WEEKLY SELECTION: US Denies Any Role in Ocalan’s Capture

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 20 1999 (IPS) - The administration of US President Bill Clinton has been quick to insist it played no part in the capture and removal of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan from Kenya to Turkey.

Official spokesmen, however, have not hidden the fact that Washington is “pleased” Ocalan has been apprehended but they declined to answer questions about intelligence support Washington may have provided Ankara which announced Tuesday that Ocalan was in Turkish custody.

The news from Ankara touched off massive demonstrations across Europe, mainly directed at Greece whose embassy in Nairobi was the last stop for Ocalan before disappeared – reportedly snatched by Turkish agents while enroute to the airport in the Kenya capital.

“The United States did not apprehend or transfer Ocalan, or transport him to Turkey,” said State Department spokesman James Foley, reading from a prepared statement. “In other words, U.S. personnel did not participate in any of those actions that I just described.”

Further, said Foley, “in the view of the United States, the hostage takings and other attacks on Greek facilities in Europe being carried out by Kurdish protesters are completely unacceptable, and should stop immediately.”

Foley and White House spokesman Joe Lockhart carefully hedged their words and refused to answer questions reporters questions regarding a possible US intelligence role in the capture of Ocalan.

In the months leading up to Tuesday’s announcement, Washington lent Turkey strong diplomatic backing for Turkey’s efforts to capture the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Ocalan was forced to leave Syria last fall under strong pressure from neighbouring Turkey.

When he was arrested in Rome in November, the US administration called on the Italians to work out a way to transfer him to Turkey despite an Italian law forbidding the extradition of criminal suspects if they could face the death penalty.

“We believe he should be extradited and brought to justice, and we hope a way will be found to extradite him…,” said State Department spokesman James Rubin at the time. “We have no doubt that this man is a terrorist and, therefore, he should receive no safe haven.”

Washington pursued that policy ever since, according to official sources here, who told IPS that the administration exerted strong pressure on the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, and Kenya to deny the Kurdish leader asylum after he left Italy last month.

Washington’s zeal surprised most observers who noted that the United States, while a close ally of Turkey, has also urged that country to settle its Kurdish problem through political means.

Foley repeated that policy Tuesday, insisting that Ocalan’s arrest represents an “opportunity to redouble efforts at reconciliation…”

Those remarks, like other US efforts to urge Ankara to adopt a more relaxed attitude toward the Kurdish minority, are likely to go unheeded, particularly given Washington’s strong support for the Turkish military which reportedly is more confident than ever that the 15-year-old Kurdish insurgency can be crushed.

US backing for the military has grown steadily since the end of the Cold War and particularly since the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq.

During the war, western warplanes used Incirlik Air Base to launch intelligence flights and bombing raids. That base is still used by US and British warplanes who enforce the “no-fly zone” established after the war to protect the mainly Kurdish population of northern Iraq.

In addition, Turkey figures large in the US strategy for the oil-rich Central Asia region.

Washington has been putting strong pressure on the new states of the region and on multinational oil companies to build a pipeline that would transport oil and gas from the Caspian area to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, thus avoiding routes through Russia and Iran.

The United States also has encouraged a growing alliance between Turkey and Israel, which may also have played an intelligence role in Ocalan’s apprehension, according to some reports received here.

That alliance deeply angered Arab states in the Middle East and is believed to have played an important role in persuading Syria, which had sheltered Ocalan and the PKK since 1980, to force him to leave the country.

Indeed, the ability of both Israel and the United States to carry out a complex intelligence operation in Kenya is significantly greater than Turkey’s, according to knowledgeable sources here.

While professing sympathy for Kurdish aspirations for greater autonomy in Turkey, Washington has provided the Turkish military with strong backing at critical moments over the years.

Washington came out in support of a series of Turkish incursions into northern Iraq beginning in 1995. Ankara justified these raids, which included tens of thousands of Turkish troops, by claiming that the region was being used by the PKK as rear bases from which to launch its own operations in Turkey.

In addition to backing these raids, Washington has also muted its criticism of scores of arrests carried out against the pro- Kurdish People’s Democracy Party after Ocalan first surfaced in Italy.

Last month, Turkey’s chief prosecutor began legal action to outlaw the party, a move which failed to elicit any strong reaction from Washington.

The State Department has listed the PKK as a terrorist organisation since the 1980s.

In its 1997 report on international terrorism, the State Department said the group had 10,000 to 15,000 full-time and 60,000 to 75,000 part-time guerrillas and that it had moved in recent years from conducting mainly rural insurgent operations against military and civilian targets to increased use of urban terrorism.

Washington’s close relationship with Turkey’s military has been criticised in Congress and by human rights groups here.

Under pressure from these forces, as well as the State Department’s human rights bureau, the administration last year said it would block a possible 3.5 billion dollar attack helicopter sale to Turkey unless its human rights record – particularly in its counter-insurgency efforts in the Kurdish southeast – improved.

Turkey has still not reached a final decision on the helicopter deal, the subject of intense competition between Bell Textron’s Super-Cobra, Boeing’s Apache Longbow, and Kamov Helicopter’s Black Shark, a Russian-Israeli production.

If Congress moves to restrict arms sales to Turkey, Ankara is likely to turn increasingly to Israel as a key weapons supplier, as well as one approved by the administration here.