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KARLIOVA, Turkey,
July 5 (AFP) - Residents of this Kurdish town
in the southeastern Turkish province of Bingol woke
up one morning last week to the roar of helicopters
heading for the surrounding mountains, just days
after they spotted a convoy of a dozen military
vehicles outside town.
"It is starting all over again," said a wary
restaurant owner as townfolk awaited news from fresh
army operations in the rugged cliffs nearby that are
a hideout for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),
where the rebel group lost five guerrillas in
fighting one week ago.
The PKK retaliated by blowing up a train in Bingol
at the weekend, killing five people.
The unrest marks sharply increased violence between
the PKK and the army in the Turkish southeast since
April, months after the rebels, on June 1, 2004,
called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire.
The death toll so far comprises at least 65
guerrillas and 32 soldiers, many killed in landmine
explosions blamed on the PKK.
Beefing up its positions in the southeast, the army
has redeployed specialized commando units from
western Turkey and is reinstalling checkpoints on
roads guarded by soldiers and armored vehicles.
"The fire is spreading," said the restaurateur, who
requested anonymity. "For some time now, we've been
closing the shops early and I think twice when I go
out of town after dusk."
Fighting remains confined largely to remote areas
and is of far lower intensity that the conflict that
raged here between 1984 and 1999 and resulted in
about 37,000 deaths.
Although reforms by Ankara to expand Kurdish
freedoms have eroded popular support for the PKK,
the funerals of killed rebels, increasingly marred
by violence, have shown that unrest may easily spill
over into urban areas.
In Diyarbakir, the family of a ranking guerrilla
killed in the Bingol operation shed no tears after
the funeral of their son as they spoke angrily of
their dissatisfaction with Ankara's fence-mending
moves.
"I want peace and no more bloodshed," father Haydar
Okur said. "But the state is still denying the Kurds
their full rights."
The guerrillas, estimated at about 5,000, retreated
to neighboring northern Iraq in 1999 after they
declared a truce following the capture of their
leader Abdullah Ocalan.
At least 1,500 of them are believed to have crossed
back into Turkey, bringing along arms and
explosives.
The United States, which has blacklisted the PKK as
a terrorist group, has frustrated Ankara by
resisting pressure to clamp down on PKK camps in
northern Iraq.
"This is the most worrisome period of the past
several years," said Osman Baydemir, Diyarbakir's
Kurdish mayor. "We urge both sides to
unconditionally stop the violence."
The rebels say Ankara's reforms, undertaken under
European Union pressure, are shallow and they demand
broader cultural and political freedoms.
The government has lifted the emergency rule in the
southeast and allowed the Kurdish language to be
taught at private courses and used in public
television broadcasts.
"The government thought that by taking a few
measures, it had closed the file on the Kurdish
problem," Baydemir said. "The people here have come
to believe that no one will recognize their rights
if they keep quiet."
Activists say rights violations in the region have
increased since December, when the EU gave Turkey
what it wanted -- a date to start membership talks
-- and the violence began to mount.
Selahattin Demirtas, head of the Human Rights
Association in Diyarbakir, said freedom of speech
was particularly threatened.
"The laws have not changed but police and the
prosecutors are becoming less tolerant, condoned by
the government," he said.
Brussels too has criticized Ankara for losing its
reform drive at a time when its membership bid is
already complicated by the EU's own woes and rising
opposition to Turkey's accession.
Local politicians demand that Kurdish be tought in
public schools, that laws restricting Kurdish
representation in parliament be repealed, that
Kurdish localities given Turkish names revert to
their former appelations and that PKK militants be
amnestied.
Ankara is suspicious that the Kurdish demands are a
cover for separatist ambitions and the army has
vowed to crack down on the PKK.
"We don't need anyone's advice on how to fight
terrorism," land forces commander Yasar Buyukanit
said. "We are not going to the mountains on a picnic
-- we are going to defend the country's unity."
AFP
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