Turkish security forces fire on protest in southeast, one dead

A worker fixes a giant portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at the top of the Ataturk Cultural Center in Istanbul’s Taksim Square June 28, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Osman Orsal

By Seyhmus Cakan

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey | Fri Jun 28, 2013 12:45pm EDT

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish security forces killed one person and wounded six on Friday when they fired on a group protesting against the construction of a new gendarmerie outpost in Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey, officials said.

The incident appeared to be the most violent in the region since a ceasefire declaration by Kurdish militant chief Abdullah Ocalan in March that led to a virtual standstill in the conflict between his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish state.

Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party called earlier in the day for marches in three major cities this weekend to launch a summer of protests aimed at raising pressure on Ankara to carry out reforms under a peace process with the PKK.

The shooting, which occurred in the village of Kayacik in the Lice district of Diyarbakir province, was likely to stoke tension among the weekend marchers, although leaders stressed the rallies would be peaceful.

Diyarbakir Governor Cahit Kirac said around 200 protesters marched on Friday onto the construction site where the outpost was being built to replace an existing one, with some throwing petrol bombs and setting fire to workers’ tents.

“At this point, the soldiers fired warning shots and a riot broke out. There were then reports of one person being killed and six people being wounded, two of them seriously. These reports are not confirmed, we are investigating,” Kirac said.

Turkish security sources earlier told Reuters they had a confirmed report of one person killed and seven wounded, but later revised the number of wounded to six.

WEEKEND MARCHES

PKK militants began withdrawing from Turkish territory to bases in northern Iraq last month as part of a deal between the state and Ocalan, imprisoned on an island south of Istanbul since 1999, to end a conflict that has killed 40,000 people.

There has been little evidence of progress this month with public attention focused instead on weeks of unrelated, broader and often violent anti-government demonstrations in cities across Turkey.

But the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said the withdrawal was continuing successfully and the process had entered a second stage during which Ankara needed to boost the rights of Kurds, who make up some 20 percent of the 76 million population.

“The government must urgently take the necessary democratic steps, listen to the demands of the people and fulfill the requirements of the second stage,” the BDP said in a statement declaring a summer of protest action.

It said it would start with marches on Sunday in Diyarbakir, Mersin and Adana, which were likely to attract thousands of demonstrators. Diyarbakir is the main city in the mainly Kurdish southeast. Mersin and Adana, in the eastern Mediterranean region, have large populations of Kurdish migrants.

Turkish authorities have already had to deal with three weeks of street unrest in cities including Ankara and Istanbul this month in which riot police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators night after night.

The BDP campaign will call for a halt to the construction of military outposts in southeast Turkey, the release of political prisoners, education in Kurdish, lowering of the threshold of 10 percent electoral support required to enter parliament, and the release of Ocalan.

The BDP said it has presented to the government a 25-article proposal on which action needed to be taken urgently.

Turkish media said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a commission of “wise people” advising on the peace process this week that the peace process had still not entered the second stage as only 15 percent of PKK fighters had so far left Turkey.

BDP leader Selahattin Demirtas responded by saying that at least 80 percent of the militants had either left Turkey or were en route to their bases in northern Iraq.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state, but subsequently moderated its goal to autonomy.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler in Istanbul; Writing by Daren Butler and Jonathon Burch; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mark Heinrich)

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Turkish security forces fire on protest in southeast, one dead

Japan and South-East Asia: Hand in hand

Abe, Thein Sein and a golden future

IT WAS all toasts and effusions of mutual esteem when President Thein Sein welcomed Shinzo Abe to Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, on May 26th. Mr Abe was the first Japanese prime minister to visit the country since 1977. Both leaders looked determined to cement diplomatic and economic ties that had long been relatively good, even during the decades when the West shunned a brutal military regime. Mr Abe, who also met Myanmar’s opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, promised “all possible assistance” to support the country’s new commitment to reform, which Mr Thein Sein initiated in 2011.

Japanese deeds matched the fine words. Mr Abe cancelled Myanmar’s $ 1.8 billion of debt and promised another $ 500m in aid loans. This comes on top of Japanese commitments already agreed on over the past 18 months, including for a special economic zone at Thilawa, just south of Yangon, the commercial capital. Japan is spending an initial $ 200m on Thilawa, which will include a new port to replace Yangon’s old one, now largely silted up. Dozens of Japanese executives also came with Mr Abe to Myanmar, where he urged them to hunt for opportunities.

Myanmar is the region’s most fashionable destination for investment, but other countries in South-East Asia have benefited more from Japanese largesse of late. Since Mr Abe came to office in December, his ministers have tripped over each other in South-East Asian capitals, offering new investment, aid and more. Japan wants to perk up its own economy by dramatically increasing its presence in ASEAN, the ten-country Association of South-East Asian Nations, a rare economic bright spot.

But the ministers’ talk is not only about trade. Diplomatic alliances, naval training and even sales of defence equipment are also on the agenda. For hanging over the new South-East Asian push is Japan’s troubled relationship with China. Chinese confrontation over Japan’s control of the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea has exacerbated differences between the two countries. Anti-Japanese sentiment in China has added to the concerns of Japanese businessmen about the long-term future of their investments there. Last year a Reuters survey of Japanese manufacturers found that almost a quarter of those questioned were considering delaying or reversing investment plans in China. For Japan, South-East Asia has fast become a diplomatic and economic hedge against China.

As part of a new financial pact with the region, Japan is investing in the government bonds of ASEAN members. Its finance ministry will also help Japanese companies borrow in local currencies. Some corporate giants are drawing together entire supply-chain clusters in South-East Asia, usually centred on Thailand—Honda, for example, expects to build 424,000 cars a year there by 2015. For this, Japanese companies increasingly need local funds. Thailand’s appalling floods in 2011, which closed car plants and many other Japanese manufacturers, have not fundamentally changed business plans; after all, insurance payouts minimised companies’ losses.

In Indonesia, another country with long-standing economic links to Japan, Japanese companies recently won a $ 370m contract to start building a new underground transit system in Jakarta. (The flood-prone capital is built atop a marsh, and is just the sort of challenge that Japanese engineers relish.) But it is in other South-East Asian countries with which it has traditionally had fewer ties that Japan is unusually active. In particular, it is forging new partnerships with Vietnam and the Philippines, both of which have their own maritime quarrels with China, over islands and reefs in the South China Sea.

In Vietnam the Japanese have been helping to bail out the country’s stricken state banking sector. In December Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ announced that it was buying a 20% stake in VietinBank, for $ 743m. Mizuho took a 15% stake in Vietcombank, for $ 567m, in September 2011. Japanese commitments to Vietnam rose to $ 5.1 billion in 2012, double the figure for the previous year. Japan has also started to improve Vietnam’s naval capabilities, training Vietnamese sailors in maritime surveillance, for instance.

As in Vietnam and Myanmar, memories in the Philippines still linger over Japan’s brutal wartime occupation (Thailand was spared, allying itself with Japan). Yet history has not spilled over into politics as relations with Japan have warmed. More pressing for the Philippines is the stand-off with China over the disputed Scarborough shoal. Japan has boosted aid to the Philippines. It has also given it naval assistance, promising ten patrol vessels, costing $ 11m each, to help with maritime surveillance. Just as in Myanmar, once in the China camp but now closer to the West and its Asian allies, Japanese business and diplomacy march hand in hand.

Chinese Economy

Japan and South-East Asia: Hand in hand