|
Landmines still kill in southeast Turkey
26.3.2007
|
|
|
|
March 26, 2007
TUNCELI, Turkey ,- Snow turns red at the edge
of Tunceli's mountain roads as it soaks up the
bronze-rich soil. Passing that red line is a matter
of life or death in these areas, where violence has
endured for 23 years.
Intense conflicts in the 90s -- and now sporadic
violence between the military and Kurdish guerillas
-- have turned much of Turkey's rural southeast into
a minefield. Security sources say some of the
explosives now come from nearby Iraq.
The government has failed to make good on promises
to clear up the mines laid across the countryside,
so for those people who did not join the hundreds of
thousands who fled, simple daily things such as
letting children play outside or going to school
have become a potential disaster.
Hidir Celik is testimony to the danger. His body
riddled with shrapnel, pain registers on his face as
he bends his legs to sit, even though doctors keep
trying to remove pieces of the land mine that
exploded near him in 2002, killing five people.
Staring into the distance, the plastic replacement
for his right eye is designed to match the
brown-yellow hue of his remaining iris.
"Just give me back my sight, give me back my health.
I don't want anything else," said the former scrap
metal collector.
In fact he was relatively lucky. When some teenagers
dumped outside his store a sack of scrap metal they
had collected in the nearby hills, detonating the
mine they had unknowingly picked up, he only lost
his eye.
His accident is just one of hundreds to plague
Turkey's rural, mainly Kurdish southeast region
since 1984, when the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
launched an armed campaign to carve out an ethnic
homeland.
Turkey's failure to clear up an estimated 400,000
mines laid during the conflict has helped drive the
human toll higher -- even in a time of relative
peace -- while hampering investment in a region
already suffering severe poverty.
"During the 1990s when the violence between the
state and the militant groups was intense, soldiers
laid mines in what were considered points of passage
for the PKK," said Ozgur Kaplan, president of the
Tunceli Bar Association, who is overseeing several
land mine cases brought against the state.
"The violence has slowed down now but the mines have
remained," he said.
Land mine deaths and injuries have risen to 533
since a five-year cease-fire between the PKK and
Turkish military ended in 2004, according to
government and NGO tallies.
MINES STILL BEING LAID?
It was in 2004 that Turkey promised to stop using
landmines in its interior military operations, and
agreed to clear the explosives. The PKK also says it
has stopped using landmines, but a security source
said both sides still lay the explosives.
But with the conflict between the Turkish military
and Kurdish separatists now reduced to isolated
skirmishes, some villagers have began trying to
resume their former livelihoods.
"In the spring and summer, people take their sheep
out to pastures to graze or they want to come back
to their villages, but there are mines everywhere.
How can people know where the mines are?" asked
local mayor Cevdet Konak.
"The only way to know is for you or your cow to set
one off," he said.
No comprehensive studies have been done on the
economic effects of mines, but Konak said they had
caused great economic damage in the region.
"The main industry here is animal husbandry. But how
can you graze your animals if you cannot move, and
what will you do if one gets blown up? Free movement
is essential for attracting investment to a region,
for moving forward," he said.
The average income in husbandry is 300 Turkish lira
($220) per month, said Konak: one sheep can cost as
much as 300 lira, a cow as much as 2,500 lira.
ORGANIC FARMS?
To clear explosives in heavily mined areas of the
South and Southeast, Turkey's Finance Ministry has
opened two tenders since 2005. Both were part of an
effort to conform to the Ottowa Convention which
gave signatories like Turkey 10 years to de-mine its
interiors.
But both tenders were called off.
While most de-mining contracts are based on cash
payments for land cleared, the Turkish ones were set
up so the winning bidder would win the right to
establish an organic farm on the cleaned land for 49
years after clearing it, in a kind of 'rehabilitate
and operate' system.
"The government is trying to get the land cleared
without spending any money," said de-mining
consultant Ali Koknar, who heads Washington-based
AMK Risk Management.
"The winning bid has to agree to farm the land for
49 years. That's not the way the de-mining industry
works," he said.
Tunceli's provincial governor Mustafa Erkal said
security forces were de-mining areas of the country,
but declined to give further details.
People living in the area are anxious.
"We want to hear from the authorities that the mines
have been cleared and that we now have the right to
move about as we wish," said Konak. "Everyone's
afraid, you can't go back to your village, you can't
veer off the road."
Reuters
** 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 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.
Turkey is home to some 20 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
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 