Turkish Forum

Tag: PKK

  • Kurdish authorities are targeting journalists in north Iraq

    Kurdish authorities are targeting journalists in north Iraq

    Saturday, August 9, 2008

    Journalists are stopped in the street, forced into cars, abused and held for hours and sometimes days for simply writing about corruption and other problems

    In recent years Western media has given us a fantastic picture of northern Iraq. The Middle Eastern region that proves that democracy is possible and that democracy conquers land and also shows the picture of a region that in a short time has developed into a tourist paradise. These pictures are indeed correct — but there is also another reality.

    Please allow me to give an account of the prosecution of Kurdish, Assyrian and Arabic journalists in northern Iraq.

    Death and torture:

    March 6, 2008, 74-year-old Abd al-Sattar Taher Sharif was shot dead in Kirkuk. He had, for a period of time, received assassination threats for his criticism of Kurdish leaders’ corruption and nepotism. July 21, Souran Mama Hama, a 23-year-old journalist, was shot and killed outside his parents’ house in Kirkuk. He had, in his articles, revealed irregularities within the two leading parties: the KDP, or Kurdish Democratic Party, and the PUK, or Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Also in July this year, according to Amnesty International, a document had circulated with a death list containing 16 names in the risk zone in the Iraqi regions dominated by Kurds. Both Hama and Sharif were on this list.

    A Kurdish journalist who I worked with was arrested earlier this year. The KDP interrogated him and he was abused before being released with the message, “You’ve got a choice, either you end your writing or your life will end”.

    He is not the only journalist who, arbitrarily and without trial, has been arrested, put into jail and tortured. Journalists are stopped in the street, forced into cars, abused and held for hours and sometimes days. The well-known journalist and human rights activist, Mohammad Siyassi Ashkani was arrested in January last year and held for six months without charges being brought and without subsequent trial. He spent 55 days alone in a cell and was not given a chance to speak to a lawyer. June 3, Rezgar Raza Chouchani was also arrested and imprisoned in a secret place, interrogated by the Kurdish secret service because of his writings on the corruption in KDP’s hierachy.

    I am worried about the other 13 journalists on the death list and I’m worried about the development in northern Iraq. Is the president of Kurdistan a new dictator? A new Saddam? And above all, will Swedish and Western journalists see the reality as it is and not wait for 20 years as was the case with Mugabe?

    “We will not allow anyone to talk or write against the democratic process of KRG, anyone who doesn’t obey will have to take the consequences,” said Masoud Barzani in a televised statement a couple of months ago. Journalists perceived it as a direct threat against those who still publish articles in their own names.

    It is getting worse:

    The organization Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, wrote a letter of protest to Barzani demanding necessary measures in order to protect journalists. The Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate, an organization defending freedom of speech in the region, claimed the situation had become steadily worse for journalists in the first six months of 2008. Sixty cases of violence, threats and even murder have been reported.

    We journalists in the West cannot be involved in allowing another freedom fighter to become a dictator. Kurds in Sweden and other countries also have a huge responsibility. The Kurdish intellectuals must therefore speak up and tell the truth about the corruption, oppression and repression in the so-called democratic areas of Iraq before it is too late. They cannot pretend not to know about the undemocratic rules of the region.

    …………….

    Nuri Kino is a journalist in Sweden specializing in investigative journalism, and is one of the most highly awarded journalists in Europe. He is an Assyrian from Turkey.

  • Turkey Pipeline Fire Boosts Oil Prices

    Turkey Pipeline Fire Boosts Oil Prices

    Oil prices sprung back up past US$120 a barrel yesterday after Kurdish rebels set fire to an oil pipeline in Turkey. The jump in prices stops a three day slide that had offered a brief reprieve to the consumer.

    The fire could cause the closure of the pipeline for more than two weeks, causing the jump in futures pricing. One energy consultant said: “Every day that it’s down, we lose about 1 million barrels of oil that otherwise would be available…”
      
    Source: news.yahoo.com

  • Kurdish Exiles in Germany Feel Pain of Protracted War at Home

    Kurdish Exiles in Germany Feel Pain of Protracted War at Home

    When twin bombings ripped through a busy square in Istanbul Sunday, some in Turkey blamed the militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) for the blasts. That renewed focus on the group doesn’t bode well for many Kurds abroad.

     

    Citing security sources, CNN-Turk television said that intelligence reports suggested the group was planning a bombing campaign in Turkish cities.

