TRKNWS-L Turkish Daily News (February 14, 1996)

From: TRKNWS-L <trh@aimnet.com>

Turkish News Directory

CONTENTS

TURKISH DAILY NEWS / 14 February 1996

[01] Ciller talks of 'farm subsidies' after crucial economic meeting

ANKARA- Caretaker Prime Minister Tansu Ciller spoke at length on fertilizer subsidies immediately after a crucial economic meeting she chaired on Tuesday.

The prime minister, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said the 50 percent state subsidies to support the use of fertilizers would be maintained.

"We have supplied TL 2 trillion to support animal husbandry in eastern and southeastern towns," Ciller said after an hour-and-a-half long meeting.

She said the government would eventually provide as much as TL 18 trillion in subsidies for animal husbandry throughout Anatolia.

The premier said animal husbandry was a newly developing industry for the economy.

Referring to the uncontrolled price surge, Ciller said inflation would gradually drop in the coming months. She, however, admitted that the privatization program, the pillar of her public reforms, was not proceeding at the desired pace.

"In any case, the government holds control of all serious matters. I should reiterate that great opportunities lie in front of Turkey. Those opportunities require bold moves to take.

And those bold moves require a working government," she said.

The Economic Council, chaired by the premier, convened shortly after noon on Tuesday. The participants included State Minister for Economic Coordination Aykon Dogan; Agriculture Minister Nafiz Kurt; Finance Minister Ismet Atilla; acting Undersecretary to the Prime Minister Arif Yuksel; State Planning Organization Undersecretary Necati Ozfirat; Foreign Trade Undersecretary Nejat Eren; acting Treasury Undersecretary Nejat Saygilioglu; State Institute of Statistics Chairman Mehmet Kaytaz; acting Central Bank Governor Osman Cavit Ertan; acting Chairman of the Privatization Administration Metin Ercan; Finance Ministry Undersecretary Kemal Kabatas; and acting General Manager at Ziraat Bankasi Salih Sevki Doruk.

[02] Turkish, European businessmen form joint council

Turkish Daily News

ISTANBUL- The Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) has founded a Turkish- European Union Business Council to coordinate policies among its business councils with individual European Community countries. It also elected Hasan Arat, a textiles industry executive, as the president of the new council at a general assembly meeting on Tuesday.

Arat, 37, a shareholder in Arat Tekstil and Arat Orme, two family owned producers of men's clothing, last November was elected president of the London- based International Apparel Federation, a trade group that represents 42,000 clothing manufacturers in 30 countries. A former basketball star, Arat served as the president of the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers Association from 1990 to 1992.

DEIK, which has 815 members among 517 companies, is organized into 50 business councils, representing Turkey's foreign economic relations with 50 countries.

The umbrella group organizes business trips to different countries for its members, meetings with visiting foreign business and economic delegations and dignitaries. It also conducts economic research, puts visiting businessmen in contact with the proper Turkish companies and acts as a pressure group in Ankara and other capitals.

DEIK members are mainly businessmen who have foreign economic interests as either importers, exporters, contractors, and/or joint ventures. It was founded by a group of 10 big Turkish business organizations, including the powerful Union of Chambers of Industry, Commerce and Exchanges (TOOB) and the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (TUSIAD).

The Board currently acts as a centre for the Association of Black Sea Economic Cooperation Business Councils, a group that brings together the top business organization of 11 BSEC countries.

"The new Turkish- EU Business Council will coordinate policies among DEIK's business councils with the individual EU nations in the wake of Turkey's customs union with the EU," the director of DEIK, Cidem Tuzun, said in a recent interview.

Under the customs union, activated on 1 January, Turkey dismantled all customs barriers, including import taxes and duties, against all EU industrial products and adopted the EU's lower tariff rates against third countries. It also enacted legislation protecting copyrights, patents and intellectual property rights, in line with international standards. The EU in turn has lifted all quotas against Turkish clothing and textiles and pledged economic aid to Ankara.

An Istanbul- based organization, DEIK has links with 12 of the 15 EU nations, but plans this year to establish business councils with the remaining three, Austria, Germany and Luxembourg. DEIK is also considering creating business council ties with Australia, Canada and countries in Africa.

Companies and businessmen pay an annual fee for membership in each council. At least 25 companies have to apply to DEIK for it to establish a new business council.

Among major DEIK events in the coming weeks is a three day Turkish- Japanese Business Council meeting in Ankara starting today, the American- Turkish Council annual conference in Washington D.C. on March 6- 9 and the Turkish- Russian Business Council meeting in Moscow April 23- 27. The Board is in the process of organizing scores of similar events.

