NEWS:Turkish ParaMil.Death Squads/W

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From: nyxfer at panix.com (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: NEWS:Turkish ParaMil.Death Squads/WW


 
Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Turkish paramilitary death squads killing kurds
 
By Bill Doares
 
On Aug. 9, Huseyin Deniz, a Kurdish reporter for the newspaper
Ozgur Gundem (Free Agenda), was shot to death in southeastern
Turkey. He was the fifth journalist to be murdered in
southeastern Turkey this year.
 
Only 10 days earlier Yahya Orhan, who also worked for Gundem, was
shot to death in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir and Burhan
Karadeniz, another Gundem correspondent, was wounded. In June,
Hafiz Akdemir, also of Gundem, was murdered in Diyarbakir, only
two weeks after the newspaper began publication. In February, two
other reporters, Halit Gulgen of Yeni Ulke (New Country) and
Cengiz Altun of 2000 E' Dogru (Toward 2000) were assassinated. No
one has been arrested in any of the murders.
 
The killings are the work of right-wing death squads, called
"counter-guerrillas," that are terrorizing the Kurdish population
in southeast Turkey. The squads are widely believed to be made up
of commandos from Turkey's U.S.-financed army and police force.
Turkey receives over $500 million a year in U.S. military aid.
 
Ozgur Gundem, Yeni Ulke and 2000 E' Dogru have been targeted
because of their role in exposing the reign of terror that the
Turkish military has launched against Turkey's 15 million-strong
Kurdish population.
 
Three-quarters of the Kurdish people live in Turkey. This terror
increased in the month of August, which is marked by the Kurdish
people as the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Workers
Party of Kurdistan (PKK). The PKK is leading the struggle of the
Kurdish people for self-determination.
 
The Turkish regime's attacks have included massacres of
civilians, as in Sirnak on Aug. 15, and the indiscriminate aerial
bombing of Kurdish villages in both Turkey and Iraq. Hundreds of
civilians have been killed in these raids, which are carried out
with U.S.-provided F16s. The Pentagon also supplies the Turkish
air force with satellite intelligence to use in its operations.
 
The Turkish regime is also collaborating with the CIA-backed
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani in its
efforts to crush the PKK. The KDP has murdered PKK supporters in
Iraq's Kurdish region and forcibly closed Berxwedan, a pro-PKK
newspaper being published in Iraqi Kurdistan.
 
The PKK has retaliated by blockading the border between Turkey
and northern Iraq, where the KDP and PUK are trying to set up a
mini-state with U.S. help. This has disrupted U.S. plans to
reopen oil production in that region under U.S. military control.
The PKK has also struck back at the Turkish military. On Aug. 30,
dozens of Turkish soldiers were slain in a 10-hour battle with
PKK guerrillas at an army base in Alan in Hakkari province.
 
While the U.S. government is hypocritically posing as a defender
of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites in an effort to dismember Iraq and
grab its oil, it is helping the Turkish regime carry out genocide
against the Kurdish people. In doing so, it is moving headlong
toward direct involvement in yet another way.
 
Protests against the death squad murders should be sent to:
President Turgut Ozal, Ankara, Turkey.
 
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers at igc.apc.org".)
 
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