From: Guven.Guzeldere%STANFORD.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU (hq.ggg)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: TRH NEWS--PART 4
Date: 19 Dec 1992 01:14:11 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

    CONFERENCE ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE OPENS
IN STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
    STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (DEC. 14) - The 52-nation Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe opened a two-day
meeting of foreign ministers Monday to discuss methods of
solving conflicts in Europe and to chart a new course for
    Before Monday's meeting representatives of Azerbaijan
accused Armenia of increasing military attacks in the two
former Soviet republics' war over the disputed territory of
Nagorno Karabakh. Nagorno Karabakh is an ethnically
christian Armenian region under the jurisdiction of
predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan.

TURKISH CITY CALM AFTER NIGHT OF HEAVY FIGHTING WITH KURDS

DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY (DEC. 14) - Turkish security forces
brought the situation in the Turkish provincial city of
Diyarbakir under control Monday after a night of heavy
fighting with Kurdish guerrillas, reports said.
    It was unclear how many people died or were injured in
the fighting with rebels of the Workers' Party of Kurdistan
(PKK).
    The clashes erupted late Sunday when guerrillas attacked
the quarters of the police in the city with the fighting
spreading rapidly over various suburbs, the semi-official
Turkish Anadolu news agency reported.
    The army barracks, the water works and police vehicles
had come under fire. Diyarbakir is the headquarters of the
governor responsible for the 10 eastern and southeastern
Anatolian provinces.

UZBEKISTAN PRESIDENT IN CAIRO; HOPES TO SIGN ECONOMIC AND
TRADE AGREEMENTS
    CAIRO, Egypt (DEC. 15) - The president of the Muslim
nation of Uzbekistan in Central Asia, Islam Karimov, arrived
in Egypt Tuesday on a three-day trip as the first leader of
the former Soviet republic to visit the Arab country.
    Karimov said before the trip he hoped to sign several
economic and trade agreements while in Egypt as part of his
country's efforts to expand new ties now that it is
independent of the former Soviet Union.
    Uzbek Foreign Minister Abead Allah Kazzamov told
reporters in Cairo Sunday that Karimov and Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak will also discuss the war in the
largely Muslim former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-
Herzegovina.
    Karimov will receive an honorary doctorate from Al Azhar
University Wednesday in a ceremony to be attended by
Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedki and Grand Sheikh Gad El
Haq, head of Al Azhar.
    Al Azhar University is the repository of religious
teaching for thousands of preachers from all over the Sunni
Muslim world. With Gulf funding, the university began
sending Egyptian preachers to the Muslim Central Asian
republics shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union a
year ago.
    There has been competition over the past year between
Shiite Iran, the predominantly Sunni Arab countries and the
more westernized Turkey for religious, cultural and other
influence over the newly independent republics of Central
Asia.

 UZBEKISTAN GOVERNMENT MAY BAN MAIN OPPOSITION PARTY DESPITE
NEW CONSTITUTION
    TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN (Dec. 16) - The hardline government
of the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan appears ready to
ban the country's main opposition movement just days after
it adopted a constitution as an independent republic
guaranteeing a multi-party state.
    Several opposition leaders remain in detention ten days
after their arrest for trying to attend an international
human rights conference in the neighboring Central Asian
state of Kirgizstan.
    The Uzbek Supreme Soviet, or parliament, voted
overwhelmingly that the Supreme Court should look into the
activities of the Birlik opposition movement, which it says
are illegal.
    "If someone is told to present themselves to the
authorities, and they do not, then they are breaking the
law," says Boris Bugarov, deputy chairman of the Supreme
Soviet.
    After a heyday when they drew a million protestors onto
the streets, notably on the question of status of the Uzbek
language, Birlik has slipped back to the political margins
in the last year.
    After the government added many of Birlik's demands to
its own platform, the opposition -- registered as a "mass
movement" but with aspirations as an alternative to the
present government of former Communists -- is looking for
new directions. One of those is human rights, a touchy one
for the government.
    Uzbek authorities told Birlik leaders not to go to the
conference in the Kirgiz capital Bishkek. Three were
arrested in advance, and three more later by Uzbek security
servicemen who travelled to Bishkek specially. "We arrested
one person in Bishkek," says Bugarov. "But this had nothing
to do with the conference."
    According to a Western diplomat, the three arrested in
Bishkek were "unceremoniously bundled into a truck" and
driven to the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. Kirgiz security men
stopped the truck at the Kirgiz-Uzbek border but after
clearance from the ministry in Bishkek, let the truck pass.
    Under Commonwealth of Independent States guidelines, the
security services of ex-Soviet republics can arrest their
nationals in other CIS countries whom they consider
criminals.
    Under Uzbekistan's new "democratic" constitution, the
three who remain in custody face up to three years in prison
for travelling outside the country without permission from
the authorities, including the security service.
    "We have done nothing against the constitution," says
Birlik co-chairman, Shokhral Ismatullaev, one of the three
arrested in Tashkent. "We have written to (Uzbek President
Islam) Karimov and if we are banned we will continue our
activities. In particular, we shall appeal to international
organizations."
    Little is likely to alter Karimov's treatment of the
opposition. Under the new constitution, he is even more
powerful than before. "The president needs that power if he
is to prevent the country falling apart," says Bugarov.
    The continuing civil war in the neighboring Central
Asian republic Tajikistan continues to hang over Uzbekistan.
Since the war began in earnest in September, the Uzbeks have
effectively sealed their border with Tajikistan fearing
unrest there will spill over the frontier.
    When Soviet Russia created the Central Asian states in
the 1920s it took care to ensure that the new borders cut
right across ethnic divides. Out of a population of around
six million, largely Persian-speaking Tajikistan harbors a
million Turkic-speaking Uzbeks.
    Out of 20 millions, Uzbekistan has around a million
Tajiks, concentrated mainly in the fabled Silk Road cities
of Bukhara and Samarkand. There are also hundreds of
thousands of Uzbeks in neighboring Kirgizstan. Two years ago
at least 200 people died in rioting in the Kirgiz city of
Osh, a city with an Uzbek majority.
    Local analysts speculate that the government is paranoid
about losing power. The moves are all the more startling
because Birlik, which means "unity" in Uzbek, though the
supposedly the main opposition movement, is now
marginalized.
    One of Birlik's early and primary demands was that Uzbek
be the state language. That status is now enshrined in the
new constitution.
    What Karimov may be doing is trying to preempt an
alliance between the weak democrats and the more shadowy and
perhaps more powerful Islamic radicals gaining support
outside the capital. It was this kind of alliance that was
so successful in ousting old guard president Rakhmon Nabiyev
in neighboring Tajikistan.
    But by cracking down on an already weakened group,
Karimov risks driving the organization underground and
creating an opposition more determined to overthrow him
through violent means.
    The Uzbek president, so desperate to stay in power, so
desperate to avoid Tajikistan's bloodshed, may, by allowing
no mechanism to release the pressure of discontent, be
creating the same forces that blew Tajikistan apart.

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Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,soc.history