OCTOBER WAR COUNT

The October War Count from HPG:


Number of Turkish army operations: 57
Number of Turkish-Iranian joint military operations: 1
Total operations: 58

Number of operations that made contact with HPG/YJA-STAR: 43

Number of enemy soldiers killed

Soldiers: 138
Officers: 6
Police: 3

Total enemy killed: 147

Number of POWs taken by HPG: 8

Number of enemy wounded: 86

Number of helicopters hit: 3

Military materiel confiscated

M-16s: 3
G-3s: 6
BKC 7.62 medium machine gun: 1
A-6 heavy weapon: 1
Heavy weapon bomb launcher: 1

Number of HPG gerîla şehîds: 6

In addition, a number of forest fires were started by the Turkish army in the areas of Dersim, Amed, Erzurum, and Botan.

PKK, OIL, AND ERDOĞAN'S PIPE DREAM

"Iraqi Kurds generally sympathize with PKK fighters. It is a force that has been demanding and fighting for the rights of Kurds in Turkey for tens of years now, and the Turks have been very harsh to their Kurdish community by forbidding them from rights."
~ Asso Hardi

There has been a lot of information let loose lately, so I will point out a number of items for your perusal and consideration that I have been collecting over the last few days.

The first item is more those good people based out of Qendil:

Up a winding series of switchbacks lies Mardu village, northeast of Sulaymaniya. Kurdish farmers tend livestock and harvest peaches, apples and grapes. A few houses among dotted oak trees serve as a makeshift headquarters for the PKK. Male and female fighters, dressed in traditional billowing shalwar pants and olive combat tops, walk freely. Local Iraqis openly support them, and some Iraqi Kurds have left city life and their families to become soldiers with the Turkish Kurd rebels and their Iranian sister movement, Party for Free Life In Kurdistan, or PEJAK.

The villagers toast the guerrillas as champions of Kurdish rights. They say they are willing to endure sacrifices as the price of their association with a movement fighting to establish Kurdish self-rule in Turkey and Iran, where they believe their minority's basic privileges are denied.

[ . . . ]

Some describe the PKK as a vital trading partner and protector in a lawless area. Hussein Rashid, 45, regularly hauls gasoline and kerosene from Iran to sell to the guerrillas. He warned, "If the PKK is not here, then this will be a place for terrorism and Iran will send Ansar al Islam," a Sunni extremist group with links to Al Qaeda.

Shereen Sulaiman, 39, a mother of three, worried about what Turkey might do to the PKK. The rebel fighters "respect the people and serve the area. They even supply the area with electricity. I don't want them to be hurt," said Sulaiman, wearing a red dress with her hair covered by a black veil. "They are Kurds like us."

More on that, with a description of a PKK fighter from Silêmanî, at the LA Times.

Whoever thought that PKK was strictly a Kurdish operation, or even a Turkish Kurd operation, will have a shock coming to them in the next item:

BRITONS are among foreigners fighting Turkish troops with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, The Sunday Times can reveal.

According to PKK fighters holed up in one of the natural fortresses of the Qandil mountain range which runs along Iraq’s Turkish and Iranian borders, several Europeans have joined forces with their group.

At least three Britons were in the PKK’s 3,000-strong force, boasted one fighter as he and a group of men huddled in a room discussing the latest clashes with the Turkish army. Others include Russians, Germans, Greeks, Iranians and Arabs. The PKK is labelled by both Europe and America as a terrorist organisation.

As diplomatic efforts to avert war falter, the PKK’s fighters now lie in wait for the mechanised Turkish divisions gathering menacingly along the border. Previous Turkish incursions have failed to deal a mortal blow to the PKK and geography again conspires against them.

This isn't new so I can't call it news, but there's more where that came from at the Times Online.

Sometimes reality can be like a very cold shower:

Welcome to the latest regional war in the Middle East — Turkey's contemplated invasion of northern Iraq. Among other things, this latest Turkish aggression, preceded years ago by the invasion of Cyprus, threatens to:

• Send energy prices through the roof. With oil prices already at a record $90 a barrel, they will easily keep setting new highs as winter arrives in Europe and America.

• Set back American military and political efforts to stabilize an already convulsed Middle East, inviting even more meddling by Iran and Syria.

• Bring doom upon the Turkish invaders, who failed for more than 30 years to subjugate their Kurdish minority of 7 million, or 10% of Turkey's population. Now they would expand the fight to all 25 million Kurds, who share the mountainous border areas of Iraq, Iran, and Syria. These well-armed Kurds live in a contiguous area the size of Germany and Britain combined.

Okay, the author probably shouldn't use 1950's census figures for today's Kurdish population in Turkey, but he does go on to talk about the "pompous Turkish army". Check it out at The NY Sun.

Anonymous left a nice little link in comments. Following the link, I found this:

Current tightness in the oil markets (peak oil?) has presented the PKK, the Kurdish guerrilla group fighting the Turkish government, with an amazing opportunity. It can become responsible for sending oil prices over $100 a barrel and sowing panic in global markets.

How? This objective can be accomplished through a series of attacks on the BTC pipeline that runs from Azerbaijan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan (in a fashion similar to earlier attacks that PKK has made on less substantial pipelines). With over 750,000 barrels of oil flow a day (1 m a day next year) over 1,092 miles of pipeline, ongoing disruption would result in:

* An immediate price spike that would likely exceed $100 a barrel, an important psychological barrier. This is pricing power in the oil market on par with Saudi Arabia (see the 2004 brief: "A Shadow OPEC" for more).

* A major loss of income for Turkey from pipeline fees, as contractual caveats kick in. Also, substantial disruptions and price hikes for not only Turkish customers, but European customers too. This could put the final nail in coffin for Turkey's EU bid.

* Global recognition of their situation/cause and immediate international pressure on Turkey to resolve the crisis. At a minimum, if Turkey opts for violence, the disruption of the BTC would be a strategic timer on the conflict -- as in the longer it persists, the greater the international pressure to end it.

Okay, actually the PKK hasn't sent the price of oil skyrocketing; the jackasses that run Ankara have done that. But I'm not averse to taking advantage of a situation set up by said jackasses. Don't forget that Turkey has pipelines running natural gas from Iran, too, and PKK sent a warning to the jackasses on that last August. For more on the current speculation, see Global Guerrillas.

Americans love Kurds, right? Think again. Check out the story of Hamid Sayadi:

His story is one of the many that have both nothing and everything to do with 9/11. A witty and eloquent Kurdish-American in his 50s, Sayadi waved the flag of his adopted country and cheered its military for three decades — all to end up stripped to his underwear one day, in the boiler room of his workplace, he says, a ragged and sobbing husk of his former self.

The truth of what happened to him, and why, lies shrouded in the fog of endless war, and in the fog of work as well — that odd space where strangers are forced to co-exist for years on end. In that double blindness, even if the parties involved could agree on facts, who could say for sure what was appropriate and what was cruel, even unlawful?

Find the rest at SFGate.com.

Just in case you don't keep up with R. Tayip Erdoğan's social calendar, he'll be visiting in Washington next week. Word is that he's got ducks in order and plans to present them to Bush. You can read about that from the Fethullacı rag, Zaman. Note a few things, though:

1. Doesn't the list of arms allegedly seized from the PKK resemble some of the stuff found in the train cars HPG derailed back in May? To refresh your memory, check out DozaMe's information--complete with links to the original Turkish media sources. The paşas allowed the contents of one train car to leak briefly into the Turkish media and then the matter was censored, and we never learned what the entire contents was. My money says Erdoğan is bringing the list of all that weaponry and is going to pass it off as "seized from PKK."

What is conspicuously absent from this list of weapons are the American tanks which Erdoğan has insisted are in the PKK arsenal. Obviously the man is a victim of his own media propaganda.

2. The alleged affiliation of the American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN), the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI), and the Kurdish National Congress of North America (KNCNA) with the PKK would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. These organizations have no affiliation with PKK.

3. As for Barzanî's alleged small business loans to PKK members, Erdoğan should not confuse the PKK with the Turkish General Staff and OYAK.

THE PKK WAY

"Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria."
~ Article 3, Geneva Convention of 1949.

From Özgür Gündem:

KCK Executive Council Chairman Murat Karayılan remarked that the Turkish military shelled the region where 8 Turkish prisoners of war, captured by HPG, were located.

Karayılan also noted that,thus far,the Turkish government did not have any demand for the prisoners to be returned.

Regarding the situation of the prisoners, Karayilan said, "May the prisoners' families not worry. If the prisoners are in the hands of HPG, which they are, they are in good hands."

Saying that they will treat the prisoners in a proper way, according to international laws, Karayılan said, "They will not receive any mistreatment. Our people know how the Turkish government treats captive guerrillas. The situation of a guerrilla captured alive is never known." Mentioning that Turkey does not currently have any demand for the release of the prisoners, Karayılan said, "The Turkish army takes the issue of its soldiers' captivity very seriously, but even now it does not admit that they are captives."

However, stating that they are receiving calls from other organizations for the release of the soldiers, Karayılan stated the following: "As you know, several calls are being made for the release of the soldiers from different quarters, including DTP. Now we are evaluating these demands."

"I believe this problem will be solved and will not last long. For this end, the proper methods and channels must be formed. Besides, we cannot just release them right away, because they were on the battlefield. We have to think about everything through this perspective. We are open to talks for any delegation that may come. We also agree that the issue is supposed to be considered as a humanitarian situation. Therefore, we are calling the prisoners' families, civil society institutions, and people who value peace and brotherhood to take a stand against the Turkish government's so-called rescue operation, which directly targets the prisoners themselves. They are shelling the places where the prisoners are located. If an effort is made to stop this shelling, the pre-conditions for release would be well established."

STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE BE DAMNED!

"I'm a US citizen, I did not commit any crime, and they issued all these gag orders and they said I don't have my First Amendment right, I don't have my Fourth Amendment right, Fifth Amendment right. They had the Federal court here in DC going along with it... I went to Congress, they didn't do anything. I went to the Mainstream Media, they couldn't care less, really. Sure, it was a 'sensational' story - a whistleblower was fired and gagged, but nobody within the Mainstream Media ever asked 'Why the State Secrets Privilege? You know, she was a language specialist, it's not as if she was an undercover agent, or an informant... Why would they go to such an length to gag her?'"
~ Sibel Edmonds.

It looks like Sibel Edmonds is ready to go public with everything she knows and State Secrets Privilege be damned!

Luke Ryland has a thread up on the matter at Daily Kos. It would be excellent for Kurds in the US to go to that thread and post their support for Sibel because a full public disclosure of her information will significantly tear open the vortex of evil that is the Deep State.

From Luke's post there's a link of tidbits from The BRAD BLOG on the information Sibel is prepared to expose, including:

9/11 Related:

* Information omitted and covered-up regarding documented and confirmed case of a long-term FBI Informant & Asset who provided the FBI with specific information and warnings in April & June 2001 regarding 9/11 terrorist attacks.

* Information omitted & covered up regarding documented information in the procession of the FBI in July 2001 regarding blue prints and building composite information of Sky Scrapers being sent to certain groups in the Middle East by certain Middle-Eastern suspects in the State of Nevada.

* Information omitted & covered up regarding arrangements made between the State Department and certain countries to deport certain Middle-Eastern and Central Asian detainees from jails in New Jersey & New York off the record and without having them interrogated in November 2001. (Documents related to these suspects were forged at the FBI).

* Information omitted & covered up regarding nuclear related information illegally obtained by certain foreign entities and US persons (government officials) from several US labs being sold to a certain Middle-Eastern group in the United States in 1998-2000. The operation involved individuals with Diplomatic cover, foreign Ph.D. students, and US employees.

* Information omitted & covered up regarding money laundering & narcotics operations, some of which involved entities from the Middle East and the Balkans, in several US cities.

* Information omitted & covered up regarding certain Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI)-related activities linked to the 9/11 attacks between August & October 2001.

* Certain terrorist related Counterintelligence/FISA information & investigations were prevented from being transferred to counterterrorism & criminal division by the Department of State and the Pentagon; "preserving sensitive diplomatic relations" and "protecting certain US foreign business relations (mainly involving weapons procurement)" were cited as reasons.

* Intentional mistranslation & blocking of foreign language intelligence of FBI counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations.

Penetration of FBI, Department of State and Department of Defense:

* Melek Can Dickerson: FBI; formerly employed by the American Turkish Council (ATC) and American Turkish Association (ATA).

* Major Douglas Dickerson: Air Force, DIA; formerly worked with the American Turkish Council (ATC), had on going relationship with International Advisors Inc (IAI) principles who worked as lobbying arms for certain foreign nations and foreign non-state entities (some of whom were engaged in illegal activities in the United States and against US interests and national Security.)

* Cases reported by John M. Cole, Veteran FBI Counterintelligence Operations Manager, to the DOJ-IG & Congress involving Hadiya Roberts (ISI-Pakistan), and several other individuals.

* Documented cases under FBI counterintelligence surveillance between 1997 and 2002, involving US government officials from the Department of State, DOD, and certain elected officials who were recipients of regular payments made by state and non-state foreign entities, some involved in criminal operations against US interests & national security. These cases were prevented from being transferred to actionable criminal and/or counterterrorism divisions/investigations.

* A reported case of penetration of FBI New York Field Office by an Iranian rouge agent.

Corruption & illegal activities involving US persons:

* Illegal payments to several elected officials in Congress; on going (1997-2002).

* Joint illegal activities between certain foreign agents (state & non-state) and US lobbying firms, government officials (Pentagon and the Department of State) and several elected officials. These activities include obtaining and passing highly classified and sensitive DOD documents & bribery and/or coercion of US individuals.

* Nuclear black market related activities carried out by certain foreign groups/lobbying firms/businesses/individuals & US persons (former & current US government employees and officials).

