US embassy cable - 04ANKARA2446

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 06 ANKARA 002446 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
STATE FOR EUR/SE AND NEA/NGA 
NSC FOR BRYZA AND MCKIBBEN 
TREASURY FOR OASIA - MILLS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/29/2014 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, ECON, MARR, TU, IZ 
SUBJECT: SOUTHEAST TURKEY ECONOMIC OUTLOOK PESSIMISTIC, 
SOME RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ISSUES PERSIST 
 
 
(U) Classified by DCM Robert Deutsch.  Reasons 1.5 (b) and 
(d). 
 
 
(U) This cable was drafted by Consulate Adana. 
 
 
1. (C) Summary:  Reporting officers traveling in southeast 
Turkey 
April 19-22 heard negative economic outlooks from a broad 
array of 
contacts, as well as reports of some continuing religious 
freedom 
restrictions.  Contacts said implementation of the recently 
passed Turkish EU reform packet laws was decidedly mixed and 
incomplete, 
depending on local official attitudes and interpretation, 
though some 
noted improving human rights conditions, such as Syriac 
Christian 
returns in Mardin, in some areas.  The Habur gate continues 
functioning roughly at approximately 2600-2700 total transits 
daily 
(north and southbound), below the 3700 daily transits target. 
 
 
Southeast Turkey's road infrastructure feeding the northern 
Iraqi 
ground line of communication (GLOC) is seriously degraded by 
heavy use 
and seasonal weather. The Habur Gate modernization project is 
reportedly ready to start in May-June and expected to take 
six months 
to complete. End Summary. 
 
 
2.(SBU)  Embassy Ankara EconCouns and AmCon Adana PO visited 
contacts 
in Diyarbakir, Mardin, Batman, and Sirnak provinces, also 
transiting 
the full GLOC through Adana, Osmaniye, Gaziantep, and 
Sanliurfa 
provinces from April 19-22. 
 
 
Iraq Trade 
---------- 
3.  (C) Discussions at the April 21 weekly Habur Gate border 
meeting 
indicated that the gate continues functioning at 
approximately 2600-2700 
total transits daily (north and southbound), below the 3700 
daily 
transits target.  Border relations remain functional, but 
heavy 
coordination, troubleshooting and border liaison remain 
necessary daily 
to keep the operation from derailing. 
 
 
4.  (C) Meanwhile, Southeast Turkey's road infrastructure 
feeding the 
northern Iraq ground line of communication (GLOC) is being 
seriously 
degraded by heavy use and seasonal weather effects. The 
highway from 
Sanliurfa through Cizre and Silopi to Habur Gate is in 
uniformly 
bad shape.  The Habur Gate modernization plan, according to a 
Cizre 
Chamber of Commerce contact working with TOBB - the project's 
prime mover 
- is slated to start in May-June and expected to take six 
months to 
complete. It is unclear what impact the modernization process 
will have on border transit rates since only part of the 
available border 
inspection positions are staffed and in use at any one time. 
There is still 
inadequate information from the GOT on which to base an 
assessment of 
interim impact on operations and possible expanded 
productivity post- 
modernization. 
 
 
Economic Conditions 
------------------- 
5.  (SBU) The consensus among our interlocutors was that 
regional economic 
conditions remained poor and local conditions near the Habur 
gate 
communities of Cizre and Silopi decidedly downbeat, despite 
two years of 
national economic growth.   Contacts consistently cited lack 
of jobs -- 
and little hope for future job opportunities -- as the 
biggest problem. 
In Cizre, per capita income was assessed at USD 680 dollars 
and falling 
by the local Chamber of Commerce head.  Rumors of (an 
apparently phantom) 
U.S.-Iraqi trade show shift from Baghdad to Diyarbakir or 
Gaziantep had 
swept the region's small business community like wildfire 
even though 
reporting officers could not corroborate it.  The manner in 
which the 
rumor was embraced and nurtured suggested the almost 
desperate nature of 
the region's commercial community.  There was little evidence 
of new 
investment, and we received a credible report, confirmed to 
AmCon Adana 
by the plant's owner, that the Sirnak province-based 
"Mezopotamya" lentil 
processing factory had closed its operations in Turkey and 
moved to 
northern Iraq,s Dohuk province to minimize exposure to 
relatively high 
Turkish taxes and take advantage of lower northern Iraqi 
labor costs. 
 
