Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE~PRESS REVIEW~BERHEVOKAÇAPÊ~RLVISTASTAMPA~DENTRO DE LA PRENSA~BASIN ÖZETi
number of fore.ign tourists kidnapped and held by the
outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has increased
t\>11. '
Turkish authorities 'searchedfor seven Western tourists
on Monday and Western diplomats ruled out negotiations
with the secessionist Kurdish militants who have
kidnapped them. Observers say that the Afghans are
, the fIrStexample for the PKK abductions from an Eastern
country. '
The PKK, which abducted three Swiss and an Italian'
in eastern Turkey on Thursday, has demanded that their '
governments negotiate directly fortheir release.
"This is absolutely excluded," Italian ambassador Luigi
Fontana Giusti told Reuters."There will be no deahng
under blackmail. Our contacts are only with the
Turkish authorities." His comments echoed those made
by th~ Swi.ss foreig.n ministry in Berne. "We will not
negotiate dlrectly,wlth the PKK. The Turkish authorities
are responsible for security in Turkey" spokesman
Franz Egle said on Sunday. ' '
The .sec~ssionist PKK, wagin,ga nine-year-old armed
campaIgn 10 southeast Turkey, ISalso holding two Germans
and a New Zealander kidnapped earlier this
month. '
rI has kidnapped a total 001 foreign tourists since
1991 but has releaSed unharmed all except the eleven seized
in August. ,
On August 10 the rebels freed four Frenchmen, a Briton
and an Australian taken in two separate kidnappings in July.
Their .gov~rnment~ say no deal. was made for their release:
A SWISSdIplomat 10 Ankara said there was no news,On'the
whereabouts of the four latest kidnap victims -~ Giuseppe
Rezzenico, Nico Pianta and his wife Anna, all from the
Swiss canton of Ticino bordering Italy, and Italian Angelo
Palego. He said they had been travelhng by car in the Mount
Agn (Ararat) area of eastern Turkey near the Iranian
border. The four are reported to be Jehovah's Witnesses
who went to the regionto seek the remains of Noah's Ark
, Jehovah's Witnesses are a Christian fundamentalist sect
which rejects'a11 other religions and denominations, believes
in the imminent end of the world and refuses to accept
civil authority where it clashes with its own principles.
. The PK~ sees kiqnappin,g foreignersas a ,way of attractmg
attentIOnto the mcreasmgly bloody struggle in southeast
Turkey, which has cost about 7,000 lives since 1984.
The PKK demands that foreigners seek its pennission to visit
the region and accuse tourists in general of indirectly
funding what they call TurkeY.'s"dirty war" against Kurds.
Turkey has stepped up military action against the PKK
since. May but there are few signs of an early end to the
confhct.
Meanwhile, PKK militants kidnapped and then released
t':V0British .tourists in southeast Turkey ~vernight, a British
d'l)lomat said on Mnday. " ,
, She said the pair, both born in 1971, had been seized at a
rebel roadblock in Batman province on Sunday evening.
They were held for the night but were abandoned by their
captors when Turkish troops attacked the area 10 the
morning. Security forces escorted them to the town of
Batman.
In a later development, the Diyarbaku-based Regional
Governor's Office revealed that the two Britons were freed
as the result of a security operation, in which eight militants
of the PKK were killed 10 a clash with, ','
security forces. The office also said that two Afghanis'
were liberated, without elaborating whether the two were
among the four Afghani tourists announced to be abducted'
by' the PKK. In another incident, four PKK militants were
killed by security forces in a clash in the village of Kazan'
near ç ukkurca, Hakkari province, which began with
militants firing on the soldiers.
80
Lira not a medium
ofexchange
in N. Iraq
• Turkish lira accepted for exchange into Iraqi dinars
but not as a medium of exchange by Iraqi Kurds
• US dollar remains môst popular currency
By Emre Cökalp
Turkish Dally News
ANKARA/IRBll- The Turkish national
currency is not accepted as a medium
o~ excha~ge in Iraqi Kurdistan, confirnung
earher reports that the controversial
plans to allow the lira to circulate in this
poverty-stricken area had failed. The lira, culation of tbe Turkish lira," Massoud
ISaccepted for exchange into Iraqi dinars Barzani, leader of the Iraq Kurdistan Debut
the holders of lira will be turned mocrat Party told those attending a press:
down by shop owners, who found the conference last week in the Kurdishtown
Turkish government's stand during the of Irbil.
recent dinar crisis as "unstable and unre- After intensive economic and political
liable." consultation, the Turkish government de-
One can easily exchange the lira on .cided not to take the economic risks of a'
the open market, but for shopping the tailor-made lira operation to help the lramost
popular"currency, like elsewhere in qi Kurds but suggested a natural circulathe
world, remains the U:S. dollar. tIOnof liras in the troubled region. At the
Only two months and a half after the end of May, Turkey gave a c~ticar go-
"dinar crisis," which had reportedly for- ahead to IraqI .Kurdsfor a free circulatIon
ced the residents of the region onto the ùf Turkey's convertible national currency
brink of starvation, the dinar is still the in place of the then-worthless Iraqi dI~
most-widely used currency. A shock de- 'nars. Ankara's pennission did not requicisionfrom
the Baghdad administration re any specific monetary operation desigto
withdraw the 25-dinar banknotes from ned by the Turkish government.
circulation had forced the Iraqi Kurds to The then-spokesman for the Turkish
search for alternative currencies. Foreign Ministry, Volkan Vural, had said
Iraqi politicians think the lira circula- in a written statement that the Turkish
tion in tlie area will not solve the people's currency was convertible and that Turkey
:structural economic problems, mostly did not have a say over its free flow outdominated
by low incomes and a high side the country. "
cost of living, fueled significantly by the V~ral said although Turkey'believed
western embargo on lrag. that It was most SUItable to solve the
"I do not thmk the existing problems problem inside lraq anci made a request
in our land can ~e resolved with the cir- to the Baghdad government a(),;ordingJy,
it was not possible for Turkey to prevent the Iraqi Kurds
from using the Turkish currency. Turkish economic l'lanners
had warned about possible negative repercussions of an unrequited
money pnnting for humanitarian purposes but the
Foreign Ministry was keen on a government-induced plan to
help the Iraqi Kurds.