FBI: incompetence: (Refer to DOJ-IG report confirming all & more)

* Hiring unqualified translators based on nepotism & cronyism, some of these translators did not even pass elementary English proficiency tests; some were granted Top Secret Clearance despite their highly questionable background.

* Language specialists charging the United States government for hours not worked and/or services not rendered (Fraudulent invoices, etc.)

* ...much more; please refer to the DOJ-IG Report.

You GO, Sibel!

SO MANY TOOLS, SO LITTLE TIME

The Saker has something up at his blog--Justin Raimondo's latest nonsense on the PKK. Here's my reply, posted also at VS's place:

Serial numbers of weapons allegedly "captured from PKK fighters" come from US weapons shipments? Really?? Does anyone, including Raimondo have any proof that the weapons in question were actually taken from "captured" PKK fighters? If this were so, why hasn't Turkey launched a huge photo-op of the facts? Why hasn't there been anything in the Turkish media? Because, believe me, it would have been all over the Turkish media if there were even a shred of truth to the accusation.

I have no doubt that the Ankara regime did get its hands on US weapons because it's very easy to purchase such weapons on the international weapons market and even on the black market in Iraq. What better place to gather those weapons than in Mûsil? How convenient that Turkey has a consulate in Mûsil. How convenient that the "diplomatic" staff of the Mûsil consulate can walk around Mûsil freely, with no one to hassle them. I mean, even residents of Mûsil can't do that without becoming targets.

Ignore the fact that Turkish consulates and embassies are fronts for MIT/JITEM activities, tell me how it is that Turkish "diplomats" can pull off such a feat as to walk around in safety in a place like Mûsil? Is it possible that MIT/JITEM "diplomats" are purchasing US weapons from places like that? Or what about offices of US-based Black Hawk Security, Inc., a Turkish mercenary company--like their brothers at Blackwater--that are based in Silopî, Zaxo, Kerkuk and Baghdad? This company is run by a former MIT under-secretary, the TSK general who was in charge of the special team in Kerkuk when it got bagged by US forces for attempting to conduct black operations in Iraq, and a couple of former Turkish "diplomats." Is it possible that these guys are running black ops and psyops for the regime, including the purchase of black market weapons?

Oh, you betcha.

If Murat Karayılan says (and he has) that weapons can be purchased anywhere by anyone in the region, then Turkish MIT and JITEM can do exactly the same thing--no matter what the American puppets in Ankara say.

The funny thing about Raimondo is that in reading his propaganda one would get the impression that PKK just popped out of thin air as a result of American involvement in Iraq in 2003. Like 99.99% of all Americans, Raimondo has no context. He knows nothing of the US role in the 12 September coup. He knows nothing of US gifts of billions of dollars worth of military hardware, most of it given to Turkey during the Clinton regime. Oh, yes, that hardware was GIFTS because it was all subsidized by the US taxpayer or given outright. Has Raimondo ever mentioned this fact? Has Raimondo ever mentioned who was on the receiving end of these very expensive GIFTS? Has Raimondo ever mentioned all the lovely events that took place in Diyarbakir Military Prison? Has Raimondo ever delved into the crimes committed by America's puppet regime in Ankara in the wake of the US-backed 12 September coup?

And the crimes continue.

No. You see, that's why Raimondo has no clue about what he's writing about. For him, it's a crime for the Kurdish people to fight back against the regimes that have engaged in gross human rights abuses for decades. Like Americans in general, it's irrelevant that tens of thousands of Kurds have been murdered since 12 September 1980 by the Ankara regime with the full support of the US. It's irrelevant for Americans that 3 to 4 million Kurds have been forcibly displaced from their homes or that 5,000 Kurdish villages have been destroyed by America's puppet regime in Ankara. It was irrelevant to Americans that Saddam destroyed 5,000 Kurdish villages in South Kurdistan--until plans for the invasion of Iraq began to solidify. Then Saddam's destruction of Kurdish life suddenly became a talking point.

When is the destruction of Kurdish life by America's regime in Ankara going to become a talking point for propagandists like Raimondo?

Or when will US backing of Turkish Islamists, especially the Turkish Islamist caliph, Fethullah Gülen going to get equal time by propagandists like Raimondo? Erdoğan, Gül, all the AKP, are followers of Fethullah Gülen . . . just as Turgut Özal was. You all remember him, right? Certainly Raimondo must remember him. He was the guy who established Turkish-Islamist synthesis with the American-backed Paşas, a move that led to the creation of Turkish Hezbollah so that America's puppet regime in Ankara could turn fight PKK on the cheap. Too bad it got so out of hand. Too bad the Ankara regime now has to export these guys to Chechnya.

Since we're talking about all this filth, let's bring Seymour Hersh into the conversation. Now here's a guy who goes to Turkey all the time, has a lot of Turkish sources, and gets all his information from them. So Hersh is basically the American mouthpiece of MIT/JITEM. Think I'm bullshitting? Go dig up anything that Hersh has ever written that's critical of the TC and give me the link. The guy's a pimp for the Turkish military. He's never heard of the filth America's puppet regime in Ankara has dumped on Kurds and continues to dump. He's never heard of the filth the mullah's regime has dumped on Kurds and continues to dump. In these respects, he's exactly like Raimondo.

Now, neither Hersh nor Raimondo has been to Qendil or around any PKK or PJAK guerrillas, but journalists from the Guardian have, and they have reported no American-made weapons in PJAK camps. This is consistent with the statement of Cemil Bayık last November. Nothing has changed.

It's ridiculous to think, as Hersh has asserted, that Israelis can teach any Kurd, particularly PKK Kurds, how to fight anyone. Go check Jonathan Randall, who writes that even in the 1960s, Israelis didn't have anything much to teach Kurds when it came to fighting Baghdad. They tweaked a little, but that was about it. Given the fact that PKK fought against Israelis as part of their initial training with the PLO in Lebanon, and given the fact that the Israelis were involved in Öcalan's betrayal, and you are unlikely to find any reason for PKK to come out of the mountains to be trained by amateurs. To suggest this idea, as Hersh has, and to propagate it, as Raimondo does, is an exercise in racism--"Golly, guys, those primitives in the mountains couldn't figure out anything if we didn't show them!"

Well, come on up into the mountains, Americans, with all your special friends from Turkey, and we'll see who teaches whom. Bring your body bags and cold-weather gear and watch out for those avalanches.

As for Raimondo's assertion of "separatism"--in his little dig about Greater Kurdistan--let's all have a reality check:

We would like as a movement to emphasize once again that the right solution is a democratic autonomy within the borders of Turkey. We believe that a solution in the unity of Turkey will be for the benefit of firstly the Kurdish people and all the people of the region.

Like Hersh, Raimondo has absolutely no concern for either truth or the Kurdish people. Like Hersh, he's the pawn of America's puppets in Ankara and that's why he's furthering his "War Party's agenda".

THE AMERICAN WAY

"The people who engaged in abuses will be brought to justice. The world will see how a free system, a democratic system, functions and operates, transparently, with no cover-ups."
~ Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, on Abu Ghraib.

It's the American way, the NATO way!

Torture claim is filed against Rumsfeld in France.

Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest.

Stupid French! Don't they have a no-fly list?

Rumsfeld, Cheney, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez . . . the entire American administration should be tried for war crimes and receive their proper punishment.

The entire French administration should be tried for assisting the flight of a war criminal.

VERY GOOD PEOPLE

"I like the PKK. They are very good people. They look after people here. The PKK are fighters but they are not dangerous people like other people, like Islamic people. Like Osama bin Laden."
~ Resident of Ranya, South Kurdistan.

The interest of the Progressive Historians has been piqued by YJA-STAR şehîd Devrim Siirt. Take a peek at the commentary by Gordon Taylor at the following links:

Moonlight in the Mountains

More Moonlight

Oramar

The Friends of Aynur

Turkish Army Captives

The Edge of Catastrophe


Okay, I confess that I have absolutely no idea what makes mainstream journalists tick--except the possibility of their getting a regular paycheck--and I'm suspicious when the old reactionary news services report accurately anything in the Kurdish world. The BBC must have someone running all over North and South Kurdistan, though, because they have another piece out, this time on PKK's neighbors in South Kurdistan:

In Ranya, local people have got used to their neighbours in the PKK.

"I like the PKK. They are very good people," one man said.

"They look after people here. The PKK are fighters but they are not dangerous people like other people, like Islamic people. Like Osama bin Laden," he added.

The recent shelling by the Turkish military in northern Iraq took place some distance from Ranya and residents in the town did not seem worried about the prospect of a Turkish military invasion.

(Photo: Warzer Jaff for The New York Times)

However, they did question the motives behind the army's plans.

"The Turkish government wants to attack all the Kurdish people and not just the PKK," said one middle-aged man.

"Turkey just wants to make things complicated here in the Kurdish region of Iraq," he said

[ . . . ]

In Ranya an elderly man in the market caught the mood of the town.

"The PKK are human beings like us," he said. "They just want to stay in their country.

"The Turkish government is like Saddam Hussein's regime. In the south of Turkey they cannot even study their own language. The situation is getting worse. We just want it to improve and for there to be peace," he added.

If you haven't figured out yet why DTP refuses to label PKK as "terrorists," another report from the BBC will explain it to you:

. . . [T]here is another dynamic at play in this region, where most people are ethnic Kurds.

Unlike in western Turkey, many here do not condemn what the PKK did. To them, the PKK remains the group that fought for their rights in the days when even saying you were a Kurd was seen as separatism.

The situation today has improved enormously. Even the most militant Kurdish nationalists admit that.

But ties to the PKK remain strong and there are plenty here who describe the violence as "self defence" against a military that has been targeting them for years.

"It's an instinct. People still feel the PKK is fighting for them," Mesrut explained.

A tiny man - dwarfed even further by his huge wooden desk - he runs a daily news-sheet in a town close to the Iraqi border.

That brings its own hazards. If he calls the PKK "terrorists" using official terminology, he gets threatened by locals.

With tension now so high, he uses news agency reports instead to avoid responsibility.

"People here still don't feel like equals in Turkey," Mesrut explains.

"And their children are still with the fighters in the mountains, so how can they condemn the PKK?"

Does everyone get it now?

In the meantime, there a couple of little snags that have developed against the international temper tantrum that the Ankara regime's been throwing. First, the US military is not going to go to Qendil and do anything . . . or so says the ranking US military officer in South Kurdistan:

Major General Benjamin Mixon, commander of Multi-National Division North, said Iraq's three northern provinces were under the control of the Kurdish provincial government and that he had no instructions to take action in the border area.

Asked what his forces planned to do against the Kurdish Workers Party or PKK rebels, Maj Gen Mixon said: "Absolutely nothing."

Pressed by reporters via a video link-up from Iraq whether there was anything US forces could do to head off a Turkish cross-border incursion, Maj Gen Mixon said, "I have not been given any requirements or any responsibility for that."

He said he had been given no instructions "that would even vaguely resemble" sending US forces into the Kurdish areas to reassure the Turks.

"Let me put it to you very clearly: the three northern provinces are under KRG [Kurdish regional government] provincial Iraqi control," he said.

"They have a security force, which you are all familiar with known as the pesh-merga. It's their responsibility to ensure the integrity of their particular provinces."

Translation: Screw you, Büyükanıt.

This tells me that the US is very aware of the geography, the climate, and the nature of guerrilla warfare, and they have no intention of getting involved with any kind of hunt on the ground for PKK fighters. They probably figure, "Better to let the Turks go in there,get the crap knocked out of them, and let them leave with their tails between their legs once more." And that's smart thinking.

The second snag came from another skunk at Turkey's garden party, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of the Iraqi parliament:

The speaker of Iraq's parliament warned Turkey on Thursday that his government would cut off the flow of oil from northern Iraq if Ankara followed through on its threat to level economic sanctions against the country.

Mahmoud al-Mashhadani's comments came a day after Turkey's top leadership agreed to recommend the government take economic measures to force cooperation by Iraqis against Kurdish rebels who have been staging cross-border attacks against Turkish troops.

"Northern Iraq cannot be pressured," al-Mashhadani told reporters in the Syrian capital of Damascus. "Iraq is a rich country, and if there are economic pressures, we will cut off the Ceyhan pipeline," he said, referring to two oil pipelines that run from northern Iraq to Turkey's Ceyhan oil terminal on the Mediterranean Sea.

The US will not commit fighters, Baghdad's going to turn off the spigot, no one supports a Turkish invasion, the Kurdish people overwhelmingly support PKK, and everyone--except the Ankara regime and the American Corporate State--wants a peaceful, political solution for the Kurdish situation in Turkey.

Every once in a while in this last week, I've had the suspicion that this current situation has been provoked by Ankara and stoked by the corporate media for the sole purpose of raising the price of a barrel of oil to over $90. It's just a matter of time before it reaches $100 a barrel, right?

Who benefits from this? Is it a coincidence that most of the Bush administration is composed of Big Oil pimps and that they were the ones who planned the invasion of Iraq well before September 11?

THE PKK, A GRAY WOLF RAMPAGE, AND ILISU UPDATE

"I didn't cry when I heard he'd been killed in fighting with Turkish troops. I'm proud of him, he is a martyr. He died honourably. He was fighting for Kurdish freedom, for Kurdish rights."
~ Amine Yiğit, mother of PKK şehîd.

Oh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. From the BBC:

On the little wooden table in front of us was a photograph of Sincan Yigit.

He was wearing makeshift army fatigues with a rifle slung across his back.

He was smiling, he looked happy.

The photo was taken shortly after Sincan left his village, family and old life behind, to start a new life as a guerrilla fighting for the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK.

"I didn't cry," she told me "when I heard he'd been killed in fighting with Turkish troops. I'm proud of him, he is a martyr."

