MORE BOMBINGS IN "THE SOUTHEAST"

"For states that support terror, it is not enough that the consequences be costly - they must be devastating."
~ George W. Bush.

The hevals over at KurdishInfo managed to dig up a nice little article about the situation in "The Southeast" which mentions the Mehmetcik body count from this last weekend and the bombing at Çatak in Wan province.

Apparently the bomb was set off in a trash can outside a tea house, killing a police and a city worker and injuring 14 others. The odd thing about this is that this bombing was carried out in imitation of some of TAK's bombings, but it occured in Turkish-occupied Kurdsitan, where TAK has not been operative. From The New Zealand Herald:

A bomb explosion ripped through a cafe in southeast Turkey on Sunday evening, killing two people including a police officer, and injuring nine others, police said.

[ . . . ]

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest bombing, which occurred at around 9pm (6am Monday NZT) in a tea garden in the district of Catak in Van province, a police officer in Van said.

"A bomb exploded in a rubbish bin in a tea garden, killing two people and injuring nine," the officer said.

The explosion occurred in the Gumus tea garden, which is frequented by civil servants, according to the CNN Turk website.

The BBC also had something on the bombing, but managed to make themselves look utterly ridiculous about it. Take a look:

It follows a series of bombings in Turkish resorts and Istanbul last week in which at least three people died.

A separatist militant group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (Tac), has said it carried out those attacks.

Tac. . . what the hell is Tac? How do you get Kurdistan Freedom Falcons out of "Tac?" Where's the "K?" Morons, man. . . lazy, sloppy, journalistic morons.

Let's think about this bombing, shall we? It takes place in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan where TAK doesn't operate, but it appears to be using one of TAK's methods. HPG does operate in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, but teahouses are not on their list of targets. Besides, HPG has already issued a statement denying that this was there operation, on their site, with a pickup on the statement by Firat News.

[By the way, check out the short bio there on Şehîd Baran Erzurum. It is HPG gerîlas of Turkish origin that are also our only hope.]

So the Çatak bombing doesn't quite fit any Kurdish operatives. It does, however, fit with JITEM operatives, the same people who bombed the Umut Bookstore, in Semdinli last November. It also fits the pattern of bombings elsewhere in "The Southeast" last November, from DozaMe:

NEWSDESK, Nov 24 (DozaMe.org) - A second Turkish military black-op intelligence (JITEM) unit has been unveiled and six people have been arrested by police for carrying out bomb attacks on a Turkish prosecutor's car, a Turkish police station and a clothing warehouse, all in the city of Silopi in northern Kurdistan (southeastern Turkey) between Nov. 10 and Nov. 22.

The JITEM unit consisted of six members, among them two Kurdish paramilitary Village Guards, one unnamed informer and three other unnamed members whose affiliations were kept secret by the Turkish state prosecutor in Silopi. The three members whose affiliations were kept secret are believed to be Turkish military personnel.

The JITEM members Sabri Binzat (Village Guard), Mehmet Özkan (Village Guard) and four others only named as C.D, C.B, D.A and A.K, are accused of three bomb attacks in the city, among them the bomb that was set off on Nov. 10 under the Turkish state prosecutor Talip Demirezen car outside the building of the Sirnak Governorship's Silopi Provincial District.

The other thing that this JITEM bombing reminds me of is the ongoing investigation of retired Turkish big mouth, Altay Tokat. Some of you may remember that he's the one who blabbed about setting off bombs in "The Southeast" in order to get civil servants to take the situation seriously. Previously, Amed and Şirnêx prosecutors offices had opened investigations on Tokat, but it looks like the Turkish General Staff is now doing the same, from Bianet:

Turkey's Chief of General Staff Prosecutor's Office has drawn up its indictment against retired Lieutenant General Altay Tokat for his public revelation that he was responsible for ordering one or two clandestine street bombings when assigned to the Southeast region "to bring judges and civil servants in line".

[ . . . ]

According to a report filed by Ersan Atar in the mass circulation daily Sabah newspaper, the 4-page indictment against Tokat charged that his statements in the media "gave the impression that the Turkish Armed Forces were using the methods used by the terrorist organization".

I object. There is nothing inconsistent in Tokat's blabbing because the TSK and related forces are terrorist organizations, sponsored by a terrorist state, Turkey. When this story broke, Al-Jazeera carried an AFP report on it:

Tokat told the magazine: "The civil servants, the judges who come from western Turkey do not realise how serious the situation is [in the southeast]... They walk around without a care, do what they want," he was quoted as saying.

"So to get them to shape up, I had [the bombs] thrown at two spots close to their homes," he said.

He described the attacks as carefully planned acts of "psychological warfare" that harmed no one, but did not further identify the targets of the attacks, nor the town where they took place.

The retired general's remarks were in response to comments defending a deadly hand grenade attack on a Kurdish-owned bookstore in November 2005, in Semdinli, for which two soldiers were each sentenced to nearly 40 years' imprisonment last month.

"What are we supposed to do? Stand by while he (the store owner) carries messages to the PKK? This (the grenade attack) is called acting outside the law? Such law is unacceptable," Tokat told the magazine.

Funny . . . Yasar Buyukanit was the commander of the Diyarbakir 7th Army Corps from 1996 to 1998. Tokat served in "The Southeast" from 1995 to 1998, which means that he served under Buyukanit. Buyukanit, as commander, would have known what was going on. Since Buyukanit knew the Semdinli bombers, non-commissioned officers who were assigned to "The Region" at the time, and he knew them well enough to refer to them as "good boys," then certainly he knew what one of his senior officers was up to.

That's the point, isn't it? The Wan prosecutor was sacked for trying to investigate Buyukanit's dirty links to the dirty war of genocide, and now Tokat the Blabbermouth is being investigated by the Turkish General Staff, for committing bombings against Turkish civilians under Buyukanit's watch, bombings the likes of which have been common knowledge among Kurds for some time.

Funny, too that MHPer Tokat identifies the civil servant targets of his hand grenades as judges, while speculation is that the same gang of nationalists were behind the Council of State attack, à la Susurluk.

Let's hope that what goes around, comes around. . . soon. Very soon.

Berxwedan û Serkeftin!