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• 12 • Information and liaison bulletin n° 272 • November 2007 through England’s decision. Wherever England has a finger one should be suspicious. In my view they decided to run the border-line over the summits, in a geography that was hard to control to create problems in the future. The borders must be changed … not only those with Iraq but also with Syria”, concluded Ibrahim Hakki Karadayi. “We cannot finish with the PKK through cross-border interventions”, said, the next day, General Hilmi Ozkok another former Chief of Staff interviewed. “For some time now, public opinion has been expecting such an intervention. As if any operation in Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) would put an end to all this. Why wasn’t the PKK born there instead of here? There has been a pro-Kurdish movement and people who incite it inside and outside the country since 1984. … After 23 years, the people have had enough and want an end to it … or else find a solution some other way… To put an end to a movement one must put an end to hope. If there is no more hope, then the movement runs out of steam, because the solution does not just lie in eliminating the cause … The English tried development and economic expansion in India, but they saw that all that just strengthened the separatist’s demands… ” To conclude with this series of interviews of Turkish generals entitled “The Commanders of 24 years with the PKK” Fikret Bila questioned General Kenan Evren, perpetrator of the 12 September 1980 Army coup d’état, who seized the opportunity of making some self-criticism of his years in power, knowing that he did not risk anything. “Government officials in the South-East (Kurdistan) should also know how to speak Kurdish”, says, today, the general who is more famous for having declared, when he seized power “why feed them instead of hanging them?” in reference to political activists who were sentenced to death. It was he who had toughened the laws forbidding the use of the Kurdish language even in everyday speech. When speaking about the PKK the Diyarbekir prison springs to mind, it is generally recognised that the use of torture and the ill treatment in this notorious prison had strengthened the PKK. Questioned on the matter, General Evren stormed “It really gets on my nerves when people talk about that prison. I was head of State, not manager of the prison”. “As if there was no torture in police stations before the 12 September coup d’état. They all used torture, which means that as soon as you fell into the hands of the police you suffered ill treatment. After the coup d’état we left the police free to work freely … but they did it all the same”, he said with astonishment. Why forbid the use of Kurdish, asked the journalist adding that he had visited a school at the time and that the children spoke Turkish very badly. “Look at Belgium. The Flemings and the Walloons don’t tear one another apart. When I was head of the General Staff I visited Canada, Quebec more exactly, and I wandered around with my opposite number. In Quebec they speak French, which astonished me as I asked about this. They answered that all government officials have to know both French and English to be able to serve the citizens. … Our officials in the South-East (Kurdistan) must also learn Kurdish …” AS WELL AS … • IRANIAN CONSULATES IN IRBIL AND SULEIMANIYAH ARE OFFICIALLY OPENED. On 6 November, Iran officially opened two consulates in Iraqi Kurdistan, at Irbil and at Suleimaniyah. Hassan Kazemi Qomi, the Iranian Ambassador to Iraq, declared in Irbil: “Today we have good economic relations with Iraq (…) The two consulates have been opened in cooperation with the government of Iraq and the authorities of Kurdistan who are responsible for security”. He attended a brief ceremony to inaugurate the Consulate in Irbil, together with the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Nechirvan Barzani. The new Irbil consulate is in premises previously occupied by Iranian officials but closed since the beginning of the year because of an operation by the
n° 272 • November 2007 Information and liaison bulletin • 13 • US Army, in the course of which five Iranian nationals had been arrested. The second Iranian consulate has begun its activity in Suleimaniyah. The two new consulates will enable “the strengthening of relations between Kurdistan and Iran”. Parallel to the opening of the two consulates in Kurdistan, the agreement between Iran ands Kurdish leaders envisages the opening of two Iraqi consulates at Kermanshah and Urmiyeh, in Iranian Kurdistan. The setting up of these two diplomatic representations was provided for in an agreement between Teheran and the Iraqi Kurdish authorities, negotiated on 8 October to allow the re-opening of the border with Iraqi Kurdistan. On 24 September, Iran had ordered the closing of the border with Iraqi Kurdistan as a reprisal against the capture, by US Forces, of an Iranian accused of supporting the Iraqi Shiite militia. Iran now has four consulates in Iraq, the other two being in Basra and Kerbala. • THE EIGHT TURKISH SOL- DIERS FREED BY THE PKK THANKS TO THE MEDIATION OF KURDISH MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT HAVE BEEN IMPRISONED PRIOR TO TRIAL BY COURT MARTIAL. The Van Court Martial has banned the showing by the media of the trial of eight soldiers kept prisoner for two weeks by the Kurdistan Work- ers’ Party (PKK) then released at the beginning of November. The media received notification by fax of this decision on 12 November. “The bulk of the documents and information regarding the enquiries on this case, which concerns matters damaging to the unity of the State and aiming at removing part of the national territory from the State’s Administration, are of a nature that requires secrecy in the interest of national security” the court affirms. The eight soldiers were made prisoner by the PKK on 21 October during its attack on a Turkish Army position on the Iraqi Kurdish border, in the course of which 12 other soldiers lost their lives. In its decision the court indicated that the soldiers were tried for acting “counter to those required of agents of the State, persistent insubordination leading to great losses and flight abroad”. The documents indicate that they have “abandoned their positions in conformity with the offers of the terrorists and went with the terrorists to their camps in Northern Iraq”. These conscripts are accused of having crossed the Kurdistan border without authorisation. The soldiers were questioned after their liberation by their officers and the Army prosecutors, first in Ankara then at Van on 4 November. The papers have speculated that soldiers, many of whom are Kurdish, have refused to fight. Three Kurdish Members of Parliament of the Party for a Democratic Society (DTP) helped secure the release of the eight soldiers. The Ankara Public Prosecutors Office has started investigations against these three MPs to determine whether their involvement in this release could constitute a crime under anti-terrorist legislation. The circumstances of this attack by the PKK remain pretty disturbing in a region so strongly controlled by the Turkish Army (the second largest Army in NATO) which, moreover, has stationed 100,000 troops there in the last few months. Observers are astonished that there was no air cover and that the twenty men were completely neglected. The Turkish authorities particularly blamer them for being still alive and in no way wish to explain the reasons for this defeat, which is itself obscure. • A TANGLE OVER THE EVEN- TUALITY OF CHEMICAL ALI’S EXECUTION. On 11 November, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al- Maliki said he was determined that Chemical Ali be hanged. Ali Hassan al-Majid should have been executed over a month ago. He was sentenced to death on 24 June along with the former Assistant Director of Military Operations, Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti and Saddam Hussein’s Minister of Defence, Sultan Hashim al-Tai. Their sentence was confirmed on appeal. According to Iraqi law, this
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