Turkey's War on the Kurds

Agneta Norberg, a long time-peace activist, journalist, and member of Women for Peace, serves as vice chair of the Swedish Peace Council, an umbrella organization for peace groups in Sweden.

"When I am in Sweden I am a Kurd. When I go home to Turkey I am a Turk—otherwise I face a lot of problems." Selim, a Kurdish schoolboy of ten, introduced himself at my first lesson. I was teaching Swedish for immigrants in a school in a suburb of Stockholm in 1984. Asking Selim about his language and his country was a turning point in my life. I began to study the political situation in Turkey. I found out many things. Not only was his Kurdish language forbidden in Turkey, but his country, Kurdistan, was divided into five parts. The biggest part of the Kurdish population live in Turkey. Each part of Kurdistan is ruled by a government oppressing the Kurdish people. In 1980 there was a bloody military take over in Turkey and thousands of refugees, mostly Kurds, escaped to Sweden and other European countries. I also learned that the US and Germany are deeply involved in equipping and training Turkey’s police force, its secret police (MIT), its military, its paramilitary troops, and its torturers.

German Support

Shortly after the military coup in 1980, Germany donated a million deutschmarks to Turkey to arm its police force. This aid was sustained in the following years, and Germany has offered training as well. The electronics firm Siemens equipped the police stations with computers and organized seminars on computer and video surveillance for the Turkish police. Since 1955 there have been contacts between German counter-intelligence and the Turkish secret service, MIT, helping Turkey to track "terrorists and separatistºs" who seek political asylum.

There are many historical links between Turkey and Germany that illuminate the present policy in Turkey. For instance, the origin of the party Millietci Hareket Partisi, now part of the Turkish government, can be traced back to the second world war when the Nazi government financed the formation of a Nazi group within the Turkish army. One of its earliest and most enthusiastic members was a young officer named Alparslan Turkesh, who went on to lead the ultra-nationalist Millietci Hareket Partisi from its inception in the sixties until 1997 when he died.

The US in Turkey

After the second world war, Turkey was considered by the US to be an extremely important strategic springboard in to Soviet Union and the Middle East. President Truman generously gave Turkey 400 million dollars in 1947. The money was meant for buying arms and military equipment from the US.

Turkey has played a central role in many international crises. It contributed some thousand troops in the Korean war 1950. US nuclear missiles deployed in Turkey, close to Moscow, were the instigation for Kruschev’s deployment of nuclear weapons in Cuba, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And during the Gulf war, Turkey’s Incirlik airfield was the launching pad for bombing of Iraq.

When the US-oriented regime fell in Iran, the Americans and their military bases were expelled. Therefore, in March 1980, US and Turkey signed an important military treaty. It included military bases in Turkey under US control plus electronic listening posts and radar. The treaty was signed four months prior to the military coup that brought the Turkish armed forces back into power. Today Turkey, Israel, and the US have developed a close military cooperation.

September 12, 1980

"Our boys have done it!" cheered Paul Henze to his friends in Washington the day after the military coup. Paul Henze was the CIA director in Ankara. The horror and cruelty that followed were unimaginable: 171 human beings were tortured to death; over 200,000 political activists, journalists, authors, and teachers were tried in military court; 23,000 organizations were closed, and 30,000 people escaped and were spread over Europe. Books were destroyed and newspapers shut down. Today there are 10,000 political prisoners in Turkish prisons.

US Weapons against the Uprising

In 1984 the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) started an armed struggle against the Turkish oppression, with about 300 guerrilla troops. In 1994 the number had grown to 15,000. Hundreds of thousands among Kurdish poor peasants were sympathizers. In 15 years of fighting between PKK and the Turkish Army, nearly 40.000 lives have been lost—more than in the conflicts on the West Bank and in Northern Ireland combined. But the Kurdish uprising is seldom mentioned in western media. The civil war in Turkey represents in fact the single largest use of US weapons anywhere in the world by non-US forces according to Bill Hartung of the World Policy Institute. In 1992 and 1993 the Pentagon quietly sent an enormous amount of military equipment to the Turkish army at no cost. Military assistance has included the use of American soldiers. In 1998 a US team was sent to train the Turkish Mountain Commandos, a unit whose chief function is to fight Kurdish guerrillas. In 1998 a US company was negotiating to sell 10.000 electro-shock weapons to the Turkish Police despite its documented record of practicing electro-shock torture.