[03] Yilmaz and Erbakan to meet today

Turkish Daily News

ANKARA- Pro-Islamic Welfare Party (RP) leader Necmettin Erbakan, due to meet Motherland Party (ANAP) Chairman Mesut Yilmaz today in an effort to form a new government, said Tuesday that he was against an early election in June. Erbakan stressed that his scheduled meeting with Yilmaz was the sole hope for the formation of a coalition government.

In an apparent effort to brighten up the generally gloomy picture, ANAP Parliamentary Group Deputy Chairman Ulku Guney said in a statement after his party's group meeting that True Path Party (DYP) Chairwoman Tansu Ciller had rejected all alternatives excluding her premiership. Guney said the only solution which seemed possible in the current Parliament could be an RP-ANAP partnership. He said the ANAP group had therefore decided that talks for formation of a government suitable to Turkey's needs should be commenced if Yilmaz and Erbakan reached an agreement in principle during today's meeting.

Erbakan also made clear his opposition to the rotational premiership model which Yilmaz is expected to propose.

"We are offering power sharing, but not rotation to ANAP," Erbakan said. He pointed out that friends could not survive by changing their positions but only by standing side by side.

There was no other example of the rotational premiership model in the world, Erbakan said. It had been put forward by "rentier profiteers." He described the model as a "disease" and said that the True Path Party (DYP) and ANAP could argue over which of them was second and third while the RP clearly had 20 more parliamentary seats than ANAP.

Erbakan said that Yilmaz had made false statements concerning the Islamic union, the Islamic dinar and the Iranian revolution.

The Islamist leader attacked Yilmaz for behaving like Democratic Left Party (DSP) leader Bulent Ecevit and reiterated that an Islamic union would make Turkey stronger in its relations with the West.

Erbakan urged the formation of a new government without further stretching the population's patience. He said that when the coalition government was formed, the partners would have to determine policy together because under his sharing model neither the economy nor foreign policy are left to one single party.

If he and Yilmaz agree "in principle" on the formation of the new government, Erbakan said that the upcoming Ramadan feast would be celebrated as a "double holiday." He instructed Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek, who was an observer at the RP group meeting, to fire the iftar gun three times should the party reach agreement with ANAP.

Referring to Ecevit's criticisms of him, Erbakan said Ecevit was an unreliable, inexperienced dreamer and a dishonest person.

Yilmaz met twice with Erbakan when the Islamist leader was trying to form the new government. At the time, Yilmaz said he was not prepared to commit ANAP to a coalition with the RP, and that he would first seek a joint government with the DYP.

Later, Erbakan failed to find partners and had to give up his attempts to form a government. Eventually, President Demirel asked Yilmaz to try. Yilmaz and the DYP's Tansu Ciller rebuffed each other and failed to form a partnership. Yilmaz has met all leaders except Erbakan in his bid to form some kind of a center-right and left-wing coalition.

On the other hand, Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal, addressing his colleagues at the CHP parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday, said the tactics employed during the attempts to form a government had gradually begun to draw a hostile reaction from the people, and urged everyone to fulfil their responsibilities and avoid further waste of time.

Baykal urged Yilmaz to conclude his efforts to form the new government within the shortest possible time. He continued: "If you are going to set up a coalition with the RP, please do so, Mr. Yilmaz. Do not keep anyone in suspense. Do not keep the country in suspense by seeming to set up the coalition but later seeming to have given up, and then assuming another stance for forming the government." Baykal said he believed the Yilmaz-Erbakan meeting had been postponed to enable the RP rank and file to forget Yilmaz's criticisms of Erbakan's statements praising the Iranian revolution and the Islamic dinar.

In a separate development on Tuesday, Ecevit said that a solution to the government crisis seemed likely to happen whether he and his colleagues accepted it or not. Ecevit answered reporters' questions following his visit to the Ankara Industrialists and Businessmen's Association. Asked if he would accept a mandate from the president to form the new government, Ecevit said that the DYP and ANAP should first make their positions clear. Otherwise, he said, he would not go door to door asking for support, nor would his party permit this.

[04] Greek-Turkish crisis puts remote island on the map

Reuters

KASTELLORIZO- A military helicopter thundered above the scenic harbour, rocking the small wooden fishing boats, as Greek commandos in combat gear landed on this remote Aegean island.

The soldiers were sent to Kastellorizo to defend Greece's most distant outpost against a possible threat from Turkey, a stone's throw away, after a spat last month between the feuding NATO allies over a deserted islet.

Local residents were busy loading a two-metre (six feet six inch) long swordfish on the boat that brought the soldiers in.

Centuries of hardship, marked by war, famine and isolation have made them weary of the threat of military conflict.