 
6.  (C)  Contacts in Cizre and Silopi argued that the sharp 
increase in 
Turkish-Iraqi trade over the past year had so far had little 
positive 
impact on the local economy.  In fact, a local contact who is 
a Nakshibende 
tarikat leader with wide regional contacts explained how the 
recent 
decision of the Sirnak governor to close the Habur gate to 
local day 
traders (largely in fuel) was threatening widespread small 
entrepreneur 
failure since many day traders had taken out loans in recent 
months to 
buy a truck, small tanker or car to pursue day trade.  He 
also decried 
that same governor's continuing resistance to allowing former 
villagers 
now resident throughout southeast Turkey to return to their 
Sirnak 
province villages where, he maintained, they could at least 
maintain subsistence levels of agriculture. 
 
 
Religious Freedom 
----------------- 
7.  (C) In Diyarbakir, EconCouns and PO met with Diyarbakir 
Protestant 
Evangelical Church leader Ahmet Guvener.  Guvener is 
currently facing 
prosecution for operating a church in a building not approved 
for non- 
residential purposes.  His next hearing is May 12.  Guvener 
explained 
that the church has been meeting since 1994 and that, when 
its current 
facility was submitted several years ago for construction 
zoning, the 
law did not allow for any religious dwelling other than a 
mosque. 
Therefore, at that time, the city applied a residence label 
to the 
structure. Later, in late 2003 when the law was amended to 
allow for 
non-mosque religious dwellings, the Diyarbakir governate 
brought suit 
against him for operating a church in a dwelling.  He 
explained that 
he has applied for the new religious dwelling designation, 
but the same 
governate authority has yet to grant it. 
 
 
8.  (C) In a subsequent meeting, the Deputy provincial 
prosecutor as 
well as the prosecutor assigned in the Guvener case explained 
that 
they were pursuing the case, under Article 261, based on an 
order 
from the Diyarbakir governor's religious and historical 
commission. 
They said that they had no leeway in whether to pursue the 
case, 
that it was not religious in nature, but zoning-based, and 
that 
the prosecutor's office was using the same statute to pursue 
similar 
cases against two improperly zoned private schools in the 
province. 
 
 
9.  (C) In Midyat, Mardin province, Syriac Orthodox Bishop 
Samuel 
Aktas and other Syriac community leaders told us that the 
religious 
freedoms of their community continue to be restricted.  While 
noting the slow, but steady return of Syriac Orthodox 
returnees 
from western Europe, Bishop Aktas criticized the GOT for 
continuing 
to prevent foreign Syriac Orthodox clergy access to the 
important 
Tor Abdin area through visa denial, GOT refusal to allow 
instruction 
of Syriac Orthodox clergy in Turkey, and the continuing GOT 
denial 
of the right to teach openly Aramaic to the Syriac Orthodox 
community. 
monastery 
through early morning classes for school-age children, the 
Bishop 
and the community want open language rights embraced in 
public 
schooling which they consider denied since their 1995 request 
to 
teach Aramaic openly continues to be unanswered by the GOT. 
Asked 
whether they have repeated the language education request 
since the 
new laws were passed in 2003, they said that they had not, 
but some 
community members in Istanbul were considering doing so. 
 
 
10.  (C) The Bishop confirmed the Mardin governor's assertion 
that he 
(the Governor) had authorized people to return to 120 of 129 
previously-evacuated villages in Mardin, many of which has 
been 
majority Syriac. He said that the "problem areas" for Syriac 
return 
now was in neighboring Sirnak province, where on some 
occasions 
village guards were being allowed to reside in the villages. 
The 
Bishop complained that some local jandarma, village guard and 
district 
level officials were using zoning laws to frustrate and delay 
historical church and building restoration in Mardin and 
Sirnak 
provinces, claiming that such buildings were not included on 
state 
historical building registries and therefore deserved no 
state 
protection.  He argued that the Syriac Orthodox community was 
systematically denied community protections because it was 
not 
explicitly mentioned in the Lausanne Treaty and that state 
authorities had rebuffed past attempts to garner recognition 
of 
these sites 
 
 
Other Human Rights Issues 
------------------------- 
11. (C) Diyarbakir Bar Association contacts said that torture 
remains 
a police tool, especially in terrorism-related cases, and 
that -- 
based on documented cases to date projected forward for the 
year -- there would be "several hundred torture cases again 
this year." 
A Bar Association contact said that police and Jandarma now 
used more 
sophisticated torture methods, mentioning that "they use less 
electric 
shock and more foot beating," which left less easily 
catalogued effects. 
He also said that the strong solidarity showings of entire 
district 
police forces in the few cases in the region in which which 
prosecution 
of alleged torturers have been pursued demonstrate the depth 
of 
institutional belief in the continued validity of that 
technique. 
 