Village Destruction and Forced Evacuation

In March 1997 I traveled in a minibus together with seven friends through the mountains of Kurdistan in the southeast of Turkey. Martial law was proclaimed in the whole area since 1980 and in almost all towns curfew prevails. To be safe we had gotten permission from the minister of foreign affairs in Ankara to make this journey. Our driver gave me the first of many testimonies about the terror. "I am from the district of Kulp," he started. "The villages there have been burnt to the ground several times. In 1992, 65 villages were put on fire on one day. In the whole county of Kulp there were earlier 70.000 people. Today there are only 4-5000. Those who dare to stay in the villages face very hard conditions. In 1988 Özel Tim (Special Forces) came to my village to enroll me as a village guard. That means you get a rifle and a uniform from the state and you are supposed to kill your brothers. When I refused they threatened me to take me to the mountain, dress me like a PKK guerrilla, put a gun in my arms and kill me.

Refugee camp. Photo: courtesy HADEP, Turkey, hadepgm@yahoo.com

In 1992 they came back and destroyed my house with a grenade thrower. I tried to escape with my friends in my minibus. The military stopped us and ordered us to go out. The bus was totally destroyed by a rocket. The commander pointed at the bus and said ‘So, you don’t want to be a village guard? Look at your bus! Remember, the bus was destroyed by PKK.’ After this I moved to Diyarbakir. My cousin stayed in Kulp and became a village guard. Six month ago he was killed by Özel Tim for suspected connection with PKK."

Abdullah Öcalan

Abdullah Öcalan led the Kurdish uprising for 15 years from his headquarters in Syria. He was expelled in 1998, and after trying to get asylum in different countries he went to Nairobi where he was arrested in a joint effort by Mossad, MIT, and the CIA. British "Aims Ltd." was involved as well. The Kurdish people took to the streets in Turkey and in Germany as well in protest. I happened to arrive in Istanbul on the same day Öcalan was brought to Turkey, and I witnessed the brutal police control of the people.

On June 29, 1999, Abdullah Öcalan was sentenced to death by hanging according to Article 125 of the Turkish criminal code. The Turkish government has to this day hesitated to enforce this verdict as it would create an uproar among Kurdish people. It would also make it even more difficult for Turkey to become a member of the European Union. Turkey is a candidate for European Union today, but has a long way to go before it has fulfilled all the demands from the EU to get rid of its terrible record of human rights abuses, torture, state terror against the Kurdish people, and the death penalty.

Prison Hunger Strikes

Today the ultra-nationalists are strong in Turkey, with powerful representation in the government. In spite of the ongoing brutality, the people are resisting, demonstrating, organizing, and eventually being imprisoned. In the effort to liquidate the left and the Kurdish nationalists, the government is modernizing prisons to meet its rising needs. In the old prisons the inmates could communicate with each other. The newly built so-called F-type prisons are based on a cell-type system. Since October 2000, more than 1000 political prisoners all over Turkey have participated in a hunger strike in protest against the new F-type prisons and isolation. The Turkish Security Forces raided 20 prisons across the country last December in order to break the resistance of the political prisoners who refused to be transferred to the F-type prisons. Thirty-two political prisoners were killed, and hundreds were maimed, tortured, and raped. Twenty-five prisoners have died from fasting, and still the Turkish government refuses to negotiate with the prisoners and their families to find an acceptable solution and close the F-type cells.

