Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue dßpresse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Baszn ()zeti
Ankara Says Kurdish Separatists
Are Rekindling Insurgency
RFEIRL
By Ron Synovitz
June 22, 2004
Prague -- Reports from southern Turkey suggest that
Turkish authorities have launched a crackdown against
Kurdish separatists since the remnants of the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) declared an end to the unilateral
cease-fire it announced five years ago.
Kurdish separatists in the PKK had waged an insurgency
for nearly two decades in southeastern Turkey in their
failed bid to win autonomy for the Kurdish minority there.
The now-defunct PKK declared the cease-fire in 1999
after its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured the
previous year and urged his followers to conduct their
campaign for autonomy through legitimate political
means.
liThe PKK based in northern Iraq Is about to
disintegrate."
But the PKK's successor group, Kongra-Gel, called off the
cease-fire at the start of June, saying Turkish security
forces have refused to respect the truce.
Turkish security forces are reported to be increasingly
involved in clashes with Kurdish separatist fighters.
Ankara claims that about 2,000 Kurdish fighters have
crossed into Turkey from hideouts in mountainous
northern Iraq in recent weeks.
Seyfi Tashan is director of the Foreign Policy Institute at
Bilkent University in Ankara. He notes that the Kurdish
separatist movement has been disintegrating since many
of its militant members fled into northern Iraq after
. Ocalan's capture.
Tashan says what now remains of the separatist
movement is divided between moderates and splintering
militant groups.
"The PKK based in northern Iraq is about to disintegrate,"
he says. "Some of their members are joining the
peshmerga [force that the PKK had fought against in the
past]. A group of the PKK -- its name now is Kongra-Gel -
- have decided to renew action, infiltrating eastern Turkey
from Iraq."
Tashan says that by rekindling violence in southern
Turkey, militant faction leaders hope to maintain unity
within the disintegrating separatist movement.
"It would be to keep at least a certain part of the people
together because, without fighting a war, keeping a group
of [militants together] in a camp in the middle of nowhere
in northern Iraq is a difficult feat," Tashan says.
However, internationallobbyists for Kurdish rights say it is
a misrepresentation to equate Kongra-Gel with militancy
and terrorism.
Estella Schmid, coordinator of the London-based
Kurdistan Solidarity Committee, told RFE/RL that
although Kongra-Gel includes some former militants, the
group in recent years has developed a political platform
that renounces terrorism.
"Kongra-Gel is a congress. And following the dissolution
of the PKK in 1999, this is quite a completely different
organization in terms of its strategy and tactics. It is
entirely based on the democratization of the Middle East.
So they are putting forward a proposal of a federation of
the Middle East in which the Kurds are part of the
resolution of the problems in the Middle East -- entirely by
political and peaceful means," Schmid says.
Schmid concludes that it is Ankara's ban against Kongra-
Gel, as well as some 700 attacks conducted by Turkish
security forces against Kurds during the last five years,
that make a peaceful, political resolution to Kurdish issues
so difficult in Turkey.
Rochelle Harris, a spokeswoman for the London-based
Kurdish Human Rights Project, says it is hard to find
objective opinions about Kurdish issues inside of Turkey.
"The difficulty in finding an objective opinion on the
Kurdish situation in Turkey is that the Kurdish side itself
has been censored for so many years. For a number of
years, it has been illegal to speak as a Kurd in the Kurdish
language. However, the European Court of Human Rights
is surely one body that could be expected to have an
objective opinion. And it has condemned Turkey on a
number of occasions for violating the right of freedom of
association, of the right to a fair trial, for torture and for
other human rights violations," Harris says.
Turkey has been enacting cultural rights for its estimated
12 million-strong Kurdish population as part of efforts to.
persuade the European Union to open entry talks .
But at the same time, ethnic clashes appear to be on the
rise. Private Turkish broadcasters -- including NTV and
the Turkish-language division of CNN television -- have
reported. in the past week that the Turkish military is
preparing large-scale operations in southeastem Turkey
to hunt down separatist militants.
Other reports confirm that raids already have been
launched by Turkish authorities in the' southern city of .
Adana near the Mediterranean coast.
In one raid in Adana last week, six Kurdish men and two
Kurdish women were arrested on charges of plotting
terrorist attacks. Turkish news reports say evidence
seized from the suspects by police included 10 kilograms
of plastic explosives along with detonators and
documents on bomb making. Earlier this month, four
members of the former PKK also were arrested in Adana
on suspicion of planning attacks.
More than 37,000 people have been killed in Turkey as a
result of separatist violence and the subsequent
crackdowns by security forces since Kurdish militants
launched their insurgency in the mid-1980s. Most of those
killed have been Kurds in the southeast of the country.
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