"He died honourably. He was fighting for Kurdish freedom, for Kurdish rights."

In this part of Turkey Amine Yigit is not alone in losing a loved one to the PKK.

The south-eastern flank of the country is a Kurdish heartland where most of the nation's 20 million Kurds live.

Kurdish political leaders will tell you (in private) that at least 80% of their people support the rebels and are proud if a family member is "living in the mountains."

The the BBC goes on to screw the whole thing up with one line:

The PKK is fighting for a separate homeland in south-eastern Turkey for the Kurds.

Wrongo! Here's a newsflash for the BBC:

We would like as a movement to emphasize once again that the right solution is a democratic autonomy within the borders of Turkey. We believe that a solution in the unity of Turkey will be for the benefit of firstly the Kurdish people and all the people of the region.

I would have thought that someone at the BBC would have figured out how to operate the Google search engine by now.

Hevallo has a little comparison between contemporary Turkey and Fascist Germany because of the recent lynching attempt in Bursa and other acts of violence against Kurds in Turkey. Not only are the fascists acting up there, but they've also been acting up in Belgium this week. More on that from The Brussels Journal:

Tonight (Wednesday evening) heavy rioting erupted in Turkish quarters of Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Buses and trams were attacked. Several cars were torched and shops destroyed. Police forces were unable to restore law and order in the boroughs of Sint-Joost-ten-Node and Schaarbeek where since last Sunday the animosity among Turks is running high. Turkish flags are omnipresent. In some streets the Turkish crescent and star adorns almost every house.

The Turks’ anger was provoked by rising tension with Kurds along the Iraqi-Turkish border and by the debate in the American Congress about the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915. On Sunday night Turkish youths in Sint-Joost destroyed the pub of Peter Petrossian, an ethnic Armenian who had to flee for his life. Apparently, some Turks think that by attacking the Armenians in Brussels they can convince the world that the Turks never committed a genocide of the Armenians.

Tonight the youths attacked Kurdish shops. They also set fire to several cars.

Belgium’s Muslim population consists mainly of Moroccans and Turks. In the past rioting Muslim youths were mostly Moroccans. The Turkish community is controlled by the Turkish embassy. The latter used to restrain the Turkish population so as not to upset the Belgian authorities and thwart Turkey’s chances of EU admission. This policy seems to have changed recently. In Antwerp, too, Turkish youths demonstrated tonight.

And from Expatica:

The unauthorised protests came after Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel targets along the Iraqi border on Wednesday as the National Security Council in Ankara urged economic sanctions against Iraqi Kurds accused of backing the insurgents.

Hundreds of youths began rallying in the high-immigration Brussels districts in small groups after 5:00 pm after receiving text messages.

Receiving text messages from whom? The Turkish embassy? Enquiring minds wanna know.

And while no one was looking, Turkey began to ethnically cleanse the region to make way for the Ilisu Dam:

The European Ilisu campaign has learned during a site visit, that without the knowledge of responsible authorities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the Turkish government has begun to expropriate the first affected villages at the controversial Ilisu dam site on the Tigris river in a move that violates conditions imposed by European export credit agencies.

Expropriated people are extremely angry at this development and the affected population’s overall indignation at the Ilisu dam project is growing. Christine Eberlein of the Swiss organisation "Berne Declaration" and member of the European Ilisu campaign observed this when she visited the villages of Ilisu and Karabayir in mid-October. Her report reveals the miserable compensation packages offered and the unfair processes by which the Turkish authorities are forcing the affected families to resettle. A Kurdish Human Rights Project delegation made similar observations in September during a visit to the affected areas.

By attaching 150 conditions to their approval of export credit guarantees, the governments of Germany, Austria and Switzerland intended to ensure that those facing resettlement receive fair compensations and new income possibilities. Although the final guarantee contracts have not yet been signed, the Turkish government has started the expropriations - completely ignoring these conditions.

Good try, guys, but you know what? I don't believe that crap about "responsible authorities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland" not knowing a damned thing about these forced displacements. The historical record simply is not there. The Germans and the Austrians forcibly displaced certain of their populations back in the 1930s and 1940s, and the people later claimed they didn't know a damned thing about it. Switzerland tried to claim that it didn't know a damned thing about how all that stolen gold was deposited in Swiss accounts and they certainly did not know the gold came from forcibly displaced populations.

They knew very well what they were doing sixty years ago and they know very well now. On top of that, there has never existed a capitalist anywhere who's paid anyone "fair compensations and new income possibilities" for anything. That just is not how capitalism works; it works by screwing your neighbor to make a profit. In this case, the neighbors were just a little further removed from the European neighborhood. As the article states, no signatures have been put to anything yet, so I'm certain that these filthy vultures have done it on purpose, in collusion with their fascist Turkish partners.

Goran from Zanetî has an excellent article on the situation at ZNet:

Today, the international community and in particular, the U.S., seems to be coming together to urge against a Turkish invasion only after it has ironically empowered the same groups involved to continue with their conflict for the past decades. Only minimal research of the seemingly everlasting conflict is required in order for anyone to see the assistance provided by foreign powers to Turkey that have instigated the conflict to the level it has reached today. While the president of the United States has recently made some requests to Turkey to find a political, rather than military, solution to the problem with the PKK, the same president was taking an opposite stance on this issue just a little more than one year ago; a stance of unconditional support for the Turkish government in their military campaign to pursue what they deem is a terrorist organization.

One year prior to the Turkish parliament's approval for an invasion of Iraq, Kurdish rebel leaders in coordination with the president of Iraq attempted to negotiate the PKK’s fifth unilateral ceasefire on several key conditions. The conditions were based on a political settlement of the Kurdish issue in Turkey, which included democratic reform as well as amnesty for the rebels. Despite public support for the ceasefire by members of the Iraqi government, and even certain officials in the European Union, as a possible solution to the decades-long conflict, the Turkish and United States governments rejected the ceasefire on all its terms.

Further provoking the conflict, the Bush Administration appointed former USAF General Joseph Ralston to assist Turkey with their military campaign. Not surprisingly, Ralston who is also a board member of the corporate arms-giant Lockheed Martin and a member of the most powerful Turkish lobby group in the United States, did not do much to try to solve the issue. Instead, Ralston overlooked one of the largest sales of American weaponry between Lockheed and the Turkish military. Lockheed and its stockholders would in turn become a primary beneficiary of the continued conflict between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish military.

[ . . . ]

Despite these realities, consecutive American administrations have refused to acknowledge that the continuous violations carried out against Turkey's Kurdish minority have any correlation with the American weaponry used to carry out these violations. Hence, weapon sales continue further arming a deadly conflict.

[ . . . ]

The mainstream American media has become gravely concerned and many statements, and even headlines, bare the phrase that the "Kurdish problem" has now become an "American problem". However, the United States' complicity in the conflict has made it an "American problem" all along; an American problem that needs U.S. pressure on Turkey for a peaceful solution very quickly.

The Ankara regime has not changed and it will not seek a peaceful political solution unless extreme pressure is brought to bear by the international community, the same community that helped Turkey and the US avoid any discussion of the Kurdish reality in 1999 with the betrayal of Öcalan.

There has also been a bit of a discussion at Kurdish Aspect about what HPG should do with the Turkish prisoners-of-war, here, here, and here, the gist of all being that HPG should hand the POW's over to international NGO's.

And if Turkey pressures the suggested NGO's not to "cooperate with terrorists," just as they have pressured American politicians to deny the Armenian Genocide, then what? And where were all these people when HPG handed Hakan Açil and Coşkun Kırandi back to the Ankara regime? Did they praise HPG for sticking to the laws of land warfare and Geneva Conventions at that time? Did they point out how humanitarian HPG was or did they notice how un-"terroristic" such hand-overs were?

No, but this news was ignored by everyone. Now is not the time to think about handing over any POW's. Snow is coming and everyone will be tucked away in the mountains for the winter. It'll be better to think about all of this next spring and then decide what to do after tempers have settled down and all.

Finally, there are some things you just can't make up. From TDN:

A group of fishermen in the Black Sea city of Zonguldak yesterday first condemned the escalating terrorist acts carried out by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and then protested the fine imposed on them for fishing in a restricted zone by the coast guard. The local fishermen boarded 15 fishing boats and sailed around the harbor shouting slogans against the PKK in what is reportedly a restricted zone.

Later in the day they proceeded to the Black Sea Regional Command port to protest the fines that ranged from YTL 5,000 - 15,000. A coast guard vessel tried to prevent the men from entering the military zone. Fisherman Muharrem Ali Köse said: “We want what is right. You needlessly fined us. Fishing feeds 1,000 mouths so give us back our licenses and cancel the fines.” The men then tied their boats together, left them in the military zone and returned home on a single boat.

Köse said a camera had recorded them fishing in a restricted zone and added that the coast guard forced them to abandon their profession by imposing exorbitant fines and canceling their licenses.

Laz. They can only be Laz.

A CLEAR-EYED VIEW OF PKK

"It's a delicate situation, and one that requires a clear-eyed view of what's actually happening. But both American press coverage, and America's official response to the problem have been misleading. I've seen a series of errors in fact and judgment that if uncorrected, could drag the United States into yet another regional conflict."
~ Andrew Lee Butters.

I have read so much garbage about the situation with Northern Kurds and PKK in the last couple of weeks that there is no point in even responding to it all. Take a browse through Technorati or Google Blog search with the terms "Kurds," "Kurdistan," or "PKK," and you'll see exactly what I mean. What is most striking about posts on the situation is the extremely high level of ignorance displayed by most who write on the subject. None of these writers has any context; they know nothing about the Dirty War; they don't even know that there are 20 million Kurds in Southeast Turkey.

Most of these are blowing their opinions out of their asses, and are totally bereft of any knowledge of the Kurdish reality in The Southeast--except, of course, for one particular blogger from The Netherlands, who admits he has a Turkish girlfriend, in which case we know from what part of his anatomy he opines. Then we have the propagandists for the extreme Right, neocon elements (like the freaks at Pajamas Media), or the nutcases on what passes for the Left (like the lemmings at Daily Kos).

The most pathetic thing about all of this garbage is that, in the West, it is nothing to access information published by fairly neutral parties, such as human rights organizations, in order to learn context. There is little censorship of this kind of information on the Internet so there is no excuse for all the stupidity.

Having said all that, there has been one voice from Western journalism that has written two short analyses of the situation that have been on target. One was published last week and one has been published today. Both are from a journalist who's been to Qendil and, thus, understands the geography as well as the implications of "official" reportage (read: Propaganda).

From Andrew Lee Butters at TIME:

1) The press keeps repeating that the PKK are a separatist group. The PKK was indeed a separatist group in the 1970's and 1980's, a time when the Turkish state practiced widespread discrimination against its Kurdish citizens, including banning the use of the Kurdish language. But the PKK has given up its demands that an independent Kurdish state be carved out of Turkey, and moderates in the organization have called for a peaceful, democratic solution to the Kurdish question.

Why does this matter? Because the PKK's new platform is a basis upon which Turkey could start political negotiations. But instead of dealing with the demands, Turkey either tries to ignore the PKK or destroy them. Neither has worked.

2) I keep seeing things written about the PKK staging "cross-border raids" and I myself once made that mistake, writing back in June. But in fact most of the fighting that is taking place is well inside Turkey. There are PKK guerillas scattered all over Turkey, perhaps twice as many as there are inside Iraq. And although the most recent attack on Sunday did take place in the border area near Iraq, that doesn't necessarily mean these fighters were coming from Iraq.

Why does this matter? Because it gives the impression that Turkish miltary operations in Iraq, or the "hot pursuit" of PKK fighters might stop clashes with the PKK and help the Turks dismantle the PKK. But they won't. The main PKK bases in Iraq are far away from the Turkish border. They are in fact near the border with Iran and would be extremely difficult to reach except by air-strikes, which are of little use aginst guerilla forces. They will do nothing to stop fighting with the PKK inside Turkey.

Likewise, in a few places I've also seen statements about how the PKK bases in northern Iraq are key to sustaining the PKK's armed struggle. Perhaps, but perhaps not. The PKK has significant fund-rasing and political activities in Europe, including satellite television stations. But Turkey isn't threatening Europe. Just Iraq and America.

3) When Turkish soldiers are killed by the PKK, the press calls them "PKK attacks." But is the PKK attacking or is the Turkish army attacking the PKK and sustaining casualties? The Turkish army is engaged in large-scale operations in PKK areas. A PKK spokesman told me today that these fights are taking place when Turkish search-and-destroy missions stumble upon PKK fighters or are ambushed. We don't really know the truth one way or another, because the Turkish army has sealed off the areas where it is operating.

Again, this matters because the Turkish army's version of events makes it sound like the PKK is hell-bent on provoking the Turkish army. And very possibly hard-liners within the PKK are determined to goad the Turkish military into invading northern Iraq, which would be a disaster for Turkey in the long-run. But it is also possible that hard-line elements in the Turkish military are trying to provoke clashes with the PKK and use that as an excuse to threaten the Kurds of northern Iraq, and gain leverage over its civilian adversaries in the Turkish government. It's no secret that there's no love lost between the former Islamists of the ruling AK party, and Turkey's secular generals. And Turks have been long implacably hostile to the whole idea of a Kurdish mini-state in northern Iraq, and refuse to recognize the Kurdistan Regional Government there.

4) I've seen a few things written about Iraqi Kurds allowing the PKK to use northern Iraq as a safe haven, and US Undersecretary of State David Satterfield today accused the Iraqi Kurds of not doing enough to control the PKK. But the Iraqi Kurds don't have very many options. Their pershmerga soldiers are busy in Baghdad and Mosul and along the Kurdistan's borders with Arab Iraq, trying to keep the lid on Iraq's raging insurgency. How are they supposed to also defeat a hardened-guerilla group in mountain terrain -- a job that the huge Turkish army hasn't been able to do in 30 years?

