Kurdistan

Thenewanatolian-Photos released yesterday showed a mysterious ex-army member linked in reports to Friday's slaying of Hrant Dink as well as the 1996 Susurluk scandal with the gunman in last year's deadly Council of State shooting.

A news agency released photos showing Veli Kucuk together with Alparslan Arslan, the gunman who killed one judge and wounded four others last May.

Speculations regarding the murder of Dink, an Armenian-origin Turkish journalist, have been growing, raising further questions, while the media has been looking into the killer's possible link with a notorious ex-general, Kucuk. However, photos released by a pro-PKK media organ, the Firat News Agency, formerly the Mesopotamia News Agency, showed Kucuk with some other important figures.

TDN-Eight former Democratic People's Party (DEHAP) executives from Cizre and a journalist were jailed on Tuesday after surrendering to the police.

They were sentenced to serve one-and-a-half-years for “inciting hatred” in a press statement they released on Aug. 15, 2005. The Supreme Court of Appeals approved their sentences. DEHAP was closed in 2005, after which most of its members joined the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP).

Thenewanatolian-While the gunman who murdered Hrant Dink was charged yesterday after he signed his confession, Yasin Hayal, who is suspected of encouraging the murder, threatened Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.

"Orhan Pamuk, be smart, be smart!" Hayal shouted at reporters as he was being brought into an Istanbul courtroom. Hayal, an ex-convict, confessed to inciting the murder and to providing a gun and money to the gunman.

Bianet-Thousands marched in assassinated Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink's funeral. Nationalist and racist reaction rise following chanted slogans "We're all Armenians". Debate on article 301 continues as five suspects get arrested on the case.

Repercussions of the assassination of Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink and his funeral, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered to condemn the killing, continue.

Eurasia -The recent release of a long-awaited study on the size of Turkey’s population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has refocused attention on this enduring problem, raising questions about Ankara’s dedication to addressing the issue.

Turkey’s IDP problem is connected to the turbulence of the 1980’s and 1990’s, when Turkish security forces battled guerillas from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the country’s predominantly-Kurdish southeast region. More than 30,000 individuals on both sides are believed to have been killed since 1984 when the PKK took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

TDN -‘Militarism and militancy are nourishing each other. It is now time to produce integrity from our differences; peace from our fights and trust from our doubts and fears,’ says the peace initiative, which will hold the ‘Turkey Seeking Its Peace’ conference over the weekend in Ankara

This weekend intellectuals will hold a conference in the Turkish capital to seek paths toward societal peace by helping to shape a public conscience about the bitter Kurdish issue.Renowned Turkish intellectual Cemil Meriç once described how an intellectual can represent his country: “I would like to be the conscience of an era -- to put it more succinctly, of a country.”

TDN -The Izmir Peace Initiative, established by a group of nongovernmental organizations and political parties two months ago, will organize a peace demonstration on Jan. 13.

Initiative spokesman Musa Sever, speaking at a press conference on Thursday, pointed to provocations by imperialists as the root cause of fighting between Kurds and Turks, peoples that had previously lived in peace for many years. He added that the initiative strongly defended Turk-Kurd brotherhood as a means to prevent discrimination and “a lynching psychology.” To this end they will be marching for peace on Jan. 13.

Kurdish-Turkish official appealed Thursday for the cancellation of a dam project in his country, saying it would destroy cultural heritage and do little to boost economic development. "Of course we want economic and social development ... but development should not disregard people, nature and history," said Osman Baydemir, president of the Union of South Eastern Anatolia Municipalities and mayor of

Controversy followed the release of a Kurdish translation of Ubuntu in Turkey last week. The release was originally reported in Millyet, a Turkish national newspaper, on November 21. This first release of a Kurdish language operating system and software has caused a stir in Turkey, where, up until
1991, it was illegal even to speak Kurdish in public.

Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) deputy leader Aysel Tuðluk and
the party's Diyarbakýr branch chief, Hilmi Aydoðdu, were charged on Tuesday
with praising the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its jailed
leader Abdullah Öcalan in a speech, each facing up to five years'
imprisonment.

In a speech in Diyarbakýr on Sept. 3 of this year, Tuðluk had said: “Close