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

Revue de Presse-Press Revie-w-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
Gunships Against Human Rights
Foreign policy: Until Turkey stops abusing the Kurds,
Washington should ban a deal on U.S.-made helicopters.
By KEVIN MCKIERNAN
Los Angeles Times 4-3-00
Monday may be a record payday for one of two U.S. weapons makers, either Boeing
Aircraft or Bell Helicopter Textron. On that day, Turkey is scheduled to award a $4-billion
contract for 145 attack helicopters, one of the largest single arms deals in history.
International competition for the lucrative project has been fierce, with five companies
submitting bids, but Boeing's Apache Longbow and Bell's Super Cobra are considered the
odds-on favorites to win the award.
About 80% of the Turkish arsenal is U.S.-made, and the Turkish army has relied on
Sikorsky Blackhawks and both Apache and Cobra gunships to win the long war with
Kurdish rebels in the country's southeast.
In 1997, the Clinton administration granted Boeing and Bell market licenses to build the
attack helicopters, brushing aside human rights objections from Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch about Turkey's abuse of its ethnic population.
If one of the American companies receives the new contract. the administration may again
override human rights concerns and, in effect, broker the sale to Turkey by granting the
necessary export licenses. American-made helicopters are well known to the Kurds.
I have often encountered refugees from destroyed villages in southeast Turkey whose only
English--delivered in a thick Kurdish accent--were the words "Sikorsky" and "Cobra."
Villagers know that the soldiers who bum their houses land in Blackhawk helicopters, the
troop transports that are made by the Connecticut-based Sikorsky Co. And they easily
recognize the rocket-equipped Cobras, which are manufactured at the Bell Textron plant in
Fort Worth, Texas.
Turkish Kurdistan is a rugged, mountainous region, and helicopters have proved essential in
the army's scorched-earth campaign. So far, more than 3,000 Kurdish villages have been
burned, depriving the guerrillas of vitallogistical support; estimates of civilian Kurds
displaced by the war range from 500,000 to 2 million.
It has been a dirty war, and both sides have been guilty of atrocities.
Last year, after Turkey captured rebelleader Abdullah Ocalan, tried him for treason and
sentenced him to death, it looked as if the 15-year-old uprising might fade away. Ocalan sent
out word from prison for his fighters to quit, and they eventually issued a formal declaration
to end the armed struggle and to work for Kurdish rights "within the framework of peace and
democratization. "
Last December, the European Union, after years of rejection, voted to consider Turkey for
EU admission, but only on the condition that it clean up its human rights record. Among
other things, Europe wants Turkey to negotiate legitimate and long-standing Kurdish
grievances in education, language and cultural expression.
Now the EU may be having second thoughts. Last month, Turkey blocked an EU delegation
from visiting Leyla Zana. the imprisoned Kurdish member of parliament who has received
the ED's peace prize. Then a Kurdish educational foundation was indicted on criminal
charges of "inciting separatist propaganda" because it advertised a scholarship in an Istanbul
newspaper for students who could "read and write in Kurdish."
Two weeks ago, the government ordered a CNN television affiliate off the air for 24 hours
because a reporter asked a guest whether history might one day regard Ocalan as a Turkish
version of South African revolutionary Nelson Mandela.
A few days later, Turkey arrested the Kurdish mayors of three cities on vague charges of
separatism. Subsequently, authorities arrested hundreds of supporters who were peacefully
protesting the detention of the mayors.
11