Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris
Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris
Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris
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Revue <strong>de</strong> Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro <strong>de</strong> la Prensa-Basm Öz<strong>et</strong>i<br />
work.<br />
"Thanks to the soldiers, we 're going<br />
to open the coal mine again, and maybe<br />
even g<strong>et</strong> a paved road, " said the village<br />
chief, Nadir Yaman, who has two wives<br />
and 18 children. "Maybe a few people<br />
from this area were tricked into joining<br />
the PKK, but no one supports them any<br />
more. The PKK is a terror and mur<strong>de</strong>r<br />
group."<br />
But about 200 kilom<strong>et</strong>ers (about 120<br />
miles) northwest of Caliskan lies the<br />
village of Gumusorgu.<br />
Rumors have been circulating<br />
through the surrounding countrysi<strong>de</strong><br />
that som<strong>et</strong>hing awful may have<br />
happened there. Some say soldiers<br />
burned the village or forcibly evacuated<br />
it or committed some kind of atrocity<br />
there.<br />
A reporter who tried to reach Gumusorgu<br />
this week was arrested, taken<br />
to a military prison in Batman, the provincial<br />
capital, and interrogated for seven<br />
hours by angry government agents<br />
who accused him of spying for the<br />
Kurdish rebels.<br />
Part of the proof they cited was a<br />
restaurant receipt they found in his<br />
pock<strong>et</strong> indicating that he had m<strong>et</strong> with a<br />
representative of a group with the<br />
phrase "human rights" in its name. ,<br />
One agent <strong>de</strong>scribed Gumusorgu an~<br />
two other villages that the reporter had<br />
hoped to visit as "PKK villages." Another<br />
said Batman Province and neighboring<br />
Siirt Province were infested by<br />
the rebels.<br />
"They're all over the place!" he<br />
shouted. "We can't go out at night. The<br />
PKK is everywhere around here. "<br />
Is the war proceeding as it looks from<br />
Caliskan, with the army in firm control<br />
and local Kurds grateful that life is<br />
r<strong>et</strong>urning to normal? Or is it the way it<br />
looks from around Gumusorgu, where<br />
soldiers seem far from victory and rumors<br />
.of repJ:ession spread unchecked<br />
over the high hills?<br />
A six-day tour of southeastern Turkey<br />
suggests that the army has <strong>de</strong>alt<br />
powerful blows to the rebel. group,<br />
killing many guerrillas and forcmg most<br />
of the rest across the bor<strong>de</strong>r to sanctuaries<br />
in Iran, Iraq and Syria. Many<br />
villages once tom by conflict are now at<br />
peace. .<br />
But throughout the regIon, many<br />
Kurds still resent the government's refusal<br />
to accept their <strong>et</strong>hnic i<strong>de</strong>ntity.<br />
With Kurdish newsr.apers closed,<br />
Kurdish politicians in jatl and hundreds<br />
of Kurdish civilians mur<strong>de</strong>red by mysterious<br />
<strong>de</strong>ath squads, the Kurdish Workers<br />
Party is the only surviving organization<br />
that upholds the concept of<br />
Kurdish i<strong>de</strong>ntity.<br />
"People are not for the PKK, because<br />
the PKK kills children and schoolteachers<br />
and commits all kinds of violence,"<br />
said a university stu<strong>de</strong>nt in Diyarbakir,<br />
the largest city in the region. "But there<br />
is a certain sympathy, because we share<br />
the same blood.<br />
"We want to be able to express<br />
ourselves as Kurds, with books and<br />
newspapers and radio and television stations,<br />
" the stu<strong>de</strong>nt said. ,. What the government<br />
has done makes us think they<br />
are against any peaceful Kurdish movement."<br />
As many as one-fourth of the 60<br />
million people in Turkeyare fully or<br />
partly Kurdish, tracing their lineage<br />
back to tribes that have lived in this<br />
region for more than 2,000 years.<br />
Kurds have never had a state of their<br />
own, and today not only the Turkish<br />
government but also the governments of<br />
Iran, Iraq and Syria, all of which have<br />
substantial Kurdish populations, strenuously<br />
oppose efforts to create one on<br />
their territory.<br />
