Yearbook 2008
 Turkey. The power struggle further raged between the
secularist establishment, with its military base, and the
moderate Islamist government and its liberal supporters. In
February, the ruling Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP)
passed a law that gave green light for women to wear
headscarves at the country's university. According to
Countryaah reports, the opposition said
that the ban on headscarves was a guarantee of the country's
secular foundation. Two opposition parties, the Republican
People's Party (CHP) and the Democratic Left Party (DSP),
notified the legislative amendment to the Constitutional
Court, demanding that the AKP be banned and 71 of its
leading representatives, including both Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah G邦l, be suspended from
politics. The EU reacted with "concern".
On July 14, 86 militants, politicians, journalists,
lawyers and other persons were indicted for involvement in
the Ergenekon ultranationalist conspiracy, "the deep state",
which was accused of forcibly trying to whip up a rebellion
against the AKP government and force it to fall.. Among the
crimes the network was prosecuted for was a murder of a
judge in 2006 and a bombing attack against the secularist
newspaper Cumh邦riyet's editorial in Istanbul. In addition,
the network is suspected of planning to murder Prime
Minister Erdoğan and Nobel laureate in literature Orhan
Pamuk. The "deep state" had long been a well-known concept
in Turkey and was believed to have murdered a long line of
intellectuals, including many Kurds in the 1990s, since the
1950s.
Throughout the year, the government forces' offensive
against the Kurdish PKK guerrillas continued. The military
carried out regular air strikes against PKK bases in the
northern, Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq. On February
21-29, 10,000 Turkish soldiers were dispatched to Iraqi
ground, but were withdrawn following criticism from Iraq and
the United States.
Parliament decided on 30 April to amend the controversial
Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Previously, it had
been criminal to "insult the Turkish", now it became
criminal to "insult the Turkish nation". Human rights
organizations thought the change was insufficient. The
publisher Ragip Zarakolu was sentenced June 17 to fines for
violating the law with its new wording.
Approach to the EU was slow, but in June two new
negotiating chapters (on commercial and intellectual
property rights) were launched. Smoking was banned on May 19
in all public buildings, on all public transport and all
sports facilities.
In January 2002, Turkish women regained the right to
property and succession. Rights that had been eliminated by
Atatürk's death.
At the November parliamentary elections, the Muslims
gathered in the Justice and Development Party's 34.3% of the
vote and 365 of the Parliament's 550 seats. In second place,
the People's Republican Party got 19.4% of the vote.
Although the Justice Party leader, Erdogan, was barred from
holding the 2002 election, his party in its election
campaign promised to remove the secular principles from the
constitution. Abdullah Gul of the party was instead
appointed prime minister, and only in March 2003 was able to
hand over this post to Erdogan, as a number of political
obstacles were cleared.
Erdogan's popularity was based on his sacrificial work
that had paved the way for the university and the mayor post
in Istanbul, even though he was descended from a poor
family. Upon his accession, he stated that he would orient
his political work towards securing Turkey's accession to
the EU, by adapting its legislation to EU requirements. With
the Justice Party assuming power, NATO gained its first
member state with a Muslim government.
The year before, consumer prices in the country had risen
45% and 50% of government spending was tied to paying
interest and repayments on the country's foreign debt. It
therefore had to raise a loan in the IMF which was granted
on the condition of further public savings and tax
increases.
The same month as Erdogan took over the prime minister's
post, Parliament decided not to allow the United
States to use its bases in Turkey for its impending war on
Iraq. However, Turkey allowed the United States to use its
airspace for war overflight.
In July 2003, Parliament passed laws on the rights of the
Kurds and abolished the death penalty. At the same time,
Abdullah Öcalan's death sentence was automatically converted
to life imprisonment. Still, in September, the Kurdistan
Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK - the successor to the
PKK) decided to suspend the unilateral ceasefire that had
been in effect since 2001. This happened on the grounds that
the security forces did not follow the newly enacted
legislation.
In November, a car bomb attack in front of a Jewish
synagogue in Istanbul cost 25 lives, and over 200 were
injured. Two days later, another 25 were killed by two
coordinated assaults against a British bank and the British
Consulate in Istanbul.
In October 2004, the European Commission was to take a
final decision on the opening of accession negotiations in
the EU with Turkey. This was decided at the EU summit in
Copenhagen in December 2002. In February, the Commission
submitted a project to the Government of Ankara to ensure
more effective protection of Kurds' rights. This was based
on a report by Amnesty International that mentioned 30,000
murders, thousands of disappearances, massive village
destruction, torture, misery in prisons, rape of female
prisoners, etc., all carried out by Turkish security forces
and the military.
At the same time, the EU commission called on the Turkish
government to ratify the Rome Statutes, thereby joining the
International Criminal Court (ICC), limiting the number of
military personnel in the National Security Council who have
a superior function over other state institutions, and
finally dissolving the 'special security tribunals' "Because
of their constant violations of human rights. At the same
time, the Commission called on the government to start
negotiations to ensure compensation for the attacks Turkey
has committed against Greek Cypriots in Cyprus.
In April 2004, the inhabitants of Cyprus conducted a
parallel double vote on reunification and on accession to
the EU. In both groups there was agreement on accession in
the EU, but the Greek Cypriots voted against reunification,
while the Turkish Cypriots voted. However, as a result of
the accession negotiations between Cyprus and the EU, the
paradoxical consequence was that the Greek-Cypriot part was
admitted, while the Turkish-Cypriot northern part of the
country remained isolated. The EU's attitude was strongly
critical of the Greek Cypriots 'No' for reunification, and
the EU therefore decided to provide comprehensive
development assistance to Northern Cyprus, which was now
outside the EU due to Greek resistance.
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