Turkey mulls militia reform after wedding bloodbath

Scores of villagers in southeast flee fearing acts of revenge after attack

Villagers load their belongings onto a truck as they prepare to flee the village of Bilge, the scene of a bloody massacre, in southeast Turkey’s Mardin province on Wednesday. Around 100 villagers have fled their homes in southeast Turkey in fear of revenge attacks for the slaying of 44 people at a wedding party.

ISTANBUL (AP) – Turkey said yesterday that it may reform a village militia that helps to fight Kurdish rebels following an attack on an engagement ceremony in which 44 people were killed by gunmen including state-backed militiamen.

Investigators believe the assault Monday night in the village of Bilge in Turkey’s mostly Kurdish southeast was the brutal outcome of a family feud but attention has focused on a security system that armed tens of thousands of pro-government fighters, many of them Kurds.

The assailants used weapons supplied by the state, according to authorities.

“If there are problems, they can be reviewed,” President Abdullah Gul said of the village guard system. “In the end, this is an issue related to security. Whatever should be done has to be done carefully.” Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek also indicated that any reform or eventual abolition of the 70,000-strong militia, approved by parliament in the 1980s, could take a long time, despite outrage among some Turks that the suspected killers were on the state payroll.

Possible changes could include tougher discipline and stricter weapons oversight.

“It is best not to make any decision on a whim,” said Cicek, noting that it was wrong to blame the many village guards who have contributed to the weakening of the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which says it seeks more rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

Turkey and the West view the guerrilla group as a terrorist enterprise that collects revenues from extortion and drug smuggling. But Europe says EU candidate Turkey should end any discrimination against Kurds, and the PKK is still able to recruit disaffected youths in the impoverished southeast.

Ahmet Turk, leader of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, said the Bilge attack partly involved a land dispute but he criticized the village guard system because it allots weapons to villagers who feel emboldened by state protection.

“We have said that if you give such people arms, there will be a tendency toward tyranny,” said Turk, whose party members were targeted in recent police raids because of suspected ties to Kurdish rebels.

“When you arm the village guards, then villagers start to arm themselves to protect themselves from the village guards,” he said. “It is a natural thing.” Southeast Turkey is also a deeply traditional region where clans often have more clout than state authorities and it is widely seen as acceptable to use violence in the name of family honor. Yesterday, about 100 Bilge villagers, some of them related to the suspects, packed belongings into trucks and left out of fear that victims’ relatives could seek revenge.

“They are blaming us even though we are innocent,” Vatan newspaper quoted villager Ahmet Celebi as saying. “They would kill us if [police] weren’t here. Our lives are in danger. We have to leave. We are going to stay with relatives who will take us in.” A Turkish court has charged at least eight people in the attack in which masked assailants gunned down the betrothed couple, the Islamic cleric and many guests. The Anatolia news agency said six of the detainees are brothers, and the other two are a father and his son.

Authorities have said some of the suspects were related to the victims, some of whom were also village guards. Most reports on the motive have said the attackers wanted the fiancee to marry one of their own group, and were enraged when her family turned them down.

Village guards have been immensely helpful to Turkey as troop guides and informers but politically powerful clan leaders have exploited the corps as a source of cash and employment in the absence of long-term economic development. Turkey has struggled over how to trim the force without relegating trained fighters to the ranks of the unemployed.

Several hundred guards have been implicated in drug smuggling and other crimes, and a larger number was purged in past years due to alleged sympathies with Kurdish rebels, who launched attacks in 1984.