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

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW~BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RNISTA STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASIN ÖZETi
46
Turkish Probe .. June 10, 1994
'
Mystery Murders Prompt.
EBNKWarning
Sinan y,lmaz
ERNK, the European based
theoutlawed Kurdistan
(PKK), openly announced
political wing of
Workers' Party
on June 6 that
parliamentarians, businessmen, police force members,
military perso['lnel aM their relatives would be
targeted by ERNK special assassination squads.
"Until now the PKK has not made use of assassination
squads although we had all the necessary
means. But now we are forced to take action since
we cannot bear to witness the killings of innocent
Kùrdish partisans. The government
is involved in systematic killings, therefore
we will retaliate in the same way in the big
metropolitan cities," the ERNK announcement
declared. The ERNK announcement
followed a series of mystery murders in the
past week which prompted allegations that
some State forces in.Turkey are linked to a
systematic campaign to ;intimidate pro-
Kurdish businessmen and politiCians.
On June 4 a group' of fishermen discovered
the bodies of pro-Kurdish businessman
Savas Buldan andtwo of his colleagues,
Haci Koray and Adnan Ylldlrlm
near the Melen -river in the YI~llca township
of Bolu province. The three had been
shot in the back of the head. Police sources
said the three had also been tortured
and were without identification papers
when found. . .
Buldan was a wealthy Istanbul businessman
who is in the hotel and restaurant ..'
business. He comes from the township of
Yüksekova in the southeastern province of
Hakkan. His colleagues Koray wasalso
from Yuksekova while Ylldlrlm came from
the
ince.
township of Lice in Diyarbakir prov-
Buldan's elder 'brother Necdet Buldan is
the former mayor of Yüksekova and belongs
to the pro-Kurdish Dem.ocracy Party
(DEP). '.
The murders follow the killing of Muhsin
Melik and his driver iri the southeastern
provincial center of Urfa by four or five unidentified
persons. Melik is th.e founder of
the People's Democrat Party (HADEP), a
new pro-Kurdish party set up to eventually replace
DEP.
DEP.
Melik was the former provincial chairman of.
Before his death Me.lik reportedly told his brother
that he had been shot by plainclothes policemen
just outside his office. Melik allegedly shot and
wounded one of hisassailants. The governor of Urfa
said two persons
murder.
were in custody related to the
Buldan and his two companions were allegedly
Haci Karay .
Adnan Ylldlrlm
Namlk ErdoQan
taken into custody by a group of policemen outside
Istanbul's Çlnar Hotel. .
The persons who apprehended them reportedly
showed their police identification cards and then
took them away in unmarked cars, according to the
personnel of the Çlnar Hotel who witnessed the incident.
The death of Buldan was the latest in a chain of
murders committed against persons who allegedly
have links with Kurdish separatist militants.
The mystery murders started with the kidnapping
of Mecit Baskin, responsible for
citizens' affairs in Ankara's Altlnda~ township.
The second case concerned pro-Kurdish
underground figure Behçet Cantürk
and his driver Recep Kuzucu who were
found murdered near the Sapanca section
of the Istanbul-Ankara highway, Cantürk
was also from Lice township.
Later the body of Cantürk's lawyer Yusuf
liya Ekinci was found near Ankara's
Gölba~1 district in February. He had been
killed by seven bullets.
In March another prominent figure from
Lice, contractor Fevzi Arslan, and his
brother $ahin were kidnapped at gun point
in their Aksaray office in Istanbul and their
bodies were .later found on the lstanbul-
Ankara highway.
In May, Namlk Erdogan, then deputy
éhairman of the investigation committee at
the Health Ministry, was similarly kidnapped
and murdered by unknown killers.
Namlk Erdo~an was originally from Hakkari.
Buldan was previously taken into custody
in 1992 when police raided his house in
Istanbul and discovered he was hosting
DEP Diyarbakir Deputy Leyla lana, her
husband Megdi lana' and seven other
people who were allegedly linked to the
outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
There were claims that Buldan had provided
PKK with guns and financial aid. He
was later released. Conservative Turkish
papers claimed Buldan may have been killed by the
mafia because of drug traffic~ing.
Pro-Kurdish daily Ozgür Ulke, however, pointed
the finger at Prime Minister Tansu Çiller and said
the prime minister had warned on November 4,
1993 that the government has information about
businessmen and other personalities who give extortion
money to the PKK and had threatened to
"make them pay." The paper claimed Çiller was now
making the businessmen'''pay,'' Özgür Ülke quoted
15
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