From: nyxfer%panix.com@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: NEWS:US Govt,Media Support Turkish Repression
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 19:53:07 GMT



Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

US continues support for Turkey's massacre of Kurds

By Ali Azad

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited.)

Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel recently said, "If the
press supports us for three days we will save this issue." Well,
the U.S. media have been more than compliant with this request.
While the airwaves are filled with a racist and psychological
propaganda campaign against Libya, the U.S. news media have been
silent on the massacre of the Kurdish masses in the southeastern
Turkey.

In a statement to the United Nations, the progressive pro-Kurdish
weekly newspaper Yeni-Ulke, which is published in Turkey, wrote:
"The target of the Turkish army and security forces is the
Kurdish civilian population... They have opened fire on unarmed
and defenseless people... and on ambulances carrying the wounded
and health centers.

"The civilian population is being openly slaughtered. Houses in
villages, towns and cities are being burnt and possessions inside
destroyed. Sirnak is in a worse situation than Erzincan that
suffered an earthquake."

At the same time the Turkish military campaign against the
Kurdish people is completely coordinated with the Pentagon. An
April 1 UPI report quotes an "anonymous Defense Department
official" as saying: "We share intelligence on this matter [the
massacre of the Kurds] and others, I mean they were an ally in
Desert Storm and continue to be one in NATO.... It is the normal
course of events given the commonality of interests over there."

U.S. support for the Ankara government does not stop there.
According to an April 1 New York Times article, U.S. Secretary of
Defense Dick Cheney went to Germany to put pressure on that
government to change its decision to cancel a shipment of arms to
Turkey.

The German government, one of the main suppliers of weapons to
the Turkish military, stopped the shipment of arms to Turkey
because of popular outrage throughout Germany over the massacres
by the Turkish military.

Despite the brutal attacks by the Turkish military, the movement
for self-determination by the Kurdish masses in Turkey is strong
and gaining the support of more and more anti-imperialist allies
both inside and outside Turkey.

On April 2, 14 Kurdish deputies in the Turkish parliament
resigned their posts to protest the government's fascist
policies. The Kurdish struggle has the strong and determined
support of the Turkish working class and its revolutionary mass
organizations.

In a letter of solidarity to the April 2 demonstrations in the
U.S. called by the National Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention
in the Middle East, Dogu Perincek, chairperson of the Socialist
Party of Turkey, wrote: "The Turkish government has accepted its
role in the new world order, which is given to it by U.S.
imperialism and capitalism. The last `Spring Operation' of the
Turkish government against the Kurdish people is a part of this
new world order project.... The Socialist Party is in the front
rows of the uprising of the workers' movement and on the side of
the oppressed Kurdish people. Today our hearts and revolutionary
feelings are with you. We are shoulder to shoulder in the
struggle for the oppressed peoples of the world."

In another message to the demonstrations, Iktidar, the newspaper
of the Workers Party of Turkey, wrote: "The state terror
exercised by the Turkish army and the special security forces
against the Kurdish people and Kurdish national liberation
movement is both a racist act and also a move towards pumping up
a conflict between Turk and Kurd working class people. The
solidarity with the Kurds now is not only a matter of human
rights, but a struggle against U.S. imperialism. And this
struggle cannot be fruitful unless it is tied with the struggle
for socialism in Turkey. Down with the bourgeoisie. Long live
proletarian internationalism."

                               ###

This article originally appeared in Workers World newspaper. A
10-week trial subscription is available for $2. A year's
subscription costs $15. Makes checks payable to Workers World,
and send to 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010.Phone (212)
255-0352. You may contact Workers World editors on New York
Transfer or PeaceNet at "workers."

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