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Turkish govt under fire as Kurdish
violence mounts 5.9.2006
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ANKARA, Sept 4,
-- Turkey's government was in the hot seat Monday
after a weekend of bloodshed by Kurdish rebels
triggered calls for a tough military response and
Kurdish politicians blamed mounting violence on
Ankara's failure to find a democratic solution to
the 22-year conflict.
Front pages splashed pictures of grieving relatives
at the funerals of eight soldiers killed in the
southeast over the weekend by separatist Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) militants.
The funerals were marked not only by grief, but also
anger at the government, and several ministers
attending the ceremonies were booed.
"Send soldiers to Mount Qandil, not Lebanon,"
headlined the mass-circulation Sabah, quoting the
father of a slain soldier referring to an imminent
parliamentary vote to send troops to the UN force in
Lebanon.
Mount Qandil, in neighboring northern Iraq, has for
years been a safe haven for the PKK; Turkish threats
of cross-border operations against PKK bases there
have so far been rebuffed by the United States.
"Prime Minister (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan, who says we
have a large army capable of undertaking any
mission, should first think of ensuring the security
of his own country," the popular daily Vatan wrote.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the
United States and the European Union, has stepped up
violence notably this summer after calling off a
five-year unilateral ceasefire in June 2004.
The weekend attacks followed bomb blasts in two
Mediterranean resorts last week that killed three
and wounded about 40, including 10 British tourists.
The PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's
mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984, in a conflict that
has so far claimed more than 37,000 lives.
The intensity of the violence is now far lower than
at its peak in the 1990s, when the army emptied and
razed hundreds of villages accused of aiding the
rebels, drawing widespread international criticism
for human rights abuse.
Eager to boost its democratic credentials as part of
its bid to join the European Union, Turkey has
passed a series of reforms since 2000 to expand
Kurdish cultural freedoms.
"The reforms narrowed the PKK's room for propaganda
and its recruitment of fresh militants and prompted
it to step up violence to prove that it is not on
its deathbed," said Ihsan Bal, an expert on the PKK
at the Ankara-based International Strategic Studies
Institute.
"The PKK is trying to force the government to
recognize it as an interlocutor in the conflict by
actually challenging Turkey's democratization and EU
process," Bal told AFP.
"Turkey is now at a turning point: it will opt
either for pure force, or soft security measures
while maintaining its efforts at democratization,"
he said.
EU and US support in condemning and combatting PKK
violence would be crucial, Bal said, but warned that
the lack of foreign backing could undermine Turkey's
EU drive and "throw the country into the lap of the
Middle East, mired in violence."
Kurdish activists say the cultural freedoms granted
by Ankara were half-hearted moves to impress the EU
and they accuse the state of lacking a comprehensive
strategy to resolve the conflict through democratic
means.
Orhan Miroglu, a senior member of Turkey's main
Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party, urged
Ankara to consider a general amnesty for PKK members
to encourage them to lay down their arms.
"There has never been a serious proposal by the
government to end the violence," he said. "What we
need is permanent social peace... The problem is not
just PKK violence over the past several days, but
violence on both sides over the past 22 years."
Miroglu also called for the expansion of Kurdish
political rights, including broader powers for local
Kurdish administrations and the abolition of a
10-percent national electoral treshold for political
parties to earn parliamentary representation.
AFP
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan".
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey
The Kurdish flag flown in Iraqi Kurdistan but
unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag is
banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it is
a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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