ANKARA, 17 March 2005 — Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said yesterday he would pay a state visit to Syria in April, despite US fears it may send the wrong signal at a time when Damascus is under international pressure to quit Lebanon. NATO member Turkey’s relations with its Arab neighbor, once tense, are now warm and Ankara has stayed largely quiet in recent weeks as the United States and European countries have piled pressure on Syria to pull its forces from Lebanon.
Syria pulled intelligence agents out of Beirut and large parts of Lebanon yesterday in response to the US and Lebanese opposition pressure. Many of its troops have already returned home or have been redeployed to eastern Lebanon. Asked if he would still go to Syria, Sezer told reporters during a reception at his palace: “Of course we will go.” Turkish media say he will visit Syria on April 13-14.
The US ambassador to Ankara, Eric Edelman, said on Monday he hoped Turkey would join the “international consensus” behind a UN Security Council resolution co-sponsored by Washington and France urging Syria’s immediate withdrawal from Lebanon.
He stopped short of asking Sezer to postpone or cancel his visit, but Turkish media interpreted his remarks as a veiled call to Sezer not to go. US diplomats said they expected Sezer to deliver a strong message to Syria if he did decide to go.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul insisted Ankara was already part of the international consensus on Syria. “Democracy and the spread of freedoms across the region are Turkey’s basic policy. Turkey is part of the international community,” Gul told reporters.
Opinion in Turkey seems split over the trip, with some saying Sezer should call it off due to the UN resolution but others taking a more nationalist line, saying Ankara cannot risk appearing to kowtow to the United States. “(Edelman) uses phrases as though he is interfering in Turkey’s internal affairs. Turkey’s policies are independent,” the Vatan newspaper quoted opposition deputy Nuzhet Kandemir as saying.
Turkey and Syria, once bitter foes, have found common cause in recent years on regional issues, especially Iraq, where both fear the Kurds might try to set up their own state, which could in turn stoke separatism among their own Kurdish minorities.
Meanwhile, 13 political activists in Turkey face six months imprisonment for having spoken in Kurdish at a congress of the Rights and Freedoms Party (Hak-Par) early last year, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. Prosecutors in Ankara have filed a case against former and current leaders of the party claiming in an indictment that only the Turkish language is allowed to be used at congress meetings of political parties. There was no mention in the Anatolia report why prosecutors had taken more than a year to bring the case to court.
The indictment noted that there was no Turkish flag, no posters of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic and that the national anthem was not played at the January congress in Ankara. In additions to some of the speeches at the congress being made in Kurdish, invitations to the congress, letters from Iraqi Kurdish leaders and placards waved by supporters were in Kurdish, the indictment said.
Invitations to the congress included Kurdish and letters from Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq were read in Kurdish to the attendees and a number of speeches were made in Kurdish, the prosecutors claimed. Hak-Par was founded in 2002 by members of the Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP) fearing that the constitutional court could rule to close it down, as it has done a number of times to its predecessors. It is not clear when the trial of the 13 Hak-Par leaders will begin.
