mainstream news

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

Turkish strikers face first defeat, stay strong

     ISTANBUL, Turkey (Reuter) - Striking Turkish public sector
workers faced their first defeat Friday when textile workers
slated to join the fight for higher pay instead agreed to
binding arbitration, the Turk-Is labor confederation said.
     ``This is a matter of life and death and the textile workers
betrayed us,'' Yildirim Koc, adviser to the president of
Turk-Is, told Reuters.
     But Turk-Is said the defection of the 16,800 textile workers
-- a total of 260,000 people are now on strike -- would not
weaken resolve to stay off the job until the government boosts
its pay hike offer of an average 5.4 percent for the year when
inflation is slated to hit 70 percent.
     Turk-Is has been a strong opponent of binding arbitration
for the public sector workers, arguing the process is inherently
unfair because unions have a minority representation on the
arbitration board.
     ``Our only trouble has been with the textile workers, the
other strikes are doing well, especially disrupting the paper
and sugar industries and the loading docks,'' he said.
     Bulgaria's railway chairman said the strike had stopped
incoming trains for three days, and Turk-Is said maintenance
workers in various regions of Turkey were blocking tracks to
keep trains from running.
     The nationwide strike by some 260,000 workers -- the number
will rise to almost 400,000 by mid-October -- comes as Prime
Minister Tansu Ciller is unsuccessfully trying to form a new
coalition to replace the one that broke down last week.

Turkey's Ciller may seek social democrat alliance

     ANKARA, Turkey (Reuter) - Turkish Prime Minister Tansu
Ciller may return to her former social democrat partners to try
to form a new government after talks with the main opposition
party collapsed, party officials said Friday.
     ``She may well meet the CHP (Republican People's Party)
again -- a new DYP-CHP government is of course a possibility,''
Ahmet Kucukel, a deputy chairman of Ciller's True Path Party
(DYP), told Reuters.
     Ciller's shaky right-left coalition ended Sept. 20 when she
resigned after a rift over internal security with the social
democrats' newly elected leader, Deniz Baykal.
     ``That was then, this is now,'' Kucukel said. ``We cannot
rule out possibilities just for a tiff.''
     Ciller met parliament speaker Husamettin Cindoruk Friday
evening in a meeting billed as talks on the possibility of early
general polls, but she told reporters later that the meeting was
just an exchange of ideas.
     DYP sources say Ciller may talk with party leaders,
including the CHP, Saturday.
     The presence of the CHP -- its hand strenghened by the
failure of a right-leaning alliance - in a new coalition could
mean a negotiated settlement to Turkey's biggest strike of more
than 250,000 public workers, now nine days old.
     The strike suffered its first major setback when textile
workers slated to join the fight for higher pay instead agreed
to binding arbitration, the Turk-Is labor confederation said.
     President Suleyman Demirel asked Ciller to form a new
government last week, but talks for a long-awaited conservative
alliance with the opposition Motherland Party (ANAP) broke down
Wednesday in a bitter dispute between the party chiefs.

Leftist guerrillas shoot dead Turkish sentries

     ISTANBUL (Reuter) - Leftist urban guerrillas shot dead two
Turkish sentries at Istanbul's gendarmerie headquarters,
Anatolian news agency said Friday.
     Members of the extreme-left Revolutionary People's
Liberation Party - Front (DHKP-C) shot one of the sentries as he
guarded the entrance to the complex in Maslak district Thursday
night, it said.
     The other chased the attackers and was later found in the
street with a bullet wound in the neck. He died in hospital.
     Anatolian quoted a senior gendarme officer as saying the
DHKP-C had taken responsibility for the attack. He said it was
an apparent act of revenge for the deaths of at least three
leftists prisoners in a jail riot in Izmir last week.
     At least three police officers have been killed in Istanbul
and more than a dozen wounded this year in attacks blamed on
leftist urban guerrilla groups or Kurdish militants.
     DHKP-C is an offshoot of the now defunct Dev Sol
(Revolutionary Left) group which killed dozens of Turkish
military and civilian officials as well as Western businessmen
and military personnel serving in Turkey in the 1970s and '80s.
     Dev Sol has split into two rivals factions in recent years.
     Leftist protesters took 28 people hostage at the Istanbul
bar association Thursday but freed them unharmed a few hours
later following a standoff with Turkish police.

Kurdish writer gets two years for article

     ISTANBUL, Turkey (Reuter) - A Turkish court Thursday
sentenced a Kurdish writer to two years imprisonment for an
article analyzing the seperatist Kurdish rebel movement, the
writer's lawyer said.
     Recep Marasli, 39, was found guilty of ``separatist
propaganda'' under article 8 of the anti-terror law, which
Turkey's European allies want lifted as a condition for
establishing closer economic ties.
     ``We argued the charge was contrary to European conventions
on human rights, but the court obviously didn't listen to us,''
lawyer Riza Dinc told Reuters.
     Marasli, who in mid 1970s founded the first publishing house
to deal seriously with Kurdish history, faces another 27 cases
for articles or speeches he has made about the Kurdish guerrilla
war for autonomy or independence in Turkey.
     All the cases but one are under article 8, which human
rights monitors say is used by Turkey to silence criticism of
military operation against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
     Dinc said they would appeal the charge, but Marasli has
already been sentenced to four years imprisonment in other
cases.
     Marasli, who has been in and out of prison since 1971,
suffers from brain and nervous disorders and his supporters say
he cannot get proper treatment from the Istanbul prison.


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 * Origin: APS Amsterdam (aps.nl), bbs +31-20-6842147 (16:31/2.0)