The reality is that the PKK's presence in Iraq is the result of an unresolved Turkish civil war spreading into the failing state next door. There needs to be a political solution: peace talks, amnesty for the PKK, reforms to how Turkey deals with its Kurdish population, PKK disarmament with international monitors, security coordination between Iraq and Turkey, and Turkish recognition of the Kurdistan region in Iraq.

Gelek sipas, Andrew. Dest xweş.

KCK ANNOUNCES PEACE INITIATIVE

To the Press and Public-Opinion

Kurdish question which awaits its resolution is the reality of the Middle East. It is well known that various social incidents occur due to this question in Turkey, Iran and Syria. We, as the Kurdish side, want to resolve this question -one of the fundamental questions of our region- through dialog and peaceful means and without any changes to the present borders. The Kurdish people only want their natural rights which stem from being a nation. Rights such as political freedom, identity and cultural rights are embedded within the fundamental rights excepted by the modern world and expressed in Universal Human Rights Declaration. Resolution to this question can only be possible through the reply of the relative states in relation to these humane requests. A solution developed along these lines will play an important role in the democratization process of and stability in the region

Our leader Abdullah Ocalan has repeatedly proposed solution projects through peaceful-democratic means and has called for many cease-fires. The last of those cease-fires was called in mid-2006 upon calls from national and international powers call. Hence a unilateral cease-fire for an independent period thereby creating suitable conditions for a democratic solution.

However the Turkish government did not utilize these opportunities while the Turkish Army evaluated the cease-fire adversely to the affect that it is a scenario to dismember Turkey and hence has doubled-tripled its military operations in order to put an end to the cease-fire and no-clash atmosphere. Within this period a total of 485 operations with the aim of annihilation have occurred, some jointly carried out with the Iranian state. As a result of these operations heavy casualties have been suffered by both sides. Commander for Ground Forces of the Turkish Army, Ilker Basbug, did not deny that such operations were taking place and in a press conference on 5 October 2007 in Diyarbakir stated that they have put the PKK under serious pressure through the operations during the year and that “this pressure shall increasingly continue during autumn and winter of this year””. He added that “until there are armed cadres of the PKK such operations shall continue”. As can be acknowledged Turkish state authorities have admitted not to have recognized the cease-fire declared and that they would do everything within their power to remove the existence of the cease-fire.

The level of clashes that continue today is a direct result of this mentality and policy of denial. We have not officially ended the cease-fire. However the conditions for a cease-fire is not present due to one-sided attacks of the Turkish state. Instead of taking up our movements efforts to solve the question through peaceful methods and the atmosphere it has created to resolve the question through democratic means the Turkish state has violently imposed to eliminate all dynamics of Kurdish freedom. On the one hand regions like Sirnak, Siirt and Hakkari have been declared to be military zones and on the other hand civilians have been executed and the suppression, arrests and blackmailing of the Kurdish people’’s legal institutions has reached a level where even the martial law administration was not. The Turkish state has also worsened the already bad isolation on the Kurdish people’s leader held at the Imrali Sole-inmate Closed Prison and has developed inhuman practices and despite the poisoning and the serious health problems he still has not had medical treatment. Hence all methods have been employed to break the will of the Kurdish peoples and their demands.

During the general elections held in Turkey on 22 July 2007 all methods have been employed once again to disable the Kurdish representatives to enter the parliament including new regulations. Despite these attempts a group of parliamentarians have entered the parliament of Turkey with their Kurdish identity giving an important chance for dialog and a democratic solution. However the AKP government and the Turkish state instead of utilizing this chance positively has put these parliamentarians under serious pressure and developed methods to give themselves up. Despite immunity of the parliamentarians decisions are being taken for their trial and the oppression and threats are becoming chronic. In parallel, court cases opened against the Kurdish Mayors are ending with some being removed from office where others being arrested thereby increasing threats on all.

In reply to the cease-fire announced by our movement the Turkish state has moved to annihilate the Kurdish Freedom Movement in Turkish Kurdistan. The loss of lives of soldiers in clashes with the guerrilla forces, who are at their defence positions due to attacks by the Turkish army, have been shown to be the reason behind the development of racism and militarism within the Turkish society and the decision from the Turkish parliamentary for an incursion inot Iraqi Kurdistan.

One of the aims of this decision by the parliament is two fold; one is to eliminate our movement and the other is to eliminate the Kurdish Federal structure. In order to achieve this aim it has sought to create conflict between Kurds and to destroy stability. However at a time when both the Federal government of the Iraqi Kurdistan and the Kurdish MPs within the parliament can play a role to create the right conditions for dialog and peaceful solution of the question both are being targeted and left out. Therefore it is quite clear that the Turkish state does not want the Kurdish people both in North and South Kurdistan to have a will-power and hence this is the reason behind the increase of attacks. The other aim of the decision is to retaliate against the Armenian genocide draft bill on the agenda of US Congress by destroying stability in Iraqi Kurdistan hence putting Iraq into further turmoil. In this context, the main aim of the anti-Kurdish, anti-PKK pact of Turkey, Iran and Syria is to strengthen the statute that has no benefit to the people of the region and to put pressure on the USA.

The Turkish state not only is the one that attacks our forces but also exaggerates its casualties and keeps them on the agenda to show a false image of itself being under attack. This is not the reality. The Turkish state is not the aggrieved party not the party that is being attacked, they are the party actively attacking. Kurdish freedom forces have been loyal to the cease-fire that they have declared. However they have been forced to self-defense in the face of developing attacks. We unreservedly state that in the event of Turkish state ending its attacks the atmosphere of increased tension shall leave itself to a non-clash atmosphere. Our movement and people have reached a level of organization, power and might to defend itself under all conditions. However we want to resolve our problems through peaceful-democratic and civilized methods not through armed clashes hence we prefer the path of peace and dialog.

Therefore we would like to once again state that we are ready to discuss a political solution project and that we will act with the responsibility that falls on our shoulders in order to create a peaceful period. However in face of operations developed, like today, to break the will for freedom of the Kurdish people and their gains shall be most naturally met with the self-defense of our people both in the North and in the South. There will be no hesitations to meet the annihilation operations of the Turkish state.

We invite all our people in four parts of Kurdistan and overseas to show more solidarity , to stand up with national-democratic unity spirit and to abort these unjust attacks. The important historical period which we are in requires that our people shows its popular power and by raising its voice of insistence on democratic solution plays its role.

We call on the Turkish state to discontinue with the dangerous adventure it has taken up with the decision of the Turkish parliament which in effect means war mobilization against the Kurdish people and to recognize that this would harm both the peoples of Turkey and the Kurdish people and to respond positively to our movement’s calls and efforts to resolve the question through democratic and peaceful means.

This mobilizations against the Kurdish people both in the North and the South has the characteristics to end a thousand year friendship between the Kurds and the Turks and lead to damages that can not be restituted. We invite all democratic forces in Turkey in favor of peace and fraternity to shoulder their responsibilities and to make efforts for long-lasting peace and stability in the region in the light of rational solution of our leader’s projects.

We call on all international forces, the USA and the EU, to make an effort to resolve the Kurdish question through peaceful-democratic means and not through violence and to stand against the unjust attacks and state terror of the Turkish state against the Kurdish people by playing their roles in the development of peaceful period.

We would also like to underline that the Kurdish people will be insistent on being a power of their own will and stability and hence are determined to respond to efforts of resolving the Kurdish question in accordance with universal law norms by playing their role in the democratization, peace and stability of the region.


22.10.2007

KCK Execution Council Presidency

************

PKK announced its Peaceful Initiative


In a statement published in the Firat News Agency, in response to the plea of Mr. Jalal Talabani, President of the Republic of Iraq, and Massoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan region, PKK, today announced its willingness to cease-fire and move toward political working to resolve problems through diplomatic channels.

A statement by the Kurdistani Community Organization (a political wing of PKK) announced that Kurdistan Workers Party is ready to discuss a political settlement for the Kurdish issue far away from the violence, through peace and dialogue ,and within the existing boundaries of the States in which Kurdish people live.

The statement added: "We call for the simplest human rights of the Kurdish people, such as recognition of its Kurdish identity and allow it to enjoy exercising cultural and political work freely. Finding a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue in the region will be an important step towards the development of democracy and stability in the region. As an initiative from as to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey, we frequently declared unilateral cease-fires, but the response of successive Turkish governments and the Turkish army was by iron and fire ,operations , large and intense military campaigns in Kurdistan, involving thousands of military troops backed by all types of conventional weapons."

As stated in the statement: "What is taking place now of clashes in the area are the result of Turkish policies and thinking of denying Kurdish people issue in Turkey, and we believe the entry of some representatives to the Turkish Parliament is a great opportunity for the Turkish government to develop the dialogue and find a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish issue, but unfortunately, we have not seen so far by the government of the Justice and Development Party only indictments , threats to these representatives ,the arrest of some Kurdish mayors and putting them in jail only because they spoke in the Kurdish language. They have not been content with that, but merely issued a note to attack on the Iraqi Kurdistan region, while the Kurdistan region of Iraq has its official existence at the Iraqi and international levels, while the leaders of the region are only demanding political and peaceful solutions to the Kurdish issue."

The statement issued by the Kurdistani Community Organization on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers Party says: "At the time, we declare our readiness to defend our people and its issue we stress that we always prefer a peaceful and democratic solution, through civilized methods, so we extend the hand of peace once again, we are ready to discuss the issue and to negotiate with others to solve this issue. Besides, we are asking the Turkish side to stop its military operations and do not interference in Kurdistan region of Iraq, if Turkey persisted in its hostility against the Kurdish people we will have to defend ourselves and our people."

Source: Firat News Agency, 2007-10-22.

GROTESQUE SELF-DECEPTION

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
~ Mark Twain.

The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) denies the existence of 20 million Kurds in Turkey. This makes it very easy for them because by denying the existence of 20 million Kurds in Turkey, they don't have to get involved in the mess of Turkey's brutality and racist policies toward those very same 20 million. They refuse to admit that a people that endures such brutality will rise up against it in a legitimate armed defense. They don't have to jeopardize their precious relationship with a regime that invites HAMAS to Ankara. They don't have to acknowledge the modern Turkish state's genocide of Kurds.

Hell, they refuse to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

Everyone should remember these things the next time they bring up the Holocaust.

Turkey's Islamist Foreign Minister, Ali Babacan, is giving the same old excuses to reject continue to reject the 1 October 2006 unilateral ceasefire as Büyükanıt, Başer, and Ralston did a year ago:

Cease-fires are "possible between states and regular forces," a stern-faced Babacan said. "The problem here is that we're dealing with a terrorist organization."

The US deals with terrorists in Iraq and did a lot of arms sales to Iran--known as the Iran-Contra scandal. The UK has finally come to terms with the terrorists that it created for itself in Northern Ireland. The Ankara regime, as previously mentioned, invites HAMAS leaders to Ankara for talks and everyone knows HAMAS is on The List®.

The Americans finally admit they're terrified of having to think about guarding the Turkish-Iraqi border, so they blame the KRG. It's really pretty funny to hear criticism about how the KRG has been lax in securing any border when it comes from the very same people who've utterly ruined Iraq and Afghanistan. It really takes a lot of guts to say something that hypocritical in public.

In another example of a total lack of shame, the leading US ragsheet, the NYTimes has published a glowing report of PKK's sister organization, PJAK.

Zaman has published a list of names of the Turkish soldiers captured by HPG. Funny, but that's the same list of names that HPG posted on its website the other day. Is it a good idea for Zaman to be copying-and-pasting information from the big, bad PKK? Sources close to Rastî indicate that the captured soldiers are doing well.

It will be interesting to see if the Ankara regime wants their soldiers back badly enough to officially negotiate a release. If not, IHD and other NGOs will end up arranging the release as they did with Hakan Açil and Coşkun Kırandi.

Some photos from HPG via Akşam:









And a link to more photos from Milliyet.

I guess that since these photos are published in Turkish media, and since Zaman is copying the names of the captured from HPG's website, then HPG must have really captured these guys, eh?

AN INVITATION

There's a new Bakûrî Kurdish blog called Rastbêj and it looks like the author has posted an invitation to the TSK.

Let's hope Büyükanıt takes up the invitation.

PKK: BALL'S IN ANKARA'S COURT

"It is obvious that the Turkish Government and its army cannot solve the problem by the violence as it already tried this so many times. Politics of “surrender or destroy” have inflicted only harm to our people and caused the destabilization of our region. A democratic solution by means of dialogue will in contrast clear the way for a democratic development that can only be positive for Turkey, if only Turkey responds positively towards the ceasefire."
~ PKK Ceasefire Statement, 1 October 2006,

Western media, including Turkish media, have been reporting on the killing of Turkish soldiers over the weekend as a result of clashes the TSK initiated against the HPG in the area of Culemêrg (Hakkari), Yüksekova. Their body counts vary between nine to sixteen kills. HPG's website reports a body count of 35 and lists the names of the eight captives. The TSK has confirmed that eight of its troops are missing.

By the way, anyone who makes the claim that these operations are the result of "rebels" crossing the Iraq border, has no clue as to the geography of the region. These operations are not "cross-border" operations.

The IHT reports the TSK's confirmation of the captives and also reports that thirty-four HPG gerîlas have become şehîds but, on Sunday, HPG dismissed the count of thirty-four HPG şehîds as another example of Turkey's psychological warfare efforts.

More from the IHT:

A senior rebel commander, Bahoz Erdal, said the soldiers were in rebel hands, the Firat News Agency reported.

"Right now, these soldiers are hostages in the hands of our forces," Firat quoted Erdal as saying.

"Their health condition is good. One of them was slightly injured but was being taken care of by our medics."

