32-year-old advertising designer, and his colleagues at the ad agency Cocuklar began to brainstorm.

The result was a one-minute cartoon in the style of a late-night American television ad that only two Turkish television channels were willing to broadcast but that became a cult favorite overnight on the Internet.

“Is thinking a crime? Speech not allowed? Is your society excluding you, or forcing you to take sides?” the salesman-style voice-over asks in staccato Turkish. “Move away from fragile systems that are easily toppled. Original Democracy, adhered to by millions around the world, is now available in Turkey!”

The short cartoon would probably not have been possible five years ago, though Cocuklar, which means “Kids” in Turkish, had first proposed a much more confrontational version that was a direct dig at the military. The newspaper that solicited the cartoon, Radikal, though brave, was not foolhardy.

“We believe there is a hidden group of people in Turkey who are bored by this talk,” said Mr. Tumer, fiddling with a green yoyo while sitting at a glass table. “We know you’re not afraid of this scarf. When she takes it off, she still has the same ideas.”

“This paranoia, this tension, for the young generation, it’s just old-fashioned,” he said.

Inherent in Turkey’s progress was a strange contradiction. The state excluded religion from public life and looked down on religious, traditional Turks as backward, yet when they became more integrated in public life, condemned them as enemies of the state.

“Secular urban forces headed by the army look at these people as if they were aliens from outer space,” said Dogu Ergil, a sociology professor at Ankara University. “But they are the products of the very regime that left them out.”

As Turkey moves ahead, it will have to grapple with where Islam fits in the building of an equitable society. Almost all Turks, after all, are practicing Muslims. But the argument, liberals contend, will not be over whether Islam should be part of the government, but instead over what type of secularism fits best.

Mr. Uskul argues that Turkey’s bid for European Union membership, pushed by Mr. Erdogan’s party, has set it on a course of democracy that virtually guarantees secularism.

“The AK Party is Turkey’s reality,” he said, chewing a cracker at a kebab restaurant. “Turks have to accept it.”

“But it should proceed by showing it’s not a threat to Turkey,” he added. “I am an example of its willingness to reform.”

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul and Tarsus.

Religion at heart of Turkish vote

Devout Muslims say they are marginalized in public life, while secularists fear an erosion of freedoms.
By Laura King
Times Staff Writer

July 21, 2007

ALANYA, TURKEY — Vacationing just a few miles apart on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, the economist from Istanbul and the engineer from Ankara could hardly have more divergent views of a nationwide vote Sunday that is expected to return the ruling party to power — and intensify an ongoing battle over the role of Islam in public life.

The ruling Justice and Development Party, which has roots in political Islam, is "just too Muslim, too radical," said Reha Guner, drinking tea in a cafe just off a crowded beach where European tourists sunbathed topless and beer flowed freely. "They want to hold the country back. That's why these elections are so important."

Down the road, at a resort that caters to religiously observant families, engineer Ahmet Alintuglu said pious Muslims like him often feel marginalized in a republic whose 8-decade-old founding principles mandate a strict separation of Islam and government.

"We're a so-called Muslim country, but we are treated like second-class citizens, even when we are on vacation," Alintuglu said. He and his family, he complained, were forced to pay premium prices to secure the hotel amenities they wanted: gender-segregated swimming pools, modest dress in public areas and a ban on alcohol.

Though parting ways at the ballot box, Guner and Alintuglu had this much in common: Like tens of thousands of Turks, each was cutting short the traditional summer holiday to return home to vote in the parliamentary elections, which are shaping up as among the country's most divisive in recent memory.

The Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, is expected to garner the largest share of seats, but not enough to render it immune to challenges by the secular-minded opposition.



Picking a president



That could set the stage for months of fresh political warfare over parliament's election of the country's president. The AKP is determined to claim the post, although it has always been held by a resolute secularist.

In April, the AKP put forth as its presidential candidate Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a sophisticated, English-speaking diplomat whose wife wears the head scarf that connotes a devout Muslim woman.

For secularists, the notion of such a first lady proved a psychological tripwire. Huge protest rallies were held, the military threatened to step in to preserve secular principles, and the Constitutional Court, citing a technicality, threw out a parliamentary vote that favored Gul.

The standoff left both sides furious, with AKP supporters accusing the secular establishment of acting undemocratically, and secular parties insisting that the AKP, despite a record focused on successfully fostering economic growth, had revealed its hidden Islamist agenda.

