Turkey cracks down on PKK

Prominent members of the DTP among 51 people arrested in raids seen as effort to weaken Kurdish party

Turkish Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug told the War Academy in Istanbul yesterday that outlawed terrorist group the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ‘is losing blood at the moment.’

DIYARBAKIR (AFP) – Fifty-one people, among them senior members of the Kurdish party in Turkey’s parliament, were detained yesterday in a sweeping police operation targeting a separatist Kurdish group, officials said.

The Democratic Society Party (DTP), which had three deputy chairmen among those detained, condemned the crackdown as a government-inspired attempt to weaken the party.

The 51 suspects were rounded up in 12 provinces as part of an operation against the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its “illegal groupings,” said the governor’s office in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the mainly Kurdish southeast, where most of the suspects were detained.

The police also seized documents and computers containing information about illegal activities, the statement said.

Eight of the suspects were PKK militants who formed a so-called “coordination unit,” tasked with organizing attacks in urban centers, a judicial source in Diyarbakir said on condition of anonymity.

Police had been trailing them for the past two years, had bugged their telephone calls and monitored their bank accounts, the source said, adding that the operation aimed to expose PKK collaborators within the DTP and Kurdish nongovernmental groups.

Two lawyers of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan were among those held in the operation.

Police also arrested the chief editor of a private television channel that broadcasts both in Turkish and Kurdish after searching its headquarters in Diyarbakir.

Ahmet Turk, the chairman of the DTP, accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government of seeking revenge following last month’s local polls, which saw the ruling party lose several municipalities in the southeast to the DTP.

“This operation is a clear indication of the government’s intolerance of the election results,” Turk said in a speech in parliament in Ankara. “The operations and the detentions should stop immediately and our colleagues should be released,” he said.

Kurdish politicians in Turkey are routinely accused of supporting the PKK, which has waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast since 1984.

Although the rebels mainly operate on rural ground in the southeast, they have been blamed for a number of bomb attacks in urban centers in western Turkey.

The DTP, which holds 21 seats in the 550-member parliament, is currently on trial in the country’s constitutional court for alleged links to the PKK and faces the risk of being outlawed.

Some 45,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the PKK and Ankara, according to a toll given by army chief Ilker Basbug yesterday.

In a fresh incident of violence, a truck driver was killed in Sirnak province yesterday when his vehicle ran over a land mine, which officials said was planted by the PKK, the Anatolia news agency reported.

ANKARA (AP) – Turkey’s military said yesterday it is the target of a smear campaign by Islamic groups bent on portraying it as being against religion and anti-democratic.

Military chief General Ilker Basbug reaffirmed the armed forces’ devotion to Turkey’s secularist system but said the military has never been opposed to religion. He also said the military, which has forced the ouster of four governments since 1960, is loyal to democracy.

“There are ill-intentioned propaganda campaigns to show the Turkish armed forces as being against religion,” Basbug said in a speech to military academy students in Istanbul, which was broadcast live. “Religious-based communities see the Turkish armed forces as the greatest obstacle to reaching their goals and lead activities against the military at every opportunity,” he said.

Basbug did not single out any specific group but he appeared to be referring to Muslim sects and brotherhoods that have gained prominence in business and politics and own several media outlets that criticize the military and are sympathetic to the government.

Basbug said the military would not remain “silent and reactionless within the rule of law” in the face of the campaign but did not elaborate.

The speech came amid a rift between secular elites and the Islamic-oriented government, which has a strong electoral mandate.

More than 200 people, including retired or serving officers, have been charged in an investigation into an alleged plot to topple the government. Most are prominent secularists who claim the government is trying to impose religion on daily life.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denied accusations that he is trying to muzzle opponents and says his government upholds Turkey’s secular principles.

Basbug also said in other comments that 40,000 Kurdish rebels and supporters and about 5,000 Turkish soldiers have died in fighting since 1984, when the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, took up arms.