TURKISH ARMY COMMITS MASSACRE IN BEYTÜŞŞEBAP

"Security forces will intervene with every possible means indiscriminately, including against women and children."
~ R. Tayyip Erdoğan.

From Özgür Gündem:

HPG Headquarters Command issued a statement about the massacre of 12 people, including 7 village guards. HPG said: "The raid on a minibus that was carrying villagers in Beşağaç (Hemkan), village of Beytüşşebap was commited by the extension of the Turkish army, JITEM."

HPG said further that the Turkish army intensified the number of its operations, with every kind of dirty warfare and special warfare tactics, since the first of October 2006, when HPG's unilateral ceasefire went into effect.

The Turkish army implemented 483 operations. In these operations, the Turkish army used chemical weapons and cluster bombs, systematically burned Kurdistan's forests, used civilian vehicles during operations, and committed war crimes in front of the entire world.

It is not a surprise that the Turkish army intensified its operations after the July 22 elections, which shows that the military and AKP agreed on the annihilation of the Kurdish people. Earlier, the Turkish generals made statement: "If you want to drive out terrorism, the best would be to aim at the supporters of the terrorists."

Check an earlier post about TSK starving Kurdish villagers and murdering Kurdish infants, and you'll have an idea of what the Paşas mean when they say they plan to "aim at the supporters." They mean that the entire Kurdish population is their target.

Another indication that the military and AKP agreed, was the recent visit of Abdullah Gül to the region. This visit was played up in the media as Gül's "reaching out" to the Kurdish people. However, the true reason for Gül's visit to The Southeast was to thank the military for accepting his presidency. In return, the Paşas have AKP's blessing for a new Dirty War.

It began with the Şemdinli bombing. Even though Erdoğan stated that the the perpetrators would be pursued to the end, he promised that whoever was responsible, would be punished. AKP did nothing, however, because the trail of the perpetrators led to the top of the Turkish general staff--Yaşar Büyükanıt. The prosecutor Sarıkaya was removed from the bar for his attempt to open an investigation against Büyükanıt. Erdoğan made comments denigrating the credibility of witnesses. Now there will be a retrial in a military court, leaving the fox to guard the henhouse.

Finally, HPG states that the Beytüşşebap massacre was committed by TSK in order to create hatred between the village guards and HPG, in an attempt to marginalize HPG and sway public opinion against the Kurdısh freedom movement. For the last few years village guards have not engaged HPG gerîlas if it were possible to avoid engagements. Some vıllage guards have gone so far as to turn their weapons back over to the state. Tensions between village guards and gerîlas had been greatly reduced.

A number of large operations have taken place in Beytüşşebap since the Dirty War began, the most recent being at least 20 days of fighting around the town of Beytüşşebap. All of these have occured without any comment from the media. However, this massacre did draw media attention. The sudden emphasis on an atrocity in Beytüşşebap is an indication of its importance to the regime as anti-gerîla propaganda. The only ones interested in creating anti-gerîla propaganda is the Ankara regime and its ruling military elite.

Beytüşşebap is famous as the first rebellious Kurdish town in modern Turkish history, with its rebellion taking place in 1924, the year before Şêx Seîd's rebellion.

In related news, Hevallo mentions the resignation of Joseph Ralston as the US "PKK coordinator." Ralston had the chance to force the Ankara regime's hand to accept the ceasefire that went into effect one year ago today. How many lives would have been saved if the ceasefire had been accepted?

Instead, Ralston's legacy to the Kurdish people is the Beytüşşebap massacre in exchange for a couple of business deals. Brilliant job, murderer!