The AKP managed to push through a package of constitutional reforms that would change the means of picking the president to a popular vote, but outgoing President Necdet Sezer ensured that the package itself must be put to a referendum. That will not take place until October, well after the new parliament's one-month deadline for electing a new president to a seven-year term.

For a campaign taking place against such an acrimonious backdrop, the electioneering has been almost incongruously peaceful. On almost every major boulevard, colorful party banners flutter like sheets on clotheslines. Sound trucks ply the streets, playing scratchy-sounding versions of pop tunes appropriated as campaign jingles, with rewritten lyrics that blandly extol the virtues of the Turkish nation.

At its campaign rallies, though, the AKP has been tapping into the simmering anger of supporters who believe the party was robbed of the presidency. "The Cankaya will be ours!" the crowd shouted at a recent rally in Istanbul, referring to Turkey's presidential palace.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his voice hoarsened by back-to-back appearances in the final week of campaigning, assured backers of imminent victory. "We'll bury them at the ballot box," he told a cheering, flag-waving throng.

Polls suggest that the AKP will secure about 45% of the vote, twice as much as its nearest rival and enough to secure a comfortable majority in the 550-member parliament, given how seats are apportioned. Many analysts, however, say the party's appeal is due as much to the booming economy as to ideological considerations.

During its five years in power, the AKP has presided over the longest period of uninterrupted growth in the country's recent history, with per capita income more than doubling and rampant inflation largely tamed. That growth spurt has engendered a phenomenon previously unseen in Turkey: a religiously devout middle class prepared to exercise its political clout as well as flex its economic muscle.

The AKP has "created a new bourgeoisie," said columnist Cuneyt Ulsever of the Hurriyet daily newspaper. "That's a departure from the tradition of an almost exclusively secular middle class. So the picture here is not only one of a political struggle, or a religious one; there are class issues as well."

Much of the dynamic economic growth has been generated by the so-called "Anatolian tigers," a grouping of exportoriented industries in the religiously conservative Turkish heartland that have benefited hugely from the government's free-market policies.

One key element of the AKP's break from Turkey's insular, cartel-style economy has been its push to join the European Union. Although those hopes have dimmed in recent months, the membership drive has spurred calls for reform in other areas, including press freedom and human rights.

Analysts say Turkey's particular brand of political Islam, as exemplified by the AKP, is unique in the Muslim world.

"It's progressive and outward-looking — the most evolved of anywhere in a Muslim-majority country," said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The secular parties, by contrast, have a strong streak of authoritarianism, often invoking the army's right to intervene in politics in its self-declared role as the guardian of the secular state. At street rallies this spring, many marchers also gave vent to anti-American and anti-European sentiments, blaming Western powers for meddling in Turkey's internal affairs.



Secularists are wary



But the secularists' fears that the AKP will seek to erode the separation of religion and state are very real. The party, which is a breakaway branch of an Islamist movement that came to the fore in the 1980s and '90s, made abortive attempts early in its tenure to criminalize adultery and ease the restrictions on the wearing of head scarves in public universities and other government institutions.

Even though the AKP insists that such measures are no longer part of its platform, there is deep distrust among secularists, particularly women, who believe that they have the most to lose by any state-mandated imposition of religious values.

"It matters more to me because I am a woman," said Hayal Ersoz, a 20-year-old university student wearing tight jeans and glittery sandals. "I don't want to limit anyone's freedom to express their religious beliefs, but I want to work where I please, and dress as I please, and I don't believe I will be able to do that if they have all the power."

By that, most secularists mean they draw the line at an AKP member becoming president. Because the post has veto power over legislation, the president is seen as a check on the ruling party's power.

Despite the AKP's insistence that it will lay claim to the presidency once a new parliamentary mandate has been secured, some analysts say there are signs that Erdogan will seek a compromise. In recent weeks, the party's list of candidates has been purged of dozens of people with a reputation for hard-line religious views.

"In the end, most of the Turkish public is comfortable with a mixture of secularism and religion in their daily lives," said Fadi Hakura, an analyst at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

"And the indications are that the party really does intend to pursue a reformist line. But the question is whether the antagonism with the secular establishment is already too great for that to go forward."

laura.king@latimes.com