"We were a bit worried but time goes by quietly here and we've acquired a kind of immunity. We've had much worse in the past," Papa Giorgis, the island's priest, told Reuters.

The latest Greek-Turkish crisis over a rocky outcrop near the island of Kalymnos to the north seems to have put the far-off, neglected little island back on the map.

Greek government officials and television channels have rushed to Kastellorizo, along with generous donations, while the military has boosted its thin presence here.

But locals, tired of what they say are years of indifference from the state, put on a brave face and say they are prepared to defend their homes themselves.

"We were concerned when we heard Kastellorizo would be Turkey's first target in case of war," said mayor Pavlos Panigyris, 40. "But all men here are assigned a rifle and we will use it to defend our homes. We will not surrender."

Hanging off the easternmost edge of Europe, Kastellorizo is four hours by boat from the nearest Greek island of Rhodes and only 10 minutes from the Turkish tourist town of Kas.

Once a flourishing community of worldly sea traders and a population of 17,000, the barren island has dwindled down to about 200 people who survive on fishing and the few tourists that dare to venture this far.

With Turkey three miles across the sea and easily cut off from the Greek mainland by bad weather, Kastellorizo has developed a symbiotic relationship with Kas.

Medical emergencies are sometimes rushed there and islanders often slip by the harbour patrol boat, which tries to stop Kurdish refugees from illegally crossing the water, to smuggle in fresh groceries in the dark.

Kas boatmen in turn bring tourists for day trips to the island in the summer and foreigners who need to extend their visas to Turkey in the winter.

Turkish boat captain Turcan Guglu, an affable young man popular with the locals, said the recent spat did not affect relations between people in Kastellorizo and Kas.

Five prostitutes from Georgia stood by his caique while their passports were stamped, eyeing about 20 dishevelled Kurds waiting a few steps away for medical check ups before travelling on to Athens.

"The day after the incident there were Turkish boats in this harbour and there were Greeks in Kas. People here treat me the same. This incident is all due to politics and it's bad for tourism, for the economy, for everything," Guglu said.

His views were echoed by many on Kastellorizo, who feel relieved that Greece reached a compromise during the duel to avoid war. The socialist government was harshly criticised in Athens for accepting a U.S.-brokered deal to defuse the crisis.

"What did they want? War? Don't they stop to think what it would mean for people, for our development?," asked Evangelia Mayafi, 60, who as a child witnessed the World War Two bombing that almost levelled the island.

Kastellorizians find it difficult to view the Turkish people across the stretch of water separating them as enemies but deeply mistrust the government in Ankara.

"We had hoped that (Turkish caretaker Prime Minister Tansu) Ciller would be more compassionate, being a woman, but she turned out to be a warmonger," Mayafi said.

And even Papa Giorgis, who was tried and acquitted in 1981 for illegally rushing a heart attack victim to Kas and who last month took his son-in-law there after an accident, vows he would take up arms to defend his island.

"What's important is to save a life. I would help anyone in need, even an enemy soldier if he was hurt, but that does not mean that we will not respond to an attack," the priest said.

Briton Shakle Kys, a yacht repairer who has lived on the island since 1992, says Greeks and Turks get along here but tensions between the two governments were bound to affect them.

"I think the deep, old fear of `the dreaded Turk' is still there," Kys said. As if to exorcise such fears, the men gathered at the island's taverna for what they now call their "Pentagon" meetings, call each other "general" or "admiral" amid merciless teasing and raucous laughter.

"We started a fund-raiser to buy a frigate to patrol the waters here," said proprietor Vangelis Mavros. "It costs two billion drachmas ($8.2 million) and we've already collected 15,000 ($60). We should buy it in two years, tops," Mavros said and his customers doubled over with laughter.

[05] Turkish and Greek doctors call for Aegean amity

ANKARA- Greek and Turkish physicians have jointly issued a statement condemning "all plots against the peace, welfare, and socio-economic and cultural solidarity of the peoples of Turkey and Greece." The two affiliated committees of health professionals have in the past campaigned against the war in former Yugoslavia and against the construction of nuclear power plants on the Aegean, as well as celebrating 1994 World Peace Day together in Ankara.

In their joint press release, sent to both the Greek and Turkish governments, the Association of Turkish Health Professionals for Peace and the Environment Against the Nuclear Threat and its Greek counterpart blame the recent dispute over the sovereignty of the Aegean rocks on the media in both countries, and say that "All vigilant and democratic efforts should be made to orient the media to function for peace and not be a device of exploitation." "We, the Greek and Turkish doctors, refuse to take part in this madness," the accompanying letter says. "The Aegean is a bridge between our countries and not a field of war."