The group leading that effort is the<br />
Kurdish Workers Party, tapping a <strong>de</strong>ep<br />
strain of Kurdish natIonalism that has<br />
persisted since the founding of the Turkish<br />
Republic 73 years ago.<br />
The first evi<strong>de</strong>ntly organized Turkish<br />
response to the rebels was a campaign of<br />
mur<strong>de</strong>r and kidnapping that has killed<br />
hundreds or perhaps thousands of Kurdish<br />
nationalists since 1991.<br />
This wave of killings effectively <strong>de</strong>capitated<br />
the Kurdish elite in southeastern<br />
Turkey. It mayalso have<br />
crippled the rebels' efforts to build an<br />
organized base among civilians.<br />
The next blow against the rebels was<br />
struck by the army, which beginning in<br />
1993 floo<strong>de</strong>d southeastern provinces<br />
with hundreds of thousands of soldiers.<br />
They have overwhelmed the rebels;<br />
who probably never had more than<br />
10,000 guerrillas.<br />
Army intelligence officers say they<br />
believe that fewer than 3,000 guerrillas<br />
remain insi<strong>de</strong> Turkey, with perhaps an<br />
additional 4,000 encamped in neigh.<br />
boring countries.<br />
Published estimates suggest that the<br />
war against the Kurdish rebels costs<br />
Turkey $7 billion to $8 billion a year.<br />
Despite that cost, <strong>de</strong>spite the social<br />
upheaval caused by the hundreds of<br />
thousands of Kurds who have abandoned<br />
their villages voluntarily or on<br />
or<strong>de</strong>rs from the army, and <strong>de</strong>spite the.<br />
political price that Turkey has had to<br />
pay for the accusations of human-rights<br />
violations that have been lodged against<br />
it in Europe and the rest of the world,<br />
most Turks seem to believe that their<br />
lea<strong>de</strong>rs have no alternative.<br />
"Turks have never forgotten how the<br />
West tried to dismantle the Ottoman<br />
Empire," said liter Turan, a political<br />
scientist at Koc University in Istanbul.<br />
"They see the PKK as ,trying to cut<br />
away a part of Turkey to create a separate<br />
state, and they don't tolerate<br />
that. "<br />
1-L1::Ll:LB'<br />
----l...JL:.JL::]""TIl\-L.J..----<br />
Northern Iraqi<br />
peace committee<br />
to hold first session<br />
Ankara- Turkish Daily News<br />
The participants at Tuesday's<br />
me<strong>et</strong>ing will attempt to take<br />
the necessary steps for<br />
building confi<strong>de</strong>nce b<strong>et</strong>ween<br />
the parties and implementing<br />
the Ankara agreement,<br />
including the principles of<br />
sharing bor<strong>de</strong>r revenues and<br />
coordination b<strong>et</strong>ween the two<br />
administrations in the region<br />
• With tension in northern Iraq<br />
increasing rapidly, a high-level coordination<br />
committee will come<br />
tog<strong>et</strong>her in Ankara on Tuesday to<br />
discuss the northern Iraqi peace<br />
movement.<br />
. The committee, ma<strong>de</strong> up of representatives<br />
of the Patriotic Union of<br />
Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdistan<br />
Democratic Party (KDP), and the<br />
Turkmen Front, will look at how<br />
exactly to implement the agreemem<br />
reached b<strong>et</strong>ween the parties in<br />
Ankara on Jan. 15.<br />
According to one source, the participants<br />
at Tuesday's me<strong>et</strong>ing will<br />
attempt "to take the necessary steps<br />
for building confi<strong>de</strong>nce b<strong>et</strong>ween the<br />
parties, for reconciliation, and implementing<br />
the Ankara agreement,<br />
including the principles of sharing<br />
bor<strong>de</strong>r revenues and coordination<br />
b<strong>et</strong>ween the two administrations in<br />
thè region."<br />
The sponsors of the me<strong>et</strong>ing,<br />
Britain, the United States and<br />
Turkey, are expected to urge for the<br />
establishment of a temporary united<br />
regional government which would<br />
be responsible for holding elections.<br />
At the moment the PUK and the<br />
KDP each have a separate<br />
Parliament.<br />
The PUK will be represented<br />
by a<br />
<strong>de</strong>legation hea<strong>de</strong>d by Fouad<br />
Masoum and which inclu<strong>de</strong>s Shazad<br />
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