THE INFERNO

The land of tears gave forth a blast of wind,
And fulminated a vermilion light,
Which overmastered in me every sense,
And as a man whom sleep hath seized I fell.
~ Dante Alleghieri, The Inferno, Canto III

Turkish Kurdish demonstrators display a banner with the pictures of PKK guerillas who were killed by Turkish troops during a demonstration in the town of Birecik, near the southeastern Turkish city of Urfa, in this Tuesday, April 4, 2006 file photo. Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, a radical militant group, is calling on Turkish Kurds to bring 'fear and chaos' to Turkey and has posted do-it-yourself instructions for homemade bombs and detonators on its Web site, along with praise for suicide bombers. The Freedom Falcons is a splinter group of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, the main militant group in southeastern Turkey that is looking to step up violence against the Turkish state. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this picture came with a few but I will add a few more.

First order of business is that part of the caption discussing TAK (Têyrbazên Azadîya Kurdistan--Kurdistan Freedom Falcons). In yesterday's post I remarked that the Turkish state, as well as Onder Aytac and Emre Uslu of The New Anatolian, were trying to make connections between TAK and PKK because there is no distinction made in the Turkish media. It is only now that journalists are beginning to say things like "splinter group of PKK."

TAK made its debut last summer with a attacks in tourist areas, with their primary goal being one of disrupting the Turkish state's lucrative tourism industry. During the recent serhildan, TAK indicated it would increase the violence as a result of security forces' brutality against the Kurdish people:

"From now on, every attack against our people will be met immediately by even more violent acts, " TAK said in an e-mail sent out to news agencies.

"We will start to harm not just property but lives too. With our actions we will turn Turkey into hell," it said.

Since the biggest bogeyman of the TC is PKK, and since they can milk a lot of sympathy by blaming everything on PKK, that is where they have lain the blame for TAK operations. Last July, HPG denied ties to TAK:

The Kurdish People's Defence Forces (HPG) issued a statement yesterday denying claims made by the Turkish state and media that their forces have ties to the militant organisation TAK (Kurdistan's Freedom Falcons).


In the statement issued by the HPG Commandership Headquarters the guerrillas accused the Turkish government of deliberately smearing HPG's legitimate struggle of self-defence.

"The Turkish government officials and media are in their statements trying to tie us to the attack in the city of Kusadasi. Their accusations are totally groundless and unfounded. We have nothing to do with the attack in Kusadasi. As we don't have any ties to this attack, we also don't have any ties at all with TAK and such organisations", the HPG statement said.

So what we have here is more looniness over PKK that turns out to be false, just as happened in the commentary I discussed yesterday, but the problem is that the guys who wrote yesterday's article were spinning propaganda. Compare what Reuters reported about who is encouraging "fear and chaos," to the BS of the Ondar and Emre show:

A radical militant group is calling on Turkish Kurds to foment "fear and chaos" and has posted do-it-yourself instructions for homemade bombs and detonators on its Web site, The Associated Press reported from Diyarbakir, Turkey.

In the past three months, the Marxist-inspired Kurdistan Freedom Falcons have claimed responsibility for at least eight bomb attacks in Istanbul and elsewhere that have left two people dead and 47 people wounded.

I said that the statement Ondar and Emre were "analyzing" didn't sound like PKK.

By the way, read that entire Reuters report to see who just got the axe. None other than the Wan prosecutor himself, Ferhat Sarikaya. He fought the pashas and the pashas won--no surprise there. It will be no surprise either when the pashas tell the parliamentary Semdinli Commission what their findings are, even though their draft report is already very pasha-friendly.

Second order of business inspired by that AP photo: gerîla funerals.

During the serhildan, the Turkish state made the statement that they were no longer going to turn over the bodies of gerîlas to their families for proper burials, but they were going to bury them where they fell, after doing some kind of half-assed autopsy on them. You know, they have to go through the the formality of even half-assed autopsies so they can continue to fool the EU. DozaMe posted more details on this.

This is an atrocity against every Kurd, because it means Kurdish dead are worth nothing. I wonder what has happened to the bodies of those gerîlas who have died since the serhildan? I also wonder how the terrorist pashas will bellydance their way out of this one:

Professor Doctor Sebnem Korur Fincanci who previously headed the Istanbul University Forensic Medicine Department told Bianet in an interview that the practice itself was a violation of international human rights and that Turkey could be convicted at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for it.

[ . . . ]

She argued that bodies of the dead could not be buried where they were killed and added "an autopsy must certainly be carried out at a center, by forensic medicine experts."

She referred to the international Mennesota Autopsy Protocol covering the effective investigation of extrajudicial killings saying, "the conditions of an autopsy are clearly stated in this protocol accepted by the United Nations. Because these conditions are not being met, Turkey could be sentenced at the ECHR for failing to conduct an effective investigation".

Fincanci added that according to the Turkish Penal Code, no matter who the deceased was, respect had to be shown to their funerals and the bodies had to be surrendered over to their families.

For reference, everyone can check the Minnesota Autopsy Protocol at this site. It's part of the United Nations Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions. You would think, by now, with all the extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions that the Turkish state has committed against the Kurdish people, that the Turkish authorities would be able to recite this manual in their sleep. No such luck. Just ask the Kaymaz family.

In the Bianet article, the IHD Chairman Alatas comments on the fact that the Turkish state will use this refusal-of-burial practice to hide its own atrocities, something that was my initial reaction when I first read the news. He goes on to say that this practice is also in violation "of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which governs respect towards family and private life."

Alatas concluded, "in essence this is a practice to punish the Kurdish people. . ."

We should all be as mad as hell and not willing to take it anymore.