     

    Though the Firat news agency reported Monday that the PKK had denied responsibility for the blast — which killed 17 and injured more than 150, making it the worst in the city since 2003 — suspicions about Kurdish involvement still abound.

     

    “There are signs of links to the separatist group,” Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler told reporters.

     

    “Of course it’s the PKK,” Orhan Balci, a 38-year-old textile businessman from the area told Reuters news service. “This has nothing to do with politics, this is all about the PKK.”

     

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday could not be called out into naming the PKK as the culprits behind the pair of bombings saying only, “Turkey’s fight against terrorism will continue” and that “the terrorist group’s biggest aim is to make propaganda.”

     

    Fears of a foray to western Turkey

    Whether responsible or not, the rebel movement has been blamed for a number of events in Turkey since its inception in 1984. The most recent headline-making action before this weekend’s blast — the kidnapping and eventual release of three German climbers from the slopes of Mount Ararat — has led many to worry that the battle for an autonomous Kurdistan may spread into western Turkey.

     

    This fear poses a special problem for Germany, which is home to one of the largest Turkish expatriate communities and provides shelter for more than half a million Kurds. Much of the fear and hostility felt toward ethnic Kurds in Turkey as a consequence of the PKK’s actions has long simmered among the immigrant population in Germany.

     

    In November, demonstrations over Turkey’s foray into Kurdish territory in northern Iraq broke out in Berlin’s Neu-Koelln neighborhood and members of the Turkish nationalist “Gray Wolf” gang attacked people at a Kurdish culture center in the German capital. In February, the Berliner Zeitung reported on the bullying and harassment a 7-year-old Kurd received at school after wearing a scarf in the colors of Kurdistan.

     

    “We’re trying to live in peace with the Turks,” Evrim Baba, a representative of the Kurdish community in Berlin told the newspaper.

     

    “We want peace,” a young man named Achmed told DW-WORLD after the November attacks.

     

    A community divided

     

    That peace has proven difficult to attain. Even among members of the Kurdish community itself, there is disagreement about the PKK. Though Germany officially banned the PKK in 1993, many of the exiles here openly sympathize with the organization’s struggle to obtain an autonomous homeland in the triangular area of southern Turkey, northern Iraq, and northwest Iran.

     

    “The Kurds have an incredible debt toward this organization,” Mahmut Seven, who runs the only Kurdish daily newspaper Yeni Özgür Politika, told the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. “They gave us back our pride and our identity.”

     

    Baktheyar Ibrahim, an Iraqi-Kurd who had to flee a well-paying government job in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, sees things another way. As a supporter of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan political party, he believes in the attainment of an independent Kurdistan through democratic processes. The group, which supports Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, often finds itself at odds with other organizations fighting for the same goals.

     

    But the PKK has made things especially difficult for Ibrahim and for other exiles like him in recent months as Germany’s instituted a major crackdown on the Kurdish population to curb PKK sympathies.

     

    Kurdish associations in Hannover, Kassel, Bremen, Koblenz and Berlin have all been raided by German security agencies and suspected members of the separatist movement taken into custody.

     

    Roj TV, the sole Kurdish television station in the country, was banned last June, followed shortly by a ban on the production company Viko, which is located in the western Germany city of Wuppertal.

     

    Citing political reforms in Turkey, the German government has carried out a number of asylum revocations, making the search for political refuge more difficult and angering moderate Kurds who don’t see the situation in Turkey as having improved.

     

    “Go back to Turkey?” asked Mostafa, a 32-year-old refugee from Istanbul who’s since become a naturalized German. “For me, that’s impossible.”  

    Courtney Tenz

  • Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes unity plea after Istanbul bombings

    Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes unity plea after Istanbul bombings

    Suna Erdem in Istanbul
     
    Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, prayed with thousands of mourners yesterday at the funeral of victims of Sunday’s bomb attack in Istanbul. He called for a united response to the threat of terror and dismissed concerns over the possibility of his ruling party being closed down by a court ruling.

    “Today is a day for unity and togetherness. The more support we can give each other and the more we can give terrorism the cold shoulder, the more successful we will be as a nation,” said a sombre Mr Erdogan.

    He was speaking after carrying a flag-draped coffin and embracing mourners at a mosque in the Gungoren district of Istanbul. The funeral was held for 10 of the 17 victims killed there on Sunday night. More than 150 people were injured.

    Turkey was shocked by the ferocity of the double bombing, which came at a time of political turmoil. On Friday charges were brought against 86 alleged ultra-nationalists for an anti-Government campaign of murder, terror and civil unrest.

