From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: Turkey steps up dirty war against Kurds /ww
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 17:45:34 GMT

 TURKEY STEPS UP DIRTY WAR AGAINST KURDS
 By Bill Doares

The government of Turkey is intensifying its dirty war against
the Kurdish people--with the full support of the U.S. government
and a deafening silence from the U.S. news media. Along with the
individual murders, the Turkish military has added the mass
killing of hundreds of Kurdish people in recent attacks.

Among the latest victims was Musa Anter, a 74-year-old journalist
for the pro-Kurdish newspapers Ozgur Gundem and Yeni Ulke and a
founder of the People's Labor Party (HEP).

Anter was gunned down in the streets of Diyarbakir, the largest
Kurdish city in Turkey, on the night of Sept. 20 as he was
walking to meet a relative for dinner. His cousin Orhan Miroglu,
who was with him, was critically wounded.

Anter was the fifth writer for Ozgur Gundem to be murdered this
year. The killers are believed to be members of
"counter-guerilla" death squads set up by the Turkish secret
police. Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel justified the
murders: "These are not the journalists you think they are. They
are all militants." The Turkish government is prosecuting
Gundem's editors, Yasar Kaya and Selcuk Gur, for printing an
interview with Abdullah Ocalan, general secretary of the Workers
Party of Kurdistan (PKK).

The systematic murder of journalists is only one aspect of the
Turkish government's anti-Kurdish terror campaign. In the past
six months over 5,000 Kurdish civilians have been imprisoned on
charges of sympathy for the PKK. And Turkey's U.S.-equipped air
force continues to bomb Kurdish villages in Turkey and northern
Iraq.

KURDISH BLOOD ON WASHINGTON'S HANDS

The extent of U.S. complicity with Turkey's regime is clear in
the town of Sirnak, where Turkish troops carried out a massacre
of Kurdish people on Aug. 15. Sirnak is only 40 miles from
Silopi--the base of Operation Provide Comfort, the U.S.-British
strike force whose alleged purpose is to "protect" Kurdish people
across the border in northern Iraq. These troops did nothing for
22 hours as Turkey's U.S.-financed NATO army set fire to entire
neighborhoods, destroyed homes with tanks and dragged civilians
into the street and shot them.

After the slaughter, Turkish troops marched through the town
chanting, "Sirnak will be the graveyard of Kurds." The killing
was timed to prevent Sirnak's Kurds from celebrating the eighth
anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army of
Kurdistan, the military wing of the PKK.

Six weeks later, Sirnak remains a ghost town. As cold weather
approaches, over 20,000 Sirnak residents are living in tents in
the mountains, where they fled to escape the bloodbath. HEP
legislators have asked neighboring Syria to accept the Sirnak
Kurds as refugees.

The hand of Washington is also apparent in northern Iraq, where
dozens of PKK supporters have been murdered by the CIA-linked
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani. Most of the
victims were members of the Free Kurdistan Party, which is allied
with the PKK. The KDP has set up a rump state in Iraqi Kurdistan
under U.S. military protection; U.S. officers are regular
visitors to its headquarters.

The fact that the PKK enjoys the enthusiastic support of the vast
majority of Turkey's 15 million Kurds does nothing to change the
minds of the decision makers in Washington. Their only concern is
to keep Turkey as a military base for controlling the Middle East
and an economic base for penetrating the Turkish-speaking
republics of the former Soviet Union.

(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@mcimail.com".)

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