Gece Kondu

In Turkish, "Gece" means night and "kondu" means built. So gece-kondu refers to houses built quickly in the night. The slum. In December 2000 I visited Turkey to learn about the situation of those who are internal refugees. Women, children, and the elderly are driven away from their villages in the mountains and scatter outside the big cities. My friends brought me in their car to one of these places. When we arrived it was dark and raining. We balanced on a plank across an open, smelling sewer ditch and saw the light from a window. We were welcomed in a warm and light room and Mariam, our hostess, offered a glass of tea. After finishing our tea, I asked her what brought her and her children to this place.

"I am 40 years old. I come from Van, a town in Eastern Turkey. I have lived here for six years with my children. We were forced to leave our home because the police in Van terrorized us all the time. They searched our home during the nights looking for weapons. They brought my husband to jail and tortured him with electricity. We have five children. Our eldest son Murat is killed in the war. Our next son Mehmet is in the mountains. Our third son Ali was on his way to join the guerrilla when he was caught by the military and imprisoned. He was tortured. He is still in prison in Diyarbakir. Our daughter Mehtap is seventeen and our son Onur is thirteen. We live here together and we help each other to survive. My husband Ibrahim is in jail in Tokat not far from Ankara. He has been imprisoned for six years now. My mother lives in Van. I cannot afford a telephone so I don’t know if she is well. I am very thankful to you for coming the long way from Sweden and asking us how we live. There are many people in Turkey who don’t know under what hardships people in the their own country are forced to live."

We stumbled further along the stinking ditch and another woman welcomed us to her little house. Emine, a mother of four, introduced her children and told her story:

"I am Emine. I am 31 and we come from Cizre in eastern Turkey. We have four children and I have given birth to all of them here without any help from a midwife. My husband has been arrested more than ten times. All we want is to return to Cizre but there are terrible things going on there and we don’t dare go back. I will give you an example. Many people were arrested, suspected for being sympathizers to PKK. When they were released from arrest they went by bus towards their home in Siirt. After a few miles’ drive there flew a helicopter above the bus and dropped a bomb on the bus. Seven of them were our relatives. People who wanted to save them out from the burning bus were hindered by soldiers. All people in the bus died. You have to tell this."

About Water

Hasankeyf, in Eastern Turkey, is an ancient town that will soon be under water. I am one of the lucky who have had the opportunity to see this peace of wonderful arcitechture built about the same time as Collosseum in Rome. Many people have protested to save this historical monument but in vain. The enourmus GAP (South East Anatolia Project) has to go on. Many Israeli engineers are working at the project and when finished it will serve Turkey´s and Israel’s need for water. Those who suffer from this project are the Kurdish people. It is extremely important for the Turkish state to keep the area under control, and the oppression of the people is severe. Huge areas are already under water. In addition, the policy of USA, Israel, and Turkey towards the neighboring countries Syria and Iraq is to use the water supply as a tool for political blackmailing—the ‘water threat’ was used against Syria when Öcalan was forced out of the country. But water isn’t the only reason for denying Kurdish people their rights. ‘Black gold’—oil and gas—is another reasons for control. There are plans to draw pipelines from Kaukasus through Eastern Turkey and Kurdistan to Ceyhan at the Mediterranian Sea in the south of Turkey.

Spread the Knowledge

"You have to tell this," Emine said, and that is what I have tried to do. The more we know about the reality for people who are suffering from US and German policy, the more we can direct our protests. The knowledge about these things are not commonplace in our country. I have written a booklet about the horror, which is now a study book for Young Left in Sweden. Those enthusiastic young people have launched a protest campaign across Sweden against the atrocities, and asked people not to visit Turkey as tourists. With friends I have started a support group for Kurdish women who are routinely raped in prisons. We are planning to go to Eastern Turkey next spring.

There are many brave organizations in Turkey we can cooperate with. But above all, it is important to spread knowledge about Turkey’s oppressive government. I have met US tourists in Ankara, and have been amazed at their lack of knowledge about the US’s controlling role in Turkey. I can only share my experiences with you, and only you can help by sharing them with others who must know.

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