The debate centers on a bill that would allow companies, foreign or domestic, who win a tender to clear land along the border of mines to operate the land for 44 years for organic agricultural purposes. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and the junior opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have requested the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) make its views public on the methods to be pursued in demining and to reveal whether it is of the same opinion as the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). What a great approach from the deputies of a country that aspires to become a member of the European Union, where the supremacy of civilian authorities over the military is recognized!
Kemal Anadol, the head of the CHP parliamentary group, urged the TSK to make its views public while threatening to take the issue to the Constitutional Court if the bill, recently introduced in Parliament, is not withdrawn. The opposition is not alone in its concerns as several deputies from the ruling AK Party also oppose the bill.
The bill envisages clearing APMs located in and around a 510-kilometer-long and 600-meter-wide area along the 820-kilometer-long Syrian border through a tender.
The Finance Ministry will also be authorized to sell the mine-cleared land. However, a certain portion of the land will be allocated for military use and for the Border Physical Security System (SFGS) that will be established.
Underground resources, such as oil and minerals, discovered in these areas will be subject to the provisions of Turkey's mining and oil legislation. Contractors will be given five years maximum to remove the minerals.
As an obvious distortion of the facts, CHP deputy Onur Öymen, a retired ambassador, claimed during last week's debate in Parliament discussing the bill that the tender was intended to be awarded to Israel, a country with a water and land shortage.
The General Staff initiated a plan in the late 1990s to clear the mines along Turkish borders through its own means. But due to the high cost and need for advanced equipment that it lacked, the General Staff asked the government to coordinate the demining activities. The Finance Ministry then established a committee comprising representatives of all related ministries to design a strategy for how to clear the lands of mines.
Two separate tenders opened to clear the Syrian-Turkish border of APMs were cancelled in the past several years due to a court decision that the bill should separate the activities, i.e., mine clearance and the cultivation of cleared land, from one another.
There are estimated to be around 615,149 mines (450,652 APMs and 164,497 anti-tank mines [ATMs]) along the Syrian-Turkish border, initially placed between the years 1956 and 1959 to prevent illegal migration across the border.
There is also an unknown number of APMs along the Iraqi and Syrian border placed by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Turkey, which became party to the Ottawa Treaty, formerly the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, in 2003, has undertaken to destroy its APMs by 2014. A total of 16,000 APMs will be kept in stock. Turkey has already cleared APMs and anti-tank mines along its border with Greece as well as along its border with Bulgaria.
A full 43 percent out of the 2,690,929 APMs in Turkey have been destroyed, Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül said on May 5.
The remaining 1,804,205 APMs are planned to be destroyed by 2010 and lie on the borders with Syria, Iraq, Iran and Armenia. This includes mines placed around several critical installations, he noted.
It now remains to be seen how Parliament will find common ground to clear the remaining land mines on Turkish soil, thereby removing a serious social and a security problem in the Kurdish-dominated war-torn Southeast.
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