TURKEY-KURDS: Kurd Rebels Step Up Guerrilla Attacks

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadire Mater

ISTANBUL, Mar 15 1999 (IPS) - Kurdish rebels warned foreign tourists Monday to stay out of Turkey and stepped up their attacks on public buildings in a campaign to free their imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan.

In a deadly strike Saturday, a group called “Revenge Hawks of Apo” set fire to a crowded department store in Istanbul and killed 13 people. “Apo” is the nickname of Ocalan.

The deaths brought to 17, the number of peopled killed in terrorist bomb attacks in cities across Turkey since Ocalan was abducted by security forces in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Feb 15. A firebomb exploded under a car parked near the European Union offices in Ankara Monday, injuring two people.

“It is essential that no tourist comes to Turkey,” Ocalan’s Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) said in a statement released in Germany. “Governments must warn their citizens and travel agencies cancel reservations.”

In past years, the PKK has targeted tourist destinations , killing and injuring several foreigners but doing little damage to Turkey’s tourism industry.

The 15 year-long war between PKK rebels and the Turkish army has caused the death of 30,000 people – most of them guerrillas and civilians.

The latest series of bomb attacks began last week when four people died during an attempt at the life of Ahan Cevik, governor of Cankiri province, to the east of Ankara. The governor was seriously injured and the driver and three inhabitants passing by were killed when his car was blasted by a remotely controlled plastic explosive on his way from his residence to the city hall.

Responsibility for the attacks was claimed by TIKKO, a clandestine Turkish group based mainly Eastern Tunceli province, that has forged an alliance with the PKK.

PKK spokesmen denied direct links with the arson attack at the weekend but attacks but said they “understand the reason behind it”.

The attacks, however, mark a dramatic shift in the attitudes of Kurdish militants who, in the aftermath of their leader’s arrest, committed suicide by burning themselves both in Turkey and across Europe. Some 70 people, in Istanbul and Izmir and PKK inmates in Turkish jails and in Moscow, London, Bonn and elsewhere were reported to have died after setting themselves on fire with gasoline.

PKK officials, shocked by the reaction of their supporters, appealed to them “not to burn yourselves, but burn your enemies.” Apparently the message has been heard.

In a Sunday talk show from the European-based Kurdish station “MED-TV”, Osman Ocalan, brother of the PKK leader repeated the arson attacks were not ordered by the PKK.””

“However, we know that some Kurds, who are not satisfied with the PKK line of action, are resorting to such action,” he said. “We are neither against these actions nor do we support them. If it proves that Turkey understands this language better, we will not move a finger.”

Accusing the international community with ignoring the Kurdish tragedy, Osman Ocalan said “NATO is concerned with the destiny of 1 million Kosovars, but they are not in the least concerned with the destiny of 40 million Kurds, the single biggest nation in the world without a state.”

Abdullah Ocalan’s search for political asylum in Europe after he was forced to leave Syria last year, and his seizure in Kenya, meanwhile has worsened Ankara’s relations with many West European capitals – particularly Athens and Rome.

Greece is in double trouble with Turkish authorities and with the Kurds, both for the part the Greeks played in supporting Ocalan’s efforts to base himself in Europe and then for apparently allowing him to be abducted in Kenya.

According to his lawyer Ahmet Zeki Okcuoglu, and members of the Council of Europe’s Committee to Prevent Torture who visited the captive leader in his Imrali island prison, Ocalan blames Europe for his capture.

“I am crucified like Jesus,” Ocalan told them. “I have been nailed on the cross on the one end in Athens, on the others in Moscow, Nairobi and Ankara.”

‘Our militants should remain in the defensive and refrain from any attack until the trial begins,” Ocalan reportedly told his lawyer.

Turkish authorities, despite pressure from the European Parliament and the Council of Europe for a “just and fair trial” of Ocalan, has given no sign foreign observers will be allowed at Ocalan trial. Ankara has warned it will not accept “outside interference during the court rulings.

The Council of Europe chairman Lord Johnson, Monday protested against the violent attacks in Turkey.

“We are categorically against violence in political issues,” he said. “In democratic countries such methods are completely unacceptable, I am shocked by the violence directed at innocent people.”

Turkish security forces meanwhile tightened security measures in major shopping centers and at football stadiums and the number of frequenters to coffee houses and entertainment areas dropped off noticeably Monday.

“I am really terrorized,” said Ali Baydar, a 20-year-old student from Istanbul University. “I am staying out of crowded places, and meeting friends at home instead of in a coffee house.”

“I visited a major shopping center in the weekend, believing it to be tightly protected,” said, cleaner Rabia Tas from Istanbul. “But I was shocked when I saw that the measures were not tight enough. If I had known that I would never go there.”

Istanbul governor Erol Cakir appealed to the city’s inhabitants “not to panic and help the security department.”

The government itself, trapped between the growing tide of Kurdish violence and pressure by the Islamist Virtue Party who, despite warnings of “chaos”, has succeeded in convening the parliament to pass new legislation in order to lift the ban on its spiritual leader Necmettin Erbakan, has remained silent.

Police chiefs and prosecutors speak instead.

Istanbul police annouced the arrest of a university student on suspicion of beinmg involved in the Istanbul shopping centre attack, while Ankara’s chief State Security prosecutor Monday accused Necmettin Erbakan and 14 other Islamist leaders, of “high treason.”

Erbakan and others are charged with violating article 146 of the Penal Code for “attempting at overthrowing the constitutional order in order to replace it with an Islamic state.” The law provides death penalty should the judges find Erbakan and others guilty.