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Turkey seeks arrest of PKK rebel
commanders Murat Karayilan and Cemil Bayik
8.11.2007
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November 8, 2007
ISTANBUL, Turkey - The jailed chief of
Turkey’s Kurdish PKK rebels remains a powerful
symbol for fighters who revere him with a
personality cult. But the guerrilla lieutenants who
plot tactics from bases in Kurdistan 'northern Ira'q
are coming under increasing scrutiny as Turkey
presses Iraq and the United States for their arrest.
They include Murat Karayilan and Cemil Bayik,
veteran commanders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party,
or PKK, who may have authorized recent attacks that
pushed Turkey close to ordering a cross-border
offensive against rebel shelters in Iraq.
Another prominent rebel is Fehman Huseyin, believed
to be the top field commander of the PKK’s military
wing.
On Monday, President Bush met Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington and promised him
that the United States would share military
intelligence in the hunt for PKK rebels. Turkey
credited U.S. help in the 1999 capture in Kenya of
Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the PKK who is now
serving a life sentence on a prison island in
Turkey.
Without providing names, the Pentagon also has said
10 PKK members are in a U.S. "most-wanted" database,
meaning American forces have had standing orders for
some time to pick them up if they are found. Citing
Iraqi officials, Turkish media have said Turkey
delivered a list of 150 alleged PKK members to Iraq
and demanded their extradition.
The PKK, which launched guerrilla warfare in 1984,
started out with a Marxist ideology mixed with
Kurdish nationalism, but it later softened its
demands and dropped the idea of an independent
homeland. The rebels now say they seek more rights
for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, which lives primarily
in the country’s southeast and in immigrant
communities in large cities.
The United States and Europe label the PKK as a
'terrorist' organization. Turkey dismisses the group
as a murderous gang and refuses to negotiate with
it.
Ocalan drew comparisons with Stalin for his harsh
control over the group, often killing or imprisoning
members who deviated from his edicts. His presence
still permeates the PKK, which displays his image on
banners and demands his release, though factions
developed as commanders debated whether to seek war
or peace. Ocalan’s brother, Osman, was a PKK leader
who quit the group several years ago. www.ekurd.net
Other individuals accused of being PKK
decision-makers are Duran Kalkan, Riza Altun and
Zubeyir Aydar, a lawmaker ejected from the Turkish
parliament in 1994.
The leadership council of the PKK is based at Mount
Qandil, which straddles the Iraq-Iran border and is
60 miles from the frontier between Iraq and Turkey.
It has links with organizers in Europe who provide
funds, allegedly through illegal activities such as
drug-running.
Some suspects have traveled extensively in Europe,
angering Turkish authorities who say countries there
should do more to restrict rebel activities among
their large Kurdish populations. And in recent
months, PKK commanders have spoken to foreign
journalists who travel to their sanctuaries,
triggering criticism of Iraqi leaders for their
failure to crack down on the group.
Karayilan, a PKK leader in his 50s who wears an
olive green uniform, is a key figure in the current
tension over whether Turkey will attack rebels in
northern Iraq despite U.S. and Iraqi calls for
restraint.
On Sunday, shortly after the PKK released eight
abducted Turkish soldiers, Karayilan delivered an
appeal directed at the United States for a peaceful
solution to what he called the "Kurdish question."
But because of the PKK’s terrorist label, the
guerrilla commander’s plea was unlikely to win the
international recognition he seeks.
Aliza Marcus, author of a book titled "Blood and
Belief: the PKK and the Kurdish Fight for
Independence," described Karayilan as an experienced
military fighter and more of an independent thinker
in an organization where anyone who opposed Ocalan
risked ostracism or death in an internal purge.
"He can see sort of two steps ahead," Marcus said.
"The other guys are more ’yes’ men. They’re not
people who can think outside the box."
Turkey believes Karayilan has virtually run the PKK
since Ocalan, who sets the tone for the rebel group
with appeals for peace and Kurdish rights, gave
consent to the guerrilla leaders to determine
operational details on their own because he cannot
do so from his cell.
Ocalan delivered a message through his lawyers last
week in which he said the PKK leadership at Mount
Qandil "should not act under orders from anyone; it
should make its own decisions itself," the
pro-Kurdish Firat news agency reported.
Bayik, another longtime leader of the PKK, attended
its inaugural congress in 1978 and was named deputy
secretary general. Testimony during Ocalan’s 1999
trial referred to Bayik’s presence in training camps
in Lebanon and Syria, and to his role in
transferring money to the PKK from Europe. He is
also believed to have spent time in Iran.
Huseyin, a Syrian Kurd also known as "Doctor Bahoz,"
is in charge of the People’s Defense Forces, the
armed wing of the PKK. Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper
reported in January that Huseyin gave a speech to
PKK members at that time in which he exhorted them
to follow orders from commanders and repeatedly
reminded them that they were at war.
Hurriyet said the speech was in Kurdish, but was
translated into Turkish for broadcast over wireless
radios. The Turkish military sometimes intercepts
rebel communications and leaks their contents to
Turkish media.
"He’s one of the younger guys, he’s not a member of
the leadership council," said Ali Koknar, a Turkish
security consultant based in Washington. "He has
proven himself in combat."
Over 37,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish PKK
guerrillas have been killed since 1984 when the PKK
took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly
Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
Turkey rejects direct talks with the official Iraqi
Kurdistan government on the crisis over the Turkey's
separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels,
officially, Turkey does not recognise the regional
government of Kurdistan led by president Massoud
Barzani. www.ekurd.net
Turkey has never, and still does not, recognize the
Kurdistan region government (KRG) and refuses to
meet with its representatives in any official
capacity. That reflects Ankara's fear that any
international respect shown to the autonomous Iraqi
Kurdistan region would only embolden Turkey's own
large Kurdish minority to seek similar home-rule
status.
AP
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
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" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 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.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially 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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