Erdal said the families of soldiers should not worry about the fate of their sons. "We have not harmed them and we will not," Erdal said.

There is no reason to doubt that the captives are being well-cared for since Turkish security forces have been captured in the past and released in good condition, as was the case with Hakan Açil and Coşkun Kırandi.

The IHT goes on to mention a ceasefire that Celal Talabanî claimed would be announced by KCK today:

The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said Monday that Kurdish rebels would announce a cease-fire later in the day, according to his office.

Kurdish rebels last declared a cease-fire in June [Wrong--Mizgîn] and the rebel group said Monday that the cease-fire was still in place, the Firat News Agency reported. The cease-fire announcement in June [Wrong again--Mizgîn] did not halt fighting.

"We have not officially ended the cease-fire," the group said in a statement in response to Talabani, Firat reported.

"We're stating clearly that if the Turkish state stops its attacks, then increased tensions will be replaced with a clash-free environment."

But the rebel group said it was determined to defend itself against Turkish attacks. "We are calling on Turkey to give up a risky adventure and give a positive response to our peaceful and democratic initiatives for the solution of the problem," it said.

There was no ceasefire in June.

The ceasefire was called on 1 October 2006. When the Turkish military ends its attacks, there will be no fighting and this has been the stand of KCK for over a year. Nothing has changed in this regard. The information quoted from Firat News accurately reflects the KCK's position since last October but IHT's version doesn't mention that when the Ankara regime makes the offer of a democratic solution, KCK will be happy to consider it.

Recall that Yaşar Büyükanıt, Edip Başer, and Joseph Ralston were the three that refused to recognize the PKK's fifth unilateral ceasefire. They also refused to recognize PKK's democratic solution. Here's how Kevin McKiernan put it last year:

Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, recently played a key role in behind-the-scenes negotiations to disarm the guerrillas. The result was a cease-fire announcement on Oct. 1 by the rebels, who also declared they might hand over weapons to US forces in Iraq in exchange for Turkish concessions that include human rights reforms and amnesty for rebels. In a speech in Istanbul last month Ralston opposed amnesty and dismissed the cease-fire, declaring he would never "negotiate with terrorists."

Büyükanıt, Başer, and Ralston--those three, along with Lockheed Martin and their puppets in the American government, really screwed Turkey good.

In one last item, since the Ankara regime gained a lot of attention from its psychological operations in Beytüşşebap, it decided to do a similar operation in Culemêrg, Yüksekova--the same area where the 35 Turkish soldiers were whacked. This time the Ankara regime attempted to massacre a wedding convoy, but their efforts only resulted in injuries instead of deaths.

Interesting, isn't it, that the Ankara regime always targets civilians in those parts of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan in which major TSK operations are ongoing? Just as three weeks ago there were major operations in Beytüşşebap and the regime massacred a dozen people, so this last weekend, during major operations in Culemêrg, Yüksekova, the regime tried to massacre civilians in a wedding convoy.

Ah, well, that's NATO's law of land warfare for you.

THE DEEP STATE'S CANDIDATE

"We should work more to both protect the Kurds and make sure they will not provide shelter to terrorists in their territory."
~ Hillary Clinton.

A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for the war industry, according to Britain's Independent. The military-industrial complex (MIC) realizes that the Republicans stand a proverbial snowball's chance of winning the White House in the next election, so the employees of the MIC have chosen Hillary with their campaign bucks:

Mrs Clinton's wooing of the defence industry is all the more remarkable given the frosty relations between Bill Clinton and the military during his presidency [Bullshit--Mizgîn]. An analysis of campaign contributions shows senior defence industry employees are pouring money into her war chest in the belief that their generosity will be repaid many times over with future defence contracts.

Employees of the top five US arms manufacturers – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon – gave Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to the Republicans. "The contributions clearly suggest the arms industry has reached the conclusion that Democratic prospects for 2008 are very good indeed," said Thomas Edsall, an academic at Columbia University in New York.

In spite of what the article says about Bill Clinton's relationship with the military itself--certainly not as cozy a relationship as he had with any number of women--Bill Clinton was the MIC's dream come true. From Multinational Monitor, 1995:

Arms industry lobbyists say they are delighted with the Clinton administration’s record. “Clinton has been very helpful through [Commerce Secretary] Ron Brown,” says Ana Stout, executive vice president of the American League for Export Assistance, Inc., an industry association that promotes unimpeded defense sales to U.S. “friends and allies.”

“We’re quite satisfied with what we see the thrust of the policy to be,” adds Joel Johnson, vice president for international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association. “It’s 180 degrees different from Carter. They won’t throw up obstacles to every arms sale to every country. The Clinton people are very supportive of specific sales. They are more dynamic than any administration we’ve seen.”

Under the sidebar:

A fellow NATO ally, the United States is Turkey’s closest military partner. Between 1987 and 1991, 77 percent of all arms deliveries to Turkey came from the United States, according to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

For fiscal years 1986-1995, Congress has appropriated $5.1 billion in military aid for Turkey, making it the third-largest recipient after Israel and Egypt. In terms of commercial sales, Turkey is the fifth-largest consumer of U.S. arms after Saudi Arabia, Japan, Taiwan and Egypt. Turkey bought $9.4 billion in U.S. arms during fiscal years 1984-1993. In 1994 alone, Turkey’s counterinsurgency campaign cost an estimated $6.5 billion.

The Clinton administration helped Turkey acquire more cluster bombs, which were used on the Kurdish people:

Human Rights Watch’s Arms Project revealed in December 1994 that the U.S. government is weighing a Turkish request to buy almost 500 U.S.-made CBU-87 Combined Effects Munitions (CEMs), or cluster bombs.

[ . . . ]

One type of bomb the Turkish air force dropped on Zaleh in January of 1994 was the U.S.-made, Vietnam-era Mk20 Rockeye cluster bomb. This is the only cluster bomb now thought to be in the Turkish arsenal. “Turkey already has [cluster bombs] in its inventory,” says an arms lobbyist, who asks not to be identified. “Human rights shouldn’t be involved. What does [blocking new cluster bombs exports] accomplish?”

We know that Turkey is using cluster bombs against the civilian population in South Kurdistan yet again.

And there's more on Bill Clinton's illegal arms transfers to Turkey, from Human Rights Watch and at the Federation of American Scientists.

Let us also remember that our friends at The Cohen Group all worked for the Clinton administration, with William Cohen as Defense Secretary, Marc Grossman in a number of State Department jobs including ambassador to Turkey, and Joseph Ralston as military head of NATO.

Deep State Hillary will not be any better than her husband when it comes to the situation in North Kurdistan? The situation there is a return to the Dirty War, complete with the state's black operations, a new OHAL, and greater efforts at enforcing a media blackout on the area.

In fact, she may be worse; females are always the more deadly of the species.

POETIC JUSTICE, PRIVACY, AND A PUPPY

"Linux was made by foreign terrorists to take money from true US companies like Microsoft."
~ Anonymous.

Ah! Poetic justice.

Now, on to more important things . . .

I posted something yesterday about how the NSA is inside your Windows box and how you could fix that problem. Today there's something on computer security at the Stress blog, but you really only need to read it if you insist upon using windows. As stated there: "These rules only apply to Windows users. Mac users are too rich to care, and Linux is immune."

Earlier in the day, CNET published an excellent post on security for instant messaging:

The major IM networks, which include AOL IM/iChat, MSN, and Google Talk (when using the gmail embedded chat function) all send data over the clear. Using IM over an unencrypted wireless network (such as at a coffee shop or hotel lobby) is an open invitation for nasty folks to read your conversations. Those people using the downloadable Google Talk client will at least have their conversations encrypted between their own computers and Google's servers - but that doesn't solve the problem of the NSA forcing/paying Google to hand over your data. Likewise, AOL confirmed in 2005 that if presented with a court order, it would let the government eavesdrop on IM conversations between customers.

The solution then, is to use an encrypted instant-messaging program--one made by a third party and not one of the major IM networks. That is, a software client with which the conversation is encrypted from one user's computer all the way to the recipient--and not just to the central servers of the IM network. While the popular Trillian multinetwork client does offer encryption, its design is flawed, and is subject to a number of attacks. The tool of choice for privacy-conscious geeks everwhere is a protocol known as Off The Record (OTR). This scheme, designed by a team of security researchers including professors Ian Goldberg and Nikita Borisov, provides a number of really cool features. The benefits of OTR include:

* Encryption: No one else can read your instant messages.

* Authentication: You are assured the correspondent is who you think it is.

* Deniability: The messages you send do not have digital signatures that are checkable by a third party. Anyone can forge messages after a conversation to make them look like they came from you. However, during a conversation, your correspondent is assured the messages he sees are authentic and unmodified.

* Perfect forward secrecy: If you lose control of your private keys (such as if your computer is hacked, for example), no previous conversation is compromised.

Do I have to mention that OTR is a standard plug-in, not only for Linux's Pidgin, but also for Linux's Gaim? Well, now you know.

If you'd like to carry your OS around in your pocket, on a 1GB flashdrive, you should check out Puppy Linux. Why would you want to do that? Here are a couple of good reasons:

The two main uses for Puppy Linux (or any Linux live CD) are to:

* Rescue files from the host PC's hosed hard drive or perform various maintenance tasks (like imaging that drive)

* Compute on a machine without leaving a trace—like browser history, cookies, documents or any other files—behind on the internal hard drive

While there's a wide range of Linux live distro's available, Puppy Linux is a fantastic option which offers a full computing environment with rich graphical apps like the Mozilla Seamonkey suite, Word and Excel equivalents, calendar, chat and photo editors, too.

See Puppy Linux screenshots or visit the Puppy Linux site.

I think Puppy Linux will be my next project.

CALL FOR RESISTANCE

Thousands of Kurds and supporters take to the streets in Dahuk, a Kurdish city near the border with Turkey, some 430 kilometers (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007 to protest the Turkish parliament's decision to authorize the government to send troops across the border to root out Kurdish rebels. More than 5,000 people packed the streets as they marched to the U.N. offices. (AP Photo)

As Kurds took to the streets in Dihok and Hewlêr in protest against Turkey, a statement of leadership has finally come from the South Kurdistan president. From Özgür Gündem:

Mesûd Barzanî has a statement for the Kurdish people on the TBMM's cross-border operations vote. Barzanî's statement was made through Dr. Rizgar Sindî, KDP Zaxo General Headquarters chief.

In his statement, Barzanî wants the kurdish people in general to become organized and take up positions in case of a Turkish cross border operations, they would have a very severe response.

Turkey is trying to annihilate the Kurdish presence from history. This is Turkey's main goal. Saddam Hussein could not finish the Kurds; how will Turkey finish them? In such an operation, Turkey would be the loser. Ankara is supposed to listen to the Kurds' calls for peace and dialog. Otherwise, the entire Kurdish people will resist a Turkish occupation.

Dr. Sindî spoke about some of the details of a 12 October meeting, with Behdinan radio and television broadcasting his speech. "PKK is a Kurdistan organization that they [KDP] would never fight anymore.

"Turkey says 'we are going there for the PKK and we will have a cross-border operation'. PKK is a Kurdish party and we are not going to fight against PKK. We are not going to use our arms against an organization which is demanding its cultural rights. Our people are not going after their brothers to attack."

Dr. Sindî continued,"We want to share the outcomes of a meeting we had with President Barzanî with our people. Even though we do not give credit to Turkey's cross-border operation, its aim is to annihilate Kurdish existence and it cannot accept the Kurdish group which has its government, its parliament, and is a ruling group. Turkey sees Kurdish law, government, and the Kurdish nation as a threat. Not only Turkey, but also the countries which say that we share the brotherhood of religion, also see the Kurds as a threat in terms of Kurdish independence and of their own traditions.

Speaking of Kurdish willingness to live with the neighboring countries in peace and brotherhood, Dr. Sindî said, "Kurdish people will not give up their land. As it was in the past, we will defend our land. Until the last drop of our blood, we will maintain our struggle. For that, Kurdish people around the world must begin a resistance and they must preserve the gains we have made now. Whatever it takes for this, it will be done. Because this is the legitimate defense of the Kurdish people for preserving their land and their law. The world is not the old world and Turkey must know this. Kurds are stronger than any time before, and Turkey must know this."

Stressing that Turkey must resolve its Kurdish question in a political and peaceful way, "You cannot solve any problem with a war, violence or weapons. Turkey cannot reach anywhere by using its military forces against PKK. On the contrary, it will just finish itself. For this reason, this question must be solved in political ways. The PKK question is the Kurds' legitimate, natural, cultural, and political rights that are supposed to be recognized by Turkey. In that way only will it be settled down. Saddam fought 50 years. He used chemical weapons, committed massacres, ruined all Kurdish cities and emptied the villages. However, the things they had done became trouble for them later. Kurdish people were never finished, but he and his generals were arrested and punished in a way that no one could even imagine."

Rizgar Sindî mentioned that the US is also opposing a cross-border operation and that on 12 October, the American ambassador to Iraq called Barzani and said they objected to Turkey's cross-border operation in terms of entering Kurdistan. France and Germany also object to an invasion and they indicated their support for Kurdistan. According to the KDP, the Baghdad government must take a clear stand against this cross-border operation.

If Turkey has a war against South Kurdistan, the Kurdish people are capable of fighting for years, and such a war will really last for many years. If Turkey has such an operation they will use their legitimate self-defense right and raise a resistance. This is the message of Mesûd Barzanî that I wanted to convey to our people.

The speech was broadcast for almost one hour on Behdinan's television and radios.

YOUR COMPUTER, THE NSA, AND LINUX

"Did you know that in Windows, there is built in back-door entry so US government can see you data as and when they like? Yes the US NSA has the key build into every copy of Windows. In Linux there is no such thing possible as the operating system is open source and can easily be detected and disabled."
~ 101 Reasons Why Linux Is Better Than Windows.

