POLITICS-TURKEY: Life Inside Hizbollah Movement

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadire Mater

DIYARBAKIR, Jan 27 2000 (IPS) - “We had finally joined our ideal organisation. Now it was time to crush the state through armed struggle. I was so proud,” recalls Cesim Dogan, a Hizbollah deserter who has fled to Istanbul from Bingol, Turkey.

Dogan, 28, had spent a decade of his youth serving the movement. But bitterly awarded: His uncle was executed by the organisation, himself sentenced to death before seeking protection from rival Kurdish nationalists.

“We were so impoverished, we envied the lifestyles in Turkey’s summer resorts like Antalya as televised in the Turkish channels. We believed that we were deliberately left underdeveloped because we were Muslims,” Dogan explains, referring to his motives of joining Hizbollah, an Islamic organisation.

“We had to crush the state and replace it with the order of the Shariat (Koranic canon),” the young man told IPS.

Dogan’s story reflects the agony of the Kurdish youth in Turkey’s southeast provinces.

Fifth of Dogan’s seven sons, Cesim was born to a lower-middle class Kurdish family. After primary school he was sent to the seminary (Imam-Hatip school) like most of his group.

“It was a new life, encouraged by our teachers we were frequenting the meetings and rites of all sorts of religious orders (tariqats) seeking the truest path to Islam. I rapidly became the leader of the juniors,” he recalls.

“In the nineties, when I started high school, I made up my mind to join the ‘Nakhsi’ order. Those days the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) was on the rise, we appreciated their struggle too, but they were atheists (qafir) so we had to distance ourselves from them,” Dogan says.

The Nakshis, who were then supporting Turkey’s liberal government seemed to the young Dogan as sellouts. “The Hizbollah’s call for Holy War (Jihad) was so attractive,” he says.

Founded by Huseyin Velioglu and a group of university students of Kurdish origin in Ankara the Hizbollah moved its organisational base in the southeast city of Diyarbakir and Batman in early 1980s when the region was under martial-law. The movement enlarged its sphere of influence through public discussions in coffee houses, bookstores, student dormitories, and mosques.

“It was originally a highly sophisticated intellectual movement. The early conscripts were almost totally recruited from among the seminary students and Islamist intellectuals. We were discussing philosophy, law, and Islamic lore,” he recalls.

Of the 2,000 Hizbollah activists, filed by the Turkish security, majority comprises of youth between 15-24 years of age. Two percent of the remaining consists of adults between 35-65 age group and another two percent of the 10-14 age group. 40 percent of the activists are high-school graduates, mostly from the seminary, 14 percent from secondary schools and 19 percent from primary schools. Only 2,5 percent of the activists comprise young girls or women.

According to their occupations, the biggest group comprises traders, who make up 28 percent of the Islamic Movement, followed by students, who make up 27 percent, unemployed 27 percent, and workers 14 percent.

“We were frequenting the mosques for preaching. We were highly respected as we were raising critical issues which the official Islam would not touch. We ended up with the call for Holy War (Jihad).”

“We had adopted a communal way of life. We were eating together, feasting together, going for prayer together…And we were awarded,” he explains. “The Hizbollah paid me five times higher weekly allowance than my family could afford. My family, too, was happy with that, and they too joined the movement.”

“The turning point came in 1994 when a select group including teachers were called for a meeting in the woods. My uncle, who spent a lot of money albeit he was unemployed, and had close ties with the police was also with us. There, we were informed of a strategic shift,” Dogan recalls of the beginning of the Hizbollah’s war against the PKK.

“The leader said: ‘Now we are suspending our fight against the state. We are turning towards the PKK, thus we will not be disturbed by the state. As soon as we finish them we will resume our fight against the state.”

The matter could, however, not be resolved in that meeting. “We could not understand why we would fight the PKK,” he says.

In spite of his uncle’s persuasion the young man was not going to be convinced to fight the PKK and he resigned. His uncle and father warned him that his life was at stake. However Dogan’s revolt gained support from among his comrades and they quickly formed a big group of Hizbollah dissidents.

“We were neither Hizbollah, nor PKK. We named ourselves Islamist Revolutionaries but were trapped in cross fire. As Hizbollah attacks grew we started to seek PKK protection,” he recalls.

Hizbollah, which was never harassed or prosecuted by the state, would later become the target of the state, after crushing the PKK. “I told my uncle that I was leaving, and three hours later I was arrested by the police for the first time in four years,” Dogan says.

Until then, Dogan was convinced that they were not touched because the state was scared of the Islamic organisation. “It was naive, but coherent with our metaphysical way of thinking,” Dogan smiles. “When looking at the organisation from outside I got the point: We were not touched because we were fighting the PKK.”

Dogan also confirms official allegations of Hizbollah links with Iran. “Initially we kept our distance with Iran for they were Shiites and we were Sunnis. However, later on, a positive attitude towards Iran was adopted. Many comrades went to the city of Kum for training. I was also willing but was not old enough for training. Later I was offered the opportunity but, then, I had nearly left the organisation,” he says.

Dogan had to flee his hometown, shortly after leaving the organisation. “One day in 1995 my mother told me that my uncle had informed them that the organisation wanted me dead. ‘Run away, my son,’ she told me. And I fled.”

Nevertheless his uncle who had remained faithful to the organisation would eventually lose his life to the Hizbollah executioners. “He was tortured, his genital organs were burnt, and then strangled to death,” he bursts in anger. “The reason why he was killed is yet uncertain. He sought to convey me the reasons of his rupture but we could not meet.”

Ironically, the Dogan family would not believe that their beloved one was executed by the organisation until recently when the state began a crackdown on the Islamic Movement.

“Hizbollah could have greater influence and public support, at least as much as the PKK had, but complicity with the state turned them into a criminal organisation and doomed them to collapse,” he says.

Dogan believes, in the end, “the organisation could preserve only 1000 fighters and 5000 supporters out of the initial 20,000 or more.”