10.10.1996

Turkish state attacks Kurds

Twenty thousand Turkish troops have been sent to the Tunceli area of eastern central Turkey in an attempt to trap 250 guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Turkish army has largely failed, in spite of its far greater numbers, though the PKK faces supply problems as the harsh east Anatolian winter approaches.

A team from Amnesty International is currently in Turkey to examine human rights abuses - previously the authorities there denied them access. European institutions have recently bestirred themselves to criticise the country’s poor human rights record, and some economic aid has been withheld. This may explain why Amnesty was allowed in.

The killing of several teachers coincided with Amnesty’s visit, and the authorities blamed this on the PKK. The Turkish TV and press gave the killings and funerals a great deal of coverage.

It would appear that the PKK has killed teachers in the past, seeing them as agents of an official ‘Turkification’ campaign in Kurdish areas. (Pupils whose first language is Kurdish or another minority language like Arabic or Laz cannot use them in Turkey’s schools.)

However, the latest killings seem very well timed with the Amnesty visit from the Turkish authorities’ point of view, and this makes it highly likely that they, rather than the PKK, were responsible.

The ‘dirty war’ against Turkey’s Kurdish community has many fronts. One of these is the prisons. Twelve PKK prisoners in the Diyarbakir jail were killed by the authorities. In protest, three more PKK prisoners in Istanbul’s Bayrampasa jail set themselves on fire with paint thinner, and one of them died on October 9.

PKK and leftist prisoners in the Canakkale jail barricaded themselves in, sensing an imminent assault by soldiers. A stalemate continued for a time, but was eventually resolved peacefully.

Turkey is a Nato member, and it can call on help in attacking Kurdish institutions abroad. The British and Belgian police have carried out raids on Med-TV, the Kurdish satellite station that the Turkish authorities would dearly love to close down. The offices of the Kurdish parliament in exile were also raided, as was the Halkevi community centre in north London.

The British and Belgian police responsible were presumably acting in solidarity with the Turkish special police teams which play a key role in the dirty war’ in Kurdistan. On September 25, the mainstream Turkish daily Milliyet shed some revealing light on the personnel in these teams.

The newspaper published an allegedly secret statement from the Turkish military which called on members of the police teams to refrain from contributing to political polarisation in the south-east. The statement singled out the police habit of decorating their handguns with Grey Wolves insignia. The Grey Wolves are Turkey’s most notorious fascist organisation.

Andrew MacKay