Kurds Protest In Bonn Against Turki

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at locust.etext.org>
Subject: Kurds Protest In Bonn Against Turkish PM Visit

Kurds Protest In Bonn Against Turkish PM Visit 

     Sept 30 (Reuter) - Around 200 Kurds protested in Bonn's main
government quarter on Tuesday against a visit by Turkish Prime
Minister Mesut Yilmaz to discuss Turkey's ambitions to join the
European Union (EU).
     Waving banners attacking Turkey's human rights record, they
urged German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to refuse any attempts to
negotiate with Yilmaz on Turkey's possible EU entry in talks
scheduled between the two later in the day.
     The Turkish leader was greeted with military honors at
Kohl's chancellery on Monday and a news conference is due to
follow their discussions at 1215 GMT.
     Yilmaz's visit comes amid a sharpening of the Kurds' 13-year
struggle for autonomy in southeastern Turkey. Turkish warplanes
bombed bases belonging to Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on
Monday, with reports of 242 Kurds killed.
     Turkey says it is fighting a war against the Marxist rebels
of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which first took up arms in
1984. More than 26,000 people have died in the rebels'
13-year-old campaign.
     Kurd leaders at the demonstration also cited a ruling last
week by the European Court of Human Rights that Turkish police
beat and raped a woman suspected of links to Kurdish separatists
as evidence of systematic human rights abuses.
     Germany has a strong trading relationship with Turkey and a
Turkish population of two million, but is seen as one of the
European countries most reluctant to allow it to enter the EU.
     Foreign affairs analysts said they expect Yilmaz, who speaks
fluent German, to push for Kohl to back a plan that would allow
negotiations on Turkey's entry into the EU to be sanctioned at an
EU summit in Luxembourg in December.
     While Kohl is expected to warm to Yilmaz's conservative,
market economy beliefs, he is likely to repeat past insistences
Ankara should improve its human rights record and show
flexibility over the Cyprus dispute and over the Kurdish
question.

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