Does this sound familiar:

It’s the relationship you spend more time on than any other. It has deepened even during the past few years. When things go wrong, you become enraged and tearful and attack inanimate objects—but you’re willing to spend hours making things right.

Obviously, we’re talking about your relationship with your personal computer.

Consider this: In a survey earlier this year, 64 percent of Americans say they spend more time with their computer than with their significant other. Meanwhile, 84 percent said they were more dependent on their computer than they were three years ago.

[ . . . ]

The respondents (who were all over 18, owned a PC and enjoyed broadband Internet access) estimated they spent an average of 12 hours a month wrestling with computer problems. Unsurprisingly, 48 percent said they would rather help a friend move than deal with a computer problem. Thirty percent said they currently felt more frustration with their computer than they felt three years ago.

Or does this alarm you:

. . . [I]f you're upset by the idea of NSA tapping your phone, be advised NSA likely can also read your Windows software to access your computer.

European investigative reporter Duncan Campbell claimed NSA had arranged with Microsoft to insert special "keys" in Windows software starting with versions from 95-OSR2 onwards.

And the intelligence arm of the French Defense Ministry also asserted NSA helped to install secret programs in Microsoft software. According to France's Strategic Affairs Delegation report, "it would seem that the creation of Microsoft was largely supported, not least financially, by NSA, and that IBM was made to accept the (Microsoft) MS-DOS operating system by the same administration." That report was published in 1999.

The French reported a "strong suspicion of a lack of security fed by insistent rumours about the existence of spy programmes on Microsoft, and by the presence of NSA personnel in Bill Gates' development teams." It noted the Pentagon was Microsoft's biggest global client.

If you're fighting with your computer an average of 12 hours a month, or if you're worried about the NSA accessing your computer through your Windows OS, never fear--Gutsy Gibbon is here!

The familiar old script that Linux is only for geeks has been largely rewritten recently with the arrival of Ubuntu, a version of Linux for the average user. In its three years on the scene, Ubuntu has quickly gained a reputation for being easy to configure and use.

On Thursday, Canonical, the London-based company which acts as Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, released version 7.10 of the software. This latest release, dubbed "Gutsy Gibbon," proves that Ubuntu Linux can compete with and, in some cases, trump Windows as an everyday desktop system when it comes to pure usability.

[ . . . ]

If you've been considering making the switch from Windows or Mac, Ubuntu makes the process painless. It's ability to seamlessly import your settings, music and data from a Windows partition erases one of the most pressing barriers for new users. And once you're in, the learning curve is minimal. In fact, besides requiring a little futzing to get multimedia playback set up, Gutsy Gibbon is about as easy as Linux gets.

Now might be a good time to make the switch. Go on. You know you wanna. Make it even easier on yourself.

COMPLICITY

"ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting."
~ Ambrose Bierce.

There's an interesting piece of bullshit at TIME today, although it's not exclusive to time; I've seen it in countless other articles on the situation. Here's what I mean:

U.S. and Iraqi leaders, fearful of the precedent and potential destabilization created by Iraq's neighbors conducting cross-border military actions on its territory, are hoping that talks between the governments of Turkey and Iraq can forestall military action. Iraqi vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi, who met with Erdogan in Ankara Tuesday, urged that "a political solution must be given priority to resolve this critical issue." And President George W. Bush said Wednesday that the U.S. is "making it clear to Turkey it is not in their interest to send more troops in. There is a better way to deal with the issue."

Suddenly everyone is urging a "political solution" even though more than one year ago PKK offered a political solution. This was the solution that Lockheed Martin's PKK coordinator, Joseph Ralston, and Yaşar Büyükanıt both rejected; There was a better way to deal with the issue.

Then came a unilateral ceasefire from PKK after Turkey and the US both begged for one through the Southern Kurdish leadership, particularly Celal Talabanî.

Did Talabanî object when Ralston's vast conflict of interest became an issue? Did he object when Ralston and Büyükanıt rejected PKK's offer of a democratic solution and the ceasefire that Talabanî begged from PKK were rejected? So what was the purpose of this tool of the Ankara regime, the Iraqi president, in begging for a ceasefire? Did he hope he would finally be recognized by the Ankara regime as the president of Iraq? Did he hope he would get his Turkish diplomatic passport back?

For the past year, in every official Ankara and Washington statement that the mainstream media has dutifully copied down verbatim from regime propagandists and has published, there has been no mention of the existence of 20 million Kurds under Turkish occupation in North Kurdistan. The only problem, according to the servile media, is between the Ankara regime and the Baghdad regime, or with the regime of South Kurdistan. Yet as of 22 July of this year, those 20 million Kurds who suffer under an official Turkish policy of brutality (and have done so since 1923), have twenty elected representatives in the parliament in Ankara. It should be through those representatives of North Kurdistan that the situation should be resolved politically, including a full and complete amnesty for Kurdistan's children in the mountains.

Immediately after the 22 July elections, the US praised the wonderful Model of Democracy that is Turkey, which would lead one to believe that the US considered even those Kurds elected as parliamentarians as legitimate representatives of their people to the infinite font of democracy, the TBMM. Practically speaking, however, the US does not recognize the legitimate Kurdish representatives--the DTP parliamentarians. There has not been one single mention of them by any US or Turkish official as the proper negotiators for the Kurdish people in finding a political solution to the Kurdish reality in Turkey.

Why does the US refuse to insist upon the Ankara regime's engagement with DTP in finding a political solution?

Because to do so, official US policy would have to admit that there are Kurds in Turkey. Official US policy would have to recognize the legitimacy of DTP. Official US policy would have to acknowledge that a political solution is the only solution, as DTP and PKK have stressed over and over again.

If the US did all these things, then the question directed toward the US would be: Why, then, did you arm Turkey? Why did you not immediately end weapons transfers to Turkey when you knew Turkey was guilty of violations of the laws of warfare? Why did you appoint a Lockheed Martin director and lobbyist who was also an advisor to the American Turkish Council as a "special envoy" to coordinate the PKK for Turkey? Why did you permit this "special envoy" to reject a ceasefire and an offer of a democratic solution?

Answer: Because the United States is an accomplice to the Ankara regime's war crimes and mass murder.

As a gentle reminder, the EU is just as guilty.


Check Hevallo for a couple of news videos from Al-Jazeera. One's on Turkish aggression and the other has a brief interview with Murat Karayılan. He also has a great post outlining a brief history of the Kurdish freedom struggle in Turkey.

RIDING THE STREETCAR NAMED DEMOCRACY

"Do not expect justice where might is right."
~ Plato.

The democratic Ankara regime is in the process of eliminating the DTP in the same way that it has eliminated previous Kurdish parties. One must consider carefully the reason why DTP refuses to "denounce the PKK as a terrorist organization" as Erdoğan has put it. This is the same Erdoğan who obtained a military waiver so his son never has to serve in the TSK. This is also the same Erdoğan who said in June:

"Has the struggle against 5,000 terrorists inside Turkey come to a close, so that we can now start dealing with the 500 in northern Iraq?"

And who now says:

"There are 3,500 terrorists sheltered in northern Iraq. We want to see concrete steps from Iraq, not empty talk. We need to deal with this problem for good. We don't want the death of any soldiers."

Why are you worried about dead soldiers, Recep? "Military service is not a place where you just take it easy."

Ahmet Türk admits there is a "lynch party" against DTP. Although CHP's Baykal tries to play the fox and compare DTP to Herri Batasuna, the proper response to Baykal would be to slap him across the face with the IRA model. Since Baykal wants to use a European model to justify a military over a political solution, someone needs to tell Baykal that just as Turkey is not Spain neither is it anything like the rest of Europe. Or that Europe never became truly democratic until after the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War. By that accounting, Ankara's current conflict has only gone on for 23 years and there are quite a few more decades of war to go.

A friend has suggested that the Ankara regime will engage in machinations against DTP to reduce the number of parliamentarians to under twenty, the number needed to form a group in the TBMM, with ÖDP parliamentarian Ufuk Uras willing and able to fill in for one DTP parliamentarian. On the other hand, I am skeptical and believe that Ankara is far too democratic a regime to permit any Kurd to remain in the TBMM. Consider that the "new" draft constitution is merely a "veneer" covering the 12 September constitution.

While Gareth Jenkins has it completely wrong on PKK's being extinquished as a result of a Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan (More than likely it will fuel an even greater increase in PKK recruitment. İlker Başbuğ himself admits the failure of TSK after 23 years.) and on the ambush of the poor, innocent "conscripts" that were actually Bolu terrorists, he's on the right track with suggesting that the Ankara regime will shut down DTP. It would appear, however, that Şirnex parliamentarian Hasip Kaplan may be thinking of what it will take to reach a Turkish Peace of Westphalia:

“If Turkey goes across it will not be a cross-border operation but a war between peoples,” said DTP MP Hasip Kaplan. “The dictators, soldiers, and oppressors who have led the Turkish republic for the last 84 years have tried to silence the Kurds. But they couldn’t succeed”

Atta boy, Hasip! Man, you gotta love those Şirnexîs.

In preparation for tomorrow's World Poverty Day, an earlier report by Jenkins on poverty among Kurds in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan is worth a read, particularly for those who labor under the delusion that there is any type of inequality in Turkey:

The unemployment rate stands at 70% of the adult population in the shantytowns that surround Diyarbakir, the largest city in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey, according to a recent study by Istanbul’s Bosphorus University (Milliyet, September 29).

[ . . . ]

The recent survey by Bosphorus University covered 5,706 households, comprising 36,221 people, in five of Diyarbakir’s poorest neighborhoods, where most of the population are first-generation migrants from the countryside.

The survey found that 309 households (5.4%) had no income at all, while 1,787 (31.3%) had total income of less than $200 per month. Almost all of those who had jobs were working in the unregistered economy, mainly as day laborers on construction sites and as street vendors. Only 933 households (16.4%) had total monthly income of more than $400, which is considered the poverty line in Turkey. In contrast, a survey by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) found that average household expenditure in Turkey as a whole stood at just over $1,000 in 2006 (Radikal, September 19).

[ . . . ]

Perhaps most importantly, the survey suggested that few of those interviewed had much hope of a better future. A total of 63.4% of those who had migrated from the countryside said that their economic situation had deteriorated since moving to Diyarbakir. When the heads of the households were asked whether they were hopeful of an improvement in their lives, 29.2% said that they were; 20.2% thought that the situation would become worse; and 50.6% did not expect any change at all (Milliyet, September 29).

When will the regime get around to charging the researchers with Article 301? I mean, democracy cannot survive with this kind of truth told.

TURKEY'S VIETNAM

"While I adamantly oppose the US occupation of Iraq, I cannot simply stand by and accept Turkish military intervention as a solution to the oppression of Kurds as a viable option in resolving the longstanding conflict. For too long, Turkish troops have displaced hundreds of Kurdish villages and killed tens of thousands of Kurds in Turkey with impunity."
~ Martin Zehr.

Finally there's someone who makes some sense:

. . . [T]here isn't much that the Turkish army can do in northern Iraq. In June, when the Turkish army was massing at the border in response to a series of attacks by the PKK, I hopped on a plane to Erbil, drove up to the Turkish border, and saw nothing. That's because there aren't PKK targets near Iraq's border with Turkey. Te [sic] PKK bases are far off in the Qandil valley, which is near the border with Iran. An invading Turkish army would have to travel deep down into Iraqi Kurdistan, pass through several cities, and then move east back up into the mountains, by which time the PKK would be long gone. All the Turkish army did in June when I was there was shell a couple random spots just across the border.

What will probably happen this time is that the Turks will make a big show of entering Iraq in force, shooting randomly at civilian targets large enough to make them feel tough, but small enough to avoid bad publicity, and then hope that such a display of resolve will force the Americans or the Iraqi Kurds to take care of the PKK themselves. But that's not going to happen, because the American military in Iraq is dangerously over-streatched as it is, and because the Iraqi Kurds -- whose pesh merga soldiers are also busy trying to keep the lid on Bagdad and Mosul -- once tried to fight the PKK in the early 1990's and don't have fond memories of the bloody experience.

So this is going to be a slow motion disaster rather than a spectacular one. Turkey will have to go deeper and deeper into Iraq, committing itself more and more to a course that will at best be ineffectual and at worst drag it and Iraqi Kurdistan into the great sucking sound that is the American project in Iraq. The only way out of this is for the Turkish state to begin political negotiations with the PKK, and internal enemy that it has been unable to defeat for more than 20 years.

Why does the word "Vietnam" go around and around in my head?

PKK's forces (HPG and YJA-STAR), are deep within Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, while the command headquarters is located at Qendil.

Actually, the Turkish army was massing at the border in April 2006, and the offer of a political solution was made by the PKK in August 2006. Add that to the PKK's fifth unilateral ceasefire of October 2006 and we can easily see who it is that's been ready for a political solution in recent months and who it is that's a pack of bloodthirsty murderers.

But notice what Andrew Lee Butters says about Turks making "a big show of entering Iraq in force, shooting randomly at civilian targets large enough to make them feel tough?" They've already been doing that for some time and they have included cluster munitions in their arsenal. Additionally, earlier today, CNN reported the following:

Turkish troops shelled farmland around a half-dozen villages in northern Iraq from across the tense border, an Iraqi Kurdish official said Sunday, in what the Turkish military called retaliation for weekend attacks by Kurdish rebels.

A provincial intelligence official in Iraq's Kurdish city of Dohuk said the shelling set orchards and farmland ablaze, but no casualties were reported. Firefighters worked until just before daybreak to put out a blaze that scorched fields on farms near the border.

