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

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RwISTA STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASlN ÖZETi
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Kurdish refugees fight for
survival in Northern Iraq
- At least 12,000 have fled Turkey and exodus continues
By Galip Rldvanoglu
Turkish Daily News
HIZAWA, Northern Iraq- Sabri çetin, 54, is a
Turkish Kurd from the district of Uludere close to
the Iraqi border. He is now in Hizawa, one of the
makeshift camps currently holding thousands ~f
Turkish Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq. He IS
seeking asylum.
Only three years ago, hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi Kurds had fled to the Turkish and Iranian
borders, fleeing the advancing troops of Saddam
Hussein. They were bombed and their villages
were destroyed. The whole world, includmg
Turkey, had embraced their cause. .
Today, Turkish Kurds in increasing numbers
are seeking asylum in Kurdish-controlled Iraq.
U.N. officials say that at least 12,000 people have
already fled from Turkey, and that dozens of families
are still crossing the border every day.
"We were under lInmense pressure to join the
(paramilitary) village guards in Turkey," Çetin
explains painfully, hIs eyes shifting tensely to one
of his eight children who have accompamed him.
"They torched the houses of those who refused to
join and gradually started to kill the p~ople as
well." çetin's village was allegedly besIeged by
Turkish troops for over eight months. The villagers
were not allowed to buy in anything from
outside during their long wait for starvation. "The
soldiers stopped me once with two kilos of sugar.
They accused me of taking sugar to the PKK and
then threw the bags to the r,ound," he explains.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has been
waging a fierce war on Turkey over the past ten
years and at least 11,000 people,including soldiers,
civilians and PKK milItants, have so far
been killed.
"Our village was bombed and I have lost two
daughte~s," says 32-year-old Hallt Bilen, from
the provmce of Slrnak "planes bombed us even
after we crossed the border" he adds. Bilen and
15 other families reached Hizawa after a four
day walk. .
Turkey's military forces recently launched"
qIajor offensive against the PKK, promising to
destroy the separatist organization by the end of
this year. Resulting from this campaign, there
has been a rapid increase in claims of human
rights abuses in the region.
"Troops destroyed our village with rockets
and bombs," explains Suzan, too fearful to give
her surname. At the age of 16, she has aged in
the struggle for survival. "We were scared and
our famIly escaped."
The 56-year-old Hatice Baran is not so much
frightened as angry. "The soldiers came and
burned down our village," she says, recounting
what recently happened in I~lkveren. "They
then killed my two cows. I was exhausted by
the long walk here. Now I am hungry."
The Turkish government initially accused the
PKK of .~. or enco_g the flight of
refugees tO~WlIlinternationiU sympathy. These
days, the official version is that the Kurds were
caught in the middle of fighting and fled. After
this, argue Ankara's officials, the PKK infiltrated
them.
Osman, 36, denies this. "The soldiers beat
me. Wh:rever we went, they insulted us.
Finally, a month ago they bombed our village.
They wanted us to go so we went," he claims,
noting that he trekked through the rugged
mountains during the night and slept in the daytime
on his journey to reach northern Iraq.
Ahmed DaI, 53, cares less for his village and
house but still weeps for his lost children. His
three children, aged 18 months, 5 and 15, were
Cindoruk vs Dernirai on DEP closure
Parliament Speaker: I have problems in explaining what is going on
Turkish Daily Ne ..... s
ANKARA- Parliament speaker Hüsamettin
Cindoruk has become involved in a war of words
and ethics with Ankara's State Security Court.
(DGM) prosecutor Nusret Demiral with regard to
the treatment of members of parliament from the
Kurdish-based Democracy Party (DEP).
Followins last Thursday's Constitutional Court
verdict cloSIng down the DEP and the decision to
evict 13 deputies from Parliament, Demiral went
on record. charging at least six of the DEP
deputies of being "terrorists."
He said that the six deputies who fled to Europe
last week and who announced they would not
return to Turkey were terrorists and had to be
ext.-adited to this country.
Newspapers implied over the weekend that the
prosecutor had further ~reached his authority.by
sending orders to Turkish border posts, bannIng
the entrance and exit of all DEP deputies. Since
the court's detailed verdict has not yet been published
in the Official Gazette or relayed to the
Parliament Speaker as required by law, all of the
turkish daily news
Monday, June 20, J 994
lost when they ran from the village. He has not
heard of them since.
The tragedy in northern Iraq is but a reflection
of the "bitter medicine" Turkey has introduced
to solve the problem in the Southeast. A
problem which Ankara still refuses to recognize
as "il Klmii.shpro.bl.~m~:,. . "
Officials sayrio villâge's have been destroyèä
!nt~ntionally and, in a :ecent bid to prove this,
mVlted a group of foreIgn envoys - including
ambassadors - to the region. They were taken
only to the villages which the PKK had raided
and torched in the past and to villaaes controlled
by village g(!ards. ::>
As for the evacuations, deputy Prime
Minister Murat Karayalçm recently agreed that
some 900 villages were evacuated. "Why
.should we pay the PKK any money?" a senior
security official in Ankara said this week when
aske~ whether the villagers, as required by
Turkish law, were being compensated after
evacuation.
Turkey has come under fire from international
human rights groups over the past three years
for failing to discriminate between the PKK
and ordinary civilians. Claims of human rights
abuses have been heard more and more from
the Southeast region. Before the "campaign"
was launcbed, 'il complete ban was imposed on
the domestic press through a controversialarititerrorism
decree and reports of village torchings
are scarce. The Turkish Daily News had
established by name earlier this year that at
least 845 of the villages evacuated were also set
on fire by troops.
Human Rights Association officials say that
the number of Turkish-Kurdish refugees in
northern Iraq now exceeds 12,000 and that the
figure is still rising.
But Ankàra is fighting the United Nations
not to recognize these people as refugees.
Officials privately argue they will return and
publicly appeal for them to come back without
facing any punishment.
13 d.eputies st.iIIretain their parliamentary status.
CIndoruk, In response to Demiral's behaviour
was quick to stress this point last week but had lit~
tle influence over the policemen who have placed
two remaining parliamentarians under constant
surveillance.
. According to newspaper reports, the prosecutor
IS als? ,~Janning to ISSue an Interpol "Red
Bulletm for the MPs abroad, demanding that
they be ~r:~~ted and returned to Turkey for crimes
of ~eI:C~~srri. -
Legal sources argued during the weekend that if
such a move was made, this would cast doubts on
the validity of all previous wanted lists given by
Turkey to Interpol as well, since neither of the
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