    Yesterday the country’s Constitutional Court began deliberating a controversial case to shut down Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK) over accusations of pro-Islamic activities.

    Nobody has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack — a small bomb apparently designed to lure a crowd, followed by a larger one intended to cause maximum casualties. Initial reports pointed to the secessionist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but the group, which usually hits rural military targets, has denied responsibility and condemned the attackers.

    Mr Erdogan angrily denied rumours that he had cancelled a nearby appointment due two hours before the explosions. Because of the timing of the bombings there is speculation that the Ergenekon group was involved. It is a shadowy ultra-nationalist entity which, according to Friday’s charge sheet, is active within the security forces, the judiciary, business, politics and media.

    “The atmosphere in Turkey is very tense,” said Deniz Ulke Aribogan, rector of Bahcesehir University. “The PKK could have done this . . . but to be honest it does not fit in with the PKK’s general strategy. This could even turn out to have links with Ergenekon.”

    The court case against the ruling party and the Ergenekon investigation go to the heart of the struggle between Turkey’s secularist elite — which includes the judiciary, the politically powerful military and the bureaucracy — and the Government of Mr Erdogan, a political Islamist turned EU advocate whose supporters range from devout Muslims to free-market liberals and socialists.

    Critics of the court case against the AK party say that it is more of a power struggle between Turkey’s Establishment and the new guard rather than a classic secularist-Islamist showdown. They argue that the decision by the constitutional court, expected within days, will determine whether Turkish democracy has matured after decades of party closures, military coups and assassinations.

    “The closure case is indefensible both in terms of democracy and the law,” said Hasan Cemal, a veteran liberal commentator who writes for the mainstream Milliyet newspaper. “We can only hope that the High Court is aware of this and will reach a historic decision that could be the turning point of Turkish democracy.”

    Seven of the 11 members of the court, seen as a bastion of Turkey’s secularist Establishment, must vote in favour for AK to be closed.

    They could also ban Mr Erdogan, President Gül and 69 other AK members from party politics for five years.

    If the party is banned, its rump could re-form under another name and the banned members could run as independents. In theory a legal loophole would allow Mr Erdogan to win a seat as an independent and continue to control the Government.

    But while the damage could be minimal for AK — which believes that it will still be the biggest party, particularly if it appeals for the sympathy vote — an outright ban could jeopardise Turkey’s newly resurgent economy, its strong ties with the West, its European Union membership talks and its recent role as Middle East mediator.

    Party insiders expect a compromise verdict — which would keep AK open but deprive it of Treasury funding. This would amount to a slap on the wrist for the Government.

    The evidence against AK in the 161-case indictment has been derided as flimsy, and is based largely on reported comments and a parliamentary vote to loosen restrictions on university education for women wearing the Muslim headscarf. That vote — also supported by a nationalist party that has escaped censure — has been overturned by the Constitutional Court.

  • Comment from Jane’s Middle East Editor on the Bombings in Turkey

    Comment from Jane’s Middle East Editor on the Bombings in Turkey

    London , UK (Jul. 28, 2008) — David Hartwell, Jane’s Middle East Editor, commented “Turkish authorities are probably correct in their early assessment that the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan was responsible for the attack, which was probably carried out in retaliation for a series of raids that took place last week by the Turkish military targeting Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan bases in northern Iraq.”

    Will Hartley, Editor, Jane’s Terrorism & Insurgency Centre , further added “There is a slight possibility the attack could be linked to current investigations into the activity of Ergenekon – a ‘deep state’ nationalist group accused of a number of violent acts. It could be significant the attacks happened on the same weekend that the indictment of alleged Ergenekon members, which the authorities have been preparing for over a year now, was finally made public. However, at this time, and in the absence of more evidence, the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan ( Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan: PKK) remains the most likely culprits – although a PKK spokesman has denied the group was responsible, and the operation is not typical of the group’s modus operandi.“

    ‘Modus operandi’ or MO refers to the signature style of a group/incident. In the absence of concrete evidence or claims of responsibility, matching the known MO of groups with the MO of an incident is often the only thing analysts can use to assess who may have been responsible. In this case the MO was a mass casualty attack aimed at urban civilian targets and employing coordinated twin bombs (emplaced), with the secondary device timed to cause maximum damage among first-responders.

    The Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan: PKK) is Turkey’s most active insurgent group.