From this it's obvious that TSK is not attacking PKK at all; rather it is "retaliating" against innocent Kurdish citizens who also happen to be Iraqi citizens. Remember that the TSK is responsible for at least as many destroyed Kurdish villages in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan as Saddam was for destroyed Kurdish villagess in South Kurdistan. That means we're talking 4,000-5,000 destroyed villages and, in Turkey's case, some 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 forcibly displaced Kurdish refugees . . . in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan alone.

Also note that the talking head "expert" at the CNN video is full of gû.

Murat Karayılan confirms Andrew Lee Butters' assesment:

Speaking to The Associated Press deep in the Qandil mountains straddling the Iraq-Turkish border, some 150 kilometers (94 miles) from the northern Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, Karayilan warned an incursion would "make Turkey experience a Vietnam war."

[ . . . ]

"Iraq's Kurds will not support the Turkish army," he said. "If Turkey starts its attack, we will swing the Turkish public opinion by political, civil and military struggle."

[ . . . ]

Karayilan said the PKK was only defending itself against attacks by the Turks.

"This was not the first time. It happened many times before and no one talked about it, so why this time," he said, adding the clashes took place at least 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the border, within Turkey, not Iraq.

He said he believes the Turkish attacks are meant to destabilize Iraq, not remove the rebels.

"Turkey is only making pretexts to enter the Kurdistan region in Iraq," he added.

There's that word again: Vietnam.

That's been the argument for some time now and it still hasn't changed. In fact, it's very possible that the US is merely playing a new game here with Turkey over oil considerations, especially since the game is up with the Iraqi oil laws that the US tried to force onto the Iraqi population . . . but only so certain multinationals (Think: Big Oil) can run off with 70% of the profits over the next thirty years.

Naturally, no Kurdish story would be complete without some kind of braying from the cehş, and this story is no different:

[Nêçîrvan] Barzani, who urged all sides to seek a political solution, apologized to Turkey for the deaths last week of 13 Turkish soldiers killed by Kurdish PKK militants, KUNA reported Monday.

"We condemn this incident," Barzani said. "The more blood is shed, the more the problem becomes complicated."

So there you have it, folks! Nêçîrvan Barzanî apologizes for PKK's killing of Bolu commandos. At the moment, I'm hard-pressed to imagine a bigger loser than Nêçîrvan Barzanî. What should we expect from someone who used to party with Uday Saddam Hussein?

I bet it must have been a lucrative business move, eh Nêçîrvan?

By the way, since we've just seen the Armenian Genocide resolution pass the House Foreign Affairs committee, I was wondering when the US will vote a genocide resolution against itself for it's long-standing support of Turkey's genocide against the Kurdish people? After all, the US is an accomplice.

THE MAN AND THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

"To us, he [David Albright] was the most credible guy, someone who was able to document something really specific: that is, the role of Turkey in the build-up of the Pakistani nuclear program. Albright told us that Turkey started helping since the very beginning. We didn’t know that. He confirmed that some stuff most likely ended up in Al-Qaeda’s hands. And to us, that was sign that the cycle was complete: we had the Christian fundamentalists, ultra right-wing zionists and the Muslim fundamentalists all in the same bed, because of their hatred of communism."
~ Mathieu Verboud, director, Kill The Messenger.

Here's something very important that my money says you won't see in mainstream American media. When you read it, think of one thing: Sibel Edmonds. From Britain's Guardian:

Rich Barlow idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campsite in Montana - itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

He prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at the Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal - a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb - he found himself a marked man.

In the late 80s, in the course of tracking down smugglers of WMD components, Barlow uncovered reams of material that related to Pakistan. It was known the Islamic Republic had been covertly striving to acquire nuclear weapons since India's explosion of a device in 1974 and the prospect terrified the west - especially given the instability of a nation that had had three military coups in less than 30 years . Straddling deep ethnic, religious and political fault-lines, it was also a country regularly rocked by inter-communal violence. "Pakistan was the kind of place where technology could slip out of control," Barlow says.

He soon discovered, however, that senior officials in government were taking quite the opposite view: they were breaking US and international non-proliferation protocols to shelter Pakistan's ambitions and even sell it banned WMD technology.

[ . . . ]

Barlow came to the conclusion that a small group of senior officials was physically aiding the Pakistan programme. "They were issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that was critical for their nuclear bomb programme and that the US Commerce Department had refused to license," he says. Dismayed, he approached his boss at the CIA, Richard Kerr, the deputy director for intelligence, who summoned senior State Department officials to a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley. Barlow recalls: "Kerr tried to do it as nicely as he could. He said he understood the State Department had to keep Pakistan on side - the State Department guaranteed it would stop working against us."

[ . . . ]

US foreign aid legislation stipulated that if Pakistan was shown to be procuring weapons of mass destruction or was in possession of a nuclear bomb, all assistance would be halted. This, in turn, would have threatened the US-funded war in Afghanistan. So there were conflicting interests at work when Barlow got a call from the Department of Energy. "I was told that a Pakistani businessman had contacted Carpenter Steel, a company in Pennsylvania, asking to buy a specific type of metal normally used only in constructing centrifuges to enrich uranium. His name was Arshad Pervez and his handler, Inam ul-Haq, a retired brigadier from the Pakistan army, had been known to us for many years as a key Pakistan government operative." Barlow and US customs set up a sting. "Pervez arrived to a do a deal at a hotel we had rigged out and was arrested," Barlow says. "But ul-Haq, our main target, never showed."

Trawling through piles of cables, he found evidence that two high-ranking US officials extremely close to the White House had tipped off Islamabad about the CIA operation. Furious, Barlow called his superiors. "The CIA went mad. These were criminal offences," Barlow says. The State Department's lawyers considered their position. They argued that an inquiry would necessitate the spilling of state secrets. The investigation was abandoned just as Reagan made his annual statement to Congress, testifying that "Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device."

But the Pervez case would not go away. Congressman Stephen Solarz, a Democrat from New Jersey, demanded a closed congressional hearing to vet the intelligence concerning Pakistan's bomb programme. Barlow was detailed to "backbench" at the meeting, if necessary offering advice to the White House representative, General David Einsel (who had been chosen by Reagan to head his Star Wars programme). An armed guard stood outside the room where the hearing was held.

Barlow recalls that Solarz got straight to the point: "Were Pervez and ul-Haq agents of the Pakistan government?" Without flinching, Einsel barked back: "It is not cut and dried." It was a criminal offence to lie to Congress, as other hearings happening on the same day down the corridor were spelling out to Colonel Oliver North, the alleged mastermind behind Iran-Contra. Barlow froze. "These congressmen had no idea what was really going on in Pakistan and what had been coming across my desk about its WMD programme," he says. "They did not know that Pakistan already had a bomb and was shopping for more with US help. All of it had been hushed up."

Then Solarz called on Barlow to speak. "I told the truth. I said it was clear Pervez was an agent for Pakistan's nuclear programme. Everyone started shouting. General Einsel screamed, 'Barlow doesn't know what he's talking about.' Solarz asked if there had been any other cases involving the Pakistan government and Einsel said, 'No'." Barlow recalls thinking, " 'Oh no, here we go again.' They asked me and I said, 'Yes, there have been scores of other cases.' "

The meeting broke up. Barlow was bundled into a CIA car that sped for Langley. It was a bad time to be the US's foremost expert on Pakistan's nuclear programme when the administration was desperate to prove it didn't exist. Shortly after, Barlow left the CIA, claiming that Einsel had made his job impossible.

[ . . . ]

In January 1989, he was recruited by the Office of the Secretary of Defence (OSD) at the Pentagon to become its first intelligence analyst in WMD.

[ . . . ]

Still optimistic, still perhaps naive and still committed to the ideal of thwarting the Pakistan programme, Barlow convinced himself that his experience in the CIA was untypical, the work of a handful of political figures who would now not be able to reach him. When he was commissioned to write an intelligence assessment for Dick Cheney, defence secretary, giving a snapshot of the Pakistan WMD programme, he thought he was making headway. Barlow's report was stark. He concluded that the US had sold 40 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan in the mid-80s - it had been a precondition of the sale that none of the jets could be adapted to drop a nuclear bomb. He was convinced that all of them had been configured to do just that. He concluded that Pakistan was still shopping for its WMD programme and the chances were extremely high that it would also begin selling this technology to other nations. Unbeknown to Barlow, the Pentagon had just approved the sale of another 60 F-16s to Pakistan in a deal worth $1.4bn, supposedly with the same provison as before.

"Officials at the OSD kept pressurising me to change my conclusions," Barlow says. He refused and soon after noticed files going missing. A secretary tipped him off that a senior official had been intercepting his papers. In July 1989, Barlow was hauled before one of the Pentagon's top military salesmen, who accused him of sabotaging the new F-16 deal. Eight days later, when Congress asked if the jet could be adapted by Pakistan to drop a nuclear bomb, the Defence Department said, "None of the F-16s Pakistan already owns or is about to purchase is configured for nuclear delivery." Barlow was horrified.

On August 4 1989, he was fired. "They told me they had received credible information that I was a security risk." Barlow demanded to know how and why. "They said they could not tell me as the information was classified." All they would say was that "senior Defence Department officials", whose identities were also classified, had supplied "plenty of evidence".

[ . . . ]

The Pentagon officials who were responsible for Barlow's downfall would all be out of government by 1993, when Bill Clinton came into the White House. In opposition they began pursuing an aggressive political agenda, canvassing for war in Iraq rather than restraining nuclear-armed Pakistan. Their number now included Congressman Donald Rumsfeld, a former Republican defence secretary, and several others who would go on to take key positions under George Bush, including Richard Armitage, Richard Perle and John Bolton.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz headed the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which concluded in July 1998 that the chief threat - far greater than the CIA and other intelligence agencies had so far reported - was posed by Iran, Iraq and North Korea: the future Axis of Evil powers. Pakistan was not on the list, even though just two months earlier it had put an end to the dissembling by detonating five nuclear blasts in the deserts of Balochistan.

It was also difficult not to conclude that Islamist terrorism was escalating and that its epicentre was Pakistan. The camps that had once been used to train the US-backed mujahideen had, since the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, morphed into training facilities for fighters pitted against the west. Many were filled by jihadis and were funded with cash from the Pakistan military.

It was made clear to the new president, Bill Clinton, that US policy on Pakistan had failed. The US had provided Islamabad with a nuclear bomb and had no leverage to stop the country's leaders from using it. When he was contacted by lawyers for Barlow, Clinton was shocked both by the treatment Barlow had received, and the implications for US policy on Pakistan. He signed off $1m in compensation. But Barlow never received it as the deal had to be ratified by Congress and, falling foul of procedural hurdles, it was kicked into the Court of Federal Claims to be reviewed as Clinton left office.

When the George Bush came to power, his administration quashed the case. CIA director George Tenet and Michael Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, asserted "state secrets privilege" over Barlow's entire legal claim. With no evidence to offer, the claim collapsed. Destroyed and penniless, the former CIA golden boy spent his last savings on a second-hand silver Avion trailer, packed up his life and drove off to Bear Canyon campground in Bozeman, Montana, where he still lives today.

Even with Barlow out of the picture, there were still analysts in Washington - and in the Bush administration - who were wary of Pakistan. They warned that al-Qaida had a natural affinity with Pakistan, geographically and religiously, and that its affiliates were seeking nuclear weapons. Some elements of the Pakistan military were sympathetic and in place to help. But those arguing that Pakistan posed the highest risk were isolated. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were in the ascendant, and they returned to the old agenda, lobbying for a war in Iraq and, in a repeat of 1981 and the Reagan years, signed up Pakistan as the key ally in the war against terror.

Contrary advice was not welcome. And Bush's team set about dismantling the government agency that was giving the most trouble - the State Department's Nonproliferation Bureau. Norm Wulf, who recently retired as deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, told us: "They met in secret, deciding who to employ, displacing career civil servants with more than 30 years on the job in favour of young, like-thinking people, rightwingers who would toe the administration line." And the administration line was to do away with any evidence that pointed to Pakistan as a threat to global stability, refocusing all attention on Iraq.

The same tactics used to disgrace Barlow and discredit his evidence were used again in 2003, this time against Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador whom the Bush administration had sent to Africa with a mission to substantiate the story that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material to manufacture WMD. When Wilson refused to comply, he found himself the subject of a smear campaign, while his wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA agent. Libby would subsequently be jailed for leaking Plame's identity (although released on a presidential pardon). Plame and Wilson's careers and marriage would survive. Barlow and his wife, Cindy's, would not - and no one would be held to account. Until now.

Sibel's side of the story, told by John Stanton and picked up by Cryptome:

Religious types like to say that “God/Allah works in mysterious ways.” Interestingly, thanks to September 11, 2001, it appears that such a God/Allah may have been at work to expose some of the demons in American government and business, and their counterparts at work around the world. Who would have thought that Sibel Edmonds would encounter a lot of archived and/or then current documentation flowing through the intelligence pipeline that exposed criminal activity across the board by an array of conniving characters.

American, Turkish and Pakistani operations (and history), planned and unplanned, were, perhaps, uncovered by her in the brief but heady days of worldwide cross-intelligence agency sharing following 911. Imagine the treasure trove of finds!

The actors in this drama include cultural and semi-legitimate groups like the American Friends of Turkey/American Turkish Council (and affiliates and chapters); the Atlantic Council; American (CIA), Turkish (MIT) and Pakistan (ISI) intelligence agencies; Pentagon intelligence operatives like USAF Major Douglas Dickerson and Jan Malek Can Dickerson; former Turkish ministers like Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz under investigation for corruption; Turkish-run companies like Giza Technologies of New Jersey, implicated and then cleared of WMD proliferation charges**; and US officials Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

As an aside, US defense contractors--like Textron, Lockheed Martin and Halliburton ­figure in this story too as they, with US government approval, have regularly exhibited at defense weapons expos in Turkey, Pakistan, and elsewhere for decades. Why China and Iran are vilified as of late for being legitimate participants in these Expos there and here in the USA Homeland remains an intriguing question. It’s interesting to note that MSNBC reported that Cheney’s big visit to China in 2004 included marketing Westinghouse’s nuclear reactors to China. No surprise there as US nuclear technology has been marketed to the world over the years by Cheney and Rumsfeld (the latter in North Korea) to include North Korea.