 
12.  (C) This contact explained that the bar association was 
distributing several hundred thousand small cards to explain 
detainee 
attorney access rights through the province county 
clerk-equivalent 
system (muhtar system), and also was mulling starting a bar 
association- 
supported radio broadcast to raise citizen awareness on legal 
defense 
issues.  Another bar association contact noted similar 
awareness-raising 
activities are needed to counter high rates of domestic and 
children's 
violence as well as women's rights issues.  Both bar 
association contacts 
expressed the need for the GOT to offer an improved version 
of the 
"return to home law" offered in late 2003-early 2004, 
explaining 
that they had offered informally to the GoT as early as June 
2003 
what they considered options short of a general amnesty which 
would 
have had markedly better success that that garnered by the 
recently closed "return to home law." 
 
 
13. (C) The Diyarbakir Deputy Provincial Prosecutor said that 
the 
Prosecutor had implemented a series of seminars to educate 
all 
prosecutors and senior law enforcement officials on the new 
EU 
reform packet laws, and that 60 of the roughly 200 designated 
personnel 
had received instruction to date.  Also prosecutors had 
recently spot- 
inspected 14 of 16 Diyarbakir districts recently to determine 
whether 
detainees were being given access to attorneys. He reported 
that 
approximately 80 percent of initial detainees had been 
released 
within a day of initial detention because their offenses were 
minor 
and resolved locally or scheduled for prosecution at a later 
date. 
Almost all the remaining detentions, he said, had sought and 
obtained 
access to an attorney. When asked whether a procedure could 
be 
implemented whereby all detainees could express whether they 
wanted 
an attorney in the presence of a lawyer, the Deputy 
Prosecutor agreed 
such a step could resolve gray area attorney access issues, 
but said 
it would require a new law. 
 
 
14.  (C) As noted above, contacts indicated that villagers 
were being 
allowed to return to previously-evacuated villages in Mardin 
province, 
but not in Sirnak Province.  Bishop Aktas attributed the 
Sirnak 
governor's resistance to a concern that returning villagers 
might support 
Kongra Gel, as well asa preference not to upset the balance 
between the 
Ministry of Interior-linked governorate and the military, 
which he 
alleged favored the position of their village guard allies 
now 
controlling cultivation in the currently evacuated villages. 
Osman 
Baydemir, the newly-elected Diyarbakir mayor (DEHAP) expanded 
this 
charge to include alleged village guard involvement in 
narcotics and 
its transformation into a regional organized crime syndicate 
of 
considerable scale. 
 
 
15. (C)  The sole UNHCR field officer in Silopi explained 
that she was 
largely idle awaiting finalization of a Makhmour refugee camp 
resettlement 
agreement.  She had recently performed some resettlement 
verification in 
Sirnak and Siirt provinces and found little complaint from 
the few 
returnees.  She noted that it was hard to determine the 
validity of these 
comment, as her  verification missions always were conducted 
in the 
presence of Turkish security force escorts.  She said that 
there was 
little consistent information available on the resettlement 
assistance 
funds offered by the GOT for returnees, though she had 
witnessed the 
extension of basic infrastructure and, in some cases, 
building materials, 
to some villages.  Funding stipends did not seem to have been 
provided to 
the returnees, but it was not clear to her that such money 
ever was 
promised explicitly.  She said that the one consistent 
complaint by 
returnees was the lack of job opportunities in the region, 
which she 
observed was part of a broader regional unemployment problem 
not 
specific to returning refugees.  This problem, she predicted, 
could 
be a negative factor influencing possible Makhmour return 
flow should 
a final agreement be reached. 
 
 
Security Situation 
------------------ 
16. (C) There were credible reports from UNHCR and local 
Mardin contacts 
of road-placed, command-detonated improvised explosive 
devices or possible 
mines used in the last several weeks against Jandarma vehicle 
patrols in 
south Mardin and Siirt province, the latter near Eruh 
township.  Jandarma 
observed patrolling the road near Gercus in south Batman 
province on 4/21, 
site of another IED or mine attack about six weeks ago, were 
using heavy 
six or eight wheeled APCs and riding on top of the vehicles 
in improvised 
sandbagged positions. 
 
 
17. (C)  Diyarbakir Bar Association contacts claimed that 
ongoing GOT 
military operations were the result of a Kongra Gel decision 
to move its 
center of activity into traditional Spring-Summer encampments 
in 
anticipation of possible coaltion actions against them in 
northern Iraq. 
They claimed that the Turkish military knew Kongra Gel's 
intentions and 
regular routes for performing this redeployment and was 
taking advantage 
of the movement to hit the Kongra Gel in Siirt, Sirnak 
and Hakkari provinces before it had consolidated into new 
fortified areas. 
EDELMAN