Kurds Challenge Turkey

[DEBRA at OLN.comlink.apc.org]

## author     : rferl-daily-repo at AdminA.RFERL.ORG
## date       : 04.11.94

The RFE/RL DAILY REPORT--a digest of the latest developments
in Russia, Transcaucasia and Central Asia, and Central and
Eastern Europe--is published Monday through Friday (except
German holidays) by the RFE/RL Research Institute, a
division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc. Copyright
1994 RFE/RL, Inc.
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RFE/RL Daily Report
                   No. 210, 4 November 1994

KURDS CHALLENGE TURKEY FROM MOSCOW. A "Confederation of
Kurds of the CIS" announced its formation at a news
conference on 1 November in Moscow. Claiming to speak for up
to one million Kurds in the former Soviet republics, the
organization will "support the national liberation struggle
of the Kurdish people for creating a Kurdish homeland, an
independent Kurdistan." Confederation chairman Yurii Nabiev
indicated to the gathering that Turkey is the primary
target. He added to Interfax that the organization intended
to "maintain close relations with the Kurdistan Workers'
Party (KWP)," which conducts guerrilla operations in Turkey.
Another leader, Sharaf Ashiri, said that the organization's
purposes were to preserve Kurdish identity in the CIS and to
"support our brothers fighting against the Turkish regime,"
Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on 2 November. The news
briefing capped a three-day Kurdish conference held in a
Moscow hall decorated with posters of KWP's terrorist leader
Abdullah Ocalan and attended by KWP representatives who
announced the founding of a Kurdish university in Moscow,
the Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported on 3 September. An appeal
to "support our liberation struggle against the Turkish
authorities" was made to the gathering by Akhmed Dere,
identified by Nezavisimaya Gazeta as a leader of the
National Liberation Front of Kurdistan. An organization by
that name had emerged earlier this year in Moscow, claiming
at that time to pursue equal rights for Kurds within Turkey
and to enjoy good relations with Russian authorities (8
September Daily Report). At the Russian Foreign Minstry
briefing on 1 November, chief spokesman Grigorii Karasin
declined to say whether Moscow regarded the KWP as terrorist
and disclaimed any official connection with the conference.
The event seemed intended to signal that Moscow might use a
Kurdish card against Turkish interests in the Transcaucasus
or within Turkey itself. -- Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.