    Source: Jane’s Information Group, 28 July 2008

  • Blood and Belief – Kurdish Identity

    Blood and Belief – Kurdish Identity

    The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence

    by Aliza Marcus
    New York: New York University Press, 2007. 349 pp. $35

    Reviewed by Michael Rubin

    Middle East Quarterly
    Summer 2008

    Most writers on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, best known by its Kurdish language acronym, the PKK, substitute advocacy for accuracy, so their books about the PKK tend to have limited practical use for policymakers. But Marcus, a former international correspondent for The Boston Globe who spent several years covering the PKK, has done important work in Blood and Belief. While sympathetic to her subject—the substitution of “militant” for “terrorist” grates—she retains professional integrity and does not skip over inconvenient parts of the PKK narrative such as its predilection to target Kurdish and leftist competitors rather than the Turks; the patronage it has received from the Syrian government; and the important role of European states and the Kurdish diaspora in its funding.

    Blood and Belief has four sections: on PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan’s life and the PKK’s beginnings; the PKK’s consolidation of power; the civil war; and the aftermath of Öcalan’s 1999 capture.

    The Kurds inhabit a region that spans Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, and Marcus does not let national borders constrain her analysis. Events in Iraq—such as the squabbling between Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani and Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masoud Barzani—influenced Öcalan, who concluded that he should tolerate no dissent. “We believed in socialism, and it was a Stalin-type of socialism we believed in,” one early PKK member relates.

    Steeped in Kurdish and Turkish history, Marcus provides better context than many other journalists who have tackled this subject. The PKK took hold, she shows, largely because of the weakness of the Turkish state in the 1970s. Between 1975 and 1980, the Turkish government barely functioned. After the 1980 coup, the Turkish military restored order. But when Barzani offered the PKK shelter in northern Iraq, the group remained beyond reach, allowing it to plan and launch a full-scale guerilla war against Turkey. Marcus concludes that the group’s continued survival in Turkey is because, at some level and among some constituents, it remains popular; its support is not all driven by intimidation as some Turkish analysts claim.

    Marcus impressively covers the civil war years (1984-99), and her narrative, combining dialogue and context, is rich and accessible. While many journalists and authors satisfy themselves with a single round of interviews, Marcus concentrates not on active PKK members, who she realizes do not enjoy the freedom to speak, but rather on past members, villagers, and family members whose accounts she cross-checks. She also incorporates Turkish language press accounts and interviews with Turkish officials.

    It is unfortunate, though, that her coverage of PKK resurgence, between 1999 and 2007, is just thirteen pages long. An exploration of how Öcalan has retained control while in prison and where he and his henchmen might take the PKK has seldom been more relevant. One hopes that this new chapter of PKK history will become the basis for a sequel.

     

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    Kurdish Identity

    Human Rights and Political Status

    Edited by Charles G. MacDonald and Carole A. O’Leary. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. 336 pp. $65

    Reviewed by Michael Rubin

    Middle East Quarterly
    Summer 2008

    The reader of Kurdish Identity, published in 2007, will find himself reading such timely insights as former State Department Iraq coordinator Francis Ricciardone explaining that, “Of course, we have no relations at all with [Baghdad],” and former deputy assistant secretary of state David Mack writing that he understands both Kurdish aspirations and “the potential danger that a ruthless regime in Baghdad poses,” as though Saddam Hussein’s regime had not ceased to exist in 2003.

    The collection of articles published by MacDonald and O’Leary, Kurdish experts at, respectively, Florida International University and American University, might have been useful to practitioners in April 2000, the date of the conference for which they were written, but the articles are now out-of-date.

    Some chapters are useful to historians. Robert W. Olson’s essay on Turkish-Iranian relations between 1997 and 2001 capably reviews that period. Kurdistan Regional Government financial advisor Stafford Clarry’s analysis of the U.N.’s humanitarian program retains value because of his precision and attention to detail, all the more so in the wake of the Oil-for-Food program scandal, which he helped expose. Michael Gunter’s apt analysis of how the capture of Kurdish terrorist leader Abdullah Öcalan catalyzed Turkey’s EU accession drive stands the test of time.

    The editors conclude with an essay updating the reader on world events. Both are academics well worth reading, but they provide no insights in this collection not already published elsewhere. Their comments in passing on the dire situation of Syrian Kurds, who do not enjoy equal protection under the law, raises the question why Kurdish Identity does not address this subject.

    Had MacDonald and O’Leary reassembled their April 2000 conference participants to reconsider their contributions seven years later and analyze where they were right and wrong, Kurdish Identity would have advanced scholarship in a novel way. As it stands, however, their book offers too little and much too late, suggesting that academics live in a world of publish or perish with the content of those publications sometimes a secondary consideration.