But go figure. Buying some conventional weapons capability and basic nuclear generation technology from dullard US defense contractors is one thing. The real question is this: How did Pakistan and Turkey escaped [sic] US scrutiny while developing nuclear weapons and Turkey helped pay for them with drug money and technology?

And from Sibel Edmonds herself:

Another well-known and documented case involves Pakistan. Over two decades ago Richard Barlow, an intelligence analyst working for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney issued a startling report. After reviewing classified information from field agents, he had determined that Pakistan, despite official denials, had built a nuclear bomb. In the March 29, 1993 issue of New Yorker, Seymour Hersh noted that “even as Barlow began his digging, some senior State Department officials were worried that too much investigation would create what Barlow called embarrassment for Pakistan.” Barlow's conclusion was politically inconvenient. A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, and it would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad. A few months later a Pentagon official downplayed Pakistan's nuclear capabilities in his testimony to Congress. When Barlow protested to his superiors, he was fired. A few years later, the Executive Branch would slap Barlow with the State Secrets Privilege.

As we all now know, Pakistan provided direct nuclear assistance to Iran and Libya. During the Cold War, the U.S. put up with Pakistani lies and deception about their nuclear activities, it did not enforce its restrictions on Pakistan's nuclear program when it counted, and as a result Pakistan ended up with a U.S.-made nuclear weapons system. Yet again, after 9/11, the Bush administration issued a waiver ending the implementation of almost all sanctions on Pakistan because of the perceived need for Pakistani assistance in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who ironically were brought to power by direct U.S. support in the 1980s in the first place.

Weiss, in the May-June 2004 issue of the Bulletin states: “We are essentially back where we were with Pakistan in the 1980s. It is apparent that it has engaged in dangerous nuclear mischief with North Korea, Iran, and Libya (and perhaps others), but thus far without consequences to its relationship with the United States because of other, overriding foreign policy considerations--not the Cold War this time, but the war on terrorism.” He continues: “But now there is a major political difference. It was one thing for Pakistan, a country with which the United States has had good relations generally, to follow India and produce the bomb for itself. It is quite another for Pakistan to help two-thirds of the "axis of evil” to get the bomb as well.”

Of course, oodles of stuff on Pakistan, Turkey, nuclear technology, and all the dirty players in this mess are archived at Luke Ryland's Kill The Messenger blog.

Okay, so tell me again: Who are the real terrorists??

REUTERS LIES ABOUT PKK STATEMENT

"I wouldn't call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either."
~ Edward Zehr.

Bahoz Erdal, HPG Headquarters Commander (photo stolen from Özgür Gündem)

Reuters has a couple of reports out today that seem to be making all the rounds of the blogosphere. The problem is that Reuters falsified their report by not translating accurately. Here's what they wrote:

Rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), fighting for an independent homeland in southeastern Turkey, said on Friday they are moving back into Turkey from northern Iraq.

Reuters quotes a Firat News article. In the paragraph titled, "GERİLLA GÜNEY'E DEĞİL KUZEYE GİDİYOR," Bahoz Erdal, HPG Headquarters Commander, says:

"Herkesi kandırmaya çalışıyorlar. Bu savaşın kaynağı Kuzey Kürdistan'dır. Gabar'daki güçlerin Güney Kürdistan'a gitmesini engellemek için sınırda top atışları yaptıklarını söylediler. Bu doğru değil, gerillalar Güney'e doğru değil aksine Dersim'e, Amanos'a ve kuzeydeki diğer yerlere doğru gidiyor. Türk devletinin saldırılarına karşı gerilla kendini bu şekilde konumlandırıyor" . . .

Translation:

"They [AKP] are trying to cheat everyone. The source of this war is North Kurdistan. They said they carried out a bombardment at Gabar in order to prevent [our] forces from going to South Kurdistan, but this is not true. The gerîlas are not going to the South; on the contrary, they are going to Dersim, Amanos, and other nothern locations. The gerîlas are positioning themselves against Turkish attacks in this way.

Erdal goes on to say to the Turkish people that this is the war of the poor, meaning that the poor must fight it and that the children of Kurdistan are pushed to it, while the children of Turkish officials receive their education in the US and pour money into their weddings.


I should take a moment to note here that Erdoğan obtained a waiver for his son's otherwise compulsory military service.

Reuters also states that PKK is "fighting for an independent homeland in southeastern Turkey," in complete contradiction to KCK's stated objectives for a democratic solution:

We would like as a movement to emphasize once again that the right solution is a democratic autonomy within the borders of Turkey. We believe that a solution in the unity of Turkey will be for the benefit of firstly the Kurdish people and all the people of the region.

Therefore, we cannot excuse Reuters' execrable reporting as a simple mistranslation or misunderstanding; instead, it is, in fact, an outright lie.

Another Reuters propaganda piece from later in the day quoted Bahoz Erdal correctly:

"The guerrillas are not moving to the south (northern Iraq); on the contrary they are moving to ... places in the north," the PKK said in a statement published on Firat news agency.

But, of course, the damage had already been done and Reuters has made no retraction to correct its earlier lie.

On the other hand, Reuters again misquoted Erdal:

Kurdish separatist rebels said on Friday they were crossing back into Turkey to target politicians and police after Ankara said it was preparing to attack them in the mountains of northern Iraq.

Referencing the Firat statement (also carried on Özgür Gündem), in the paragraph titled, "AKP VE CHP KURUMLARI HEDEFTE," Bahoz Erdal says that the Turkish state went crazy because of its failure toward HPG and is implementing state terrorism as it did in the 1990s. For all of this, AKP bears the responsibility. Erdal stresses that "if Kurds and their institutions are targeted, AKP must know that there are AKP and CHP, and state insitutions in Kurdistan, and their attacks will not be without a response."

Bahoz Erdal's comments are a far cry from "crossing back into Turkey to target politicians and police." HPG is already inside Turkey. It is not "crossing back into Turkey," as claimed by the propagandists at Reuters.

Reuters also presents Erdoğan as the ass he is:

"We don't need anyone's advice on northern Iraq and the operation to be carried out there," Erdogan told a cheering crowd in Istanbul, after saying that the United States "came tens of thousands of kilometers and attacked Iraq without asking anyone's permission".

This would be an extreme case of monkey see, monkey do. Since the Ankara regime used Israel's invasion of Lebanon last year as an excuse for it's own "hot pursuit" BS vis-a-vis Kurds, everyone should see clearly that there is no original or creative thinking on the part of anyone within the Ankara regime's political elite. It should also be clear that only a criminal regime, like the one in Ankara, would use criminal examples to justify its own potential criminal behavior.

A cross-border operation into South Kurdistan presents several outcomes, all of which benefit Kurdistan. The overall outcome would be utter failure for the Ankara regime in general and the AKP in particular. The regime has invaded South Kurdistan in the past in vain attempts to annihilate the Kurdish freedom movement, all of which spiked the body count for the TSK and did very little damage to PKK.

The regime has created heightened tensions and expectations among the Turkish people. Another invasion of South Kurdistan, with its accompanying rise in body counts, withdrawal due to military failure, and the resiliency of the Kurdish freedom movement will ensure that the wrath of the Turkish people turns on the AKP.

As the people call for AKP leaders' heads on pikes, so the opposition parties will turn on AKP like a pack of dogs moving in on wounded prey. DTP will be able to say, "We told you so!" thus proving that no military or "security" solution will solve the Kurdish situation. Only a political answer can solve a political question.

Turkey's EU accession will come to an abrupt halt but--even better for Kurds--the Kurdish situation will appear on the international stage once again. Such an appearance will be the opportunity to do that which Öcalan tried to do when he went to Europe--present both sides of the Kurdish struggle in Turkey and demand a political solution from the international community which has aided and abetted the Ankara regime in its genocidal policies.

Invasion will cause repercussions in both Syria and Iran. Turkey and Iran have enjoyed warm relations since 2003, but Iran will not stand for the shift in power that a Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan will bring to the region,

Lastly, a cross-border invasion into South Kurdistan will work wonders for pan-Kurdish unity. We'll all have Erdoğan, Gül, and Büyükanıt to thank for a unified Kurdistan.

Let them come.


Hevallo has a scientific test to determine who is the terrorist: Turkey or the PKK?

AKP'S KURDISH POLICY

"Some might not agree with the things I say but the time will show the truth."
~ Murat Karayılan.

Last month, the hevals at KurdishInfo ran an interview with Murat Karayılan, who has a lot of interesting things to say about a number of issues affecting Kurdistan. Karayılan's explanation of the AKP's approach to the Kurdish situation is enlightening, especially after we have witnessed the intensification of military operations against the Kurdish freedom movement since Abdullah Gül's visit to military installations in The Southeast in September, and the recent Ankara regime massacre in Beytüşşebap.

Politically, the war has also been intensified by the Ankara regime, with DTP parliamentarians, mayors, and politicians continue to be harassed, rounded up, arrested, and fired upon with weapons since the July elections. Threats are made to lift parliamentary immunity so that bogus accusations of "separatism" can be tried in kangaroo courts. Once again, the regime is engaging in its usual policy toward Kurdish political participation, one that will lead to the banning of yet another Kurdish party, as Büyükanıt has begun the call for:

The military, in parallel with their intervention on the ground, have also become more strident. Last week, before members of the military academy, General Büyükanit suggested it would be necessary to ban the DTP, whose members "call 'terrorists' brothers."

The full interview can be read at KurdishInfo but this post contains that portion in which Karayılan speaks about the AKP's policy toward the Kurdish people [Note: Paragraphs have been created that do not exist in the original, in order to make the replies easier to read--Mizgîn]:

****************************

Question: In the context of Abdullah Gul's becoming president, Iran and Turkish military attacks, the deferral of the Kirkuk referendum, we have Iraq's head of state and PUK leader Jalal Talabani's statement that the struggle in North Kurdistan is against democracy. How do you see this statement?


Murat Karayılan: Certainly any politician from Kurdistan can make comments about Kurdistan. But making empty statements is wrong. It is important to respect the people's situation in each part, taking in account that the people are living under pressure of colonialist powers. I think they should be careful when make their views public. Also we should consider Turkey's past history and the Kurdish people's struggle in Turkey. The Kurdish people's struggle opens the door for Turkey's democratic process. It was the Kurdish nation that resisted the 12 September military regime. It was again the Kurdish nation under the leadership of the PKK in its struggle for democracy on the 12 September fascist incidents. Since that time, the Kurdish struggle has helped Turkey to become democratic. It is the same today.

It is wrong to see the Kurdish nation's struggle as against democracy. The Kurdish struggle is a democratic struggle. In all parts of Kurdistan, the Kurdish nation has only one flag. With this, the Kurdish nation is reaching to its freedom. Whether in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq, the Kurdish nation should be democracy's main dynamic and voice. The Kurdish nation's struggle is against flag-waving nationalism and anti-democratic oppression. When considering this, it should be assessed accurately. It is not right to make empty political statements about these issues.


Question: Talabani in his statement mentioned the voting in Kurdistan and stated how the AKP have proved that they are not racist. How true is this assertion do you think?


Murat Karayılan: The nature of the AKP should be understood. Generally, the AKP government is not well known by South Kurdistan politicians and individuals. They are misled by the AKP's false moderate political approach. Truly there are no huge differences between the AKP's and the military's strategic politics. The military's aim is to destroy the Kurdish people and their movement physically. They believe they can achieve this exclusively by using violence. The AKP uses not just military means, they are also doing it in a political way. Their political aim is to destroy the Kurds politically, militarily and culturally. The military's attitude is shared by the CHP and MHP.

In the AKP' s view all cannot be destroyed by violence alone, a more subtle approach should be used to destroy them. The AKP is saying to the military "you always say we will destroy, weakening them culturally, finishing them politically, but you cannot do it. Together with this you should use a policy of gradual erosion". Approach the Kurds softly, give them a hand, feed the poor, meet them; they think if they approach them from Islamic perspective, they can shift them from the national movement. Under developing Islam, they think they can hold Kurds under a colonist power, like Ottoman Empire's holding many nations under the umbrella of Islam, because the Turkish republic is the continuance of the Ottoman regime, which is why they are following this policy.

The AKP's policy is an Ottoman type of policy. They believe that by following this policy they can control and include the Kurds in their system. This is what they stand for. They do not recognize the Kurds as a power, they are aiming to include the Kurds in the system. Consequently, the strategic aim is the same, but the method is different. Apart from violence they also follow a devious policy. This means they defending a policy light force while the military is only defending use of force. The AKP says "No, we should give them sweets and hit them with a whip".

The Southern powers are developing and analyzing this policy. There is a trust and belief in some of Abdullah Gul's political statements that are sent from religious orders via the AKP party. This is definitely a trick; on the other side AKP is working to activate former collaborators. Again supporting the Islamic groups and trying to damage the federal state's national politic organizations in the South. In my point of view, Southern politicians cannot understand the Turkish republic's political views. Thus they cannot analyse the AKP correctly.

Some might not agree with the things I say but the time will show the truth. The AKP's policy is to pressure and weaken the Kurdish nation. The AKP has come together with the state and military on the Kurdistan problem. As a result of this cooperation, it was agreed about Abdullah Gul's becoming president. If this cooperation had never taken place, they would not have agreed to it. This is a certainty. All the Kurds should know this. The AKP agreed on using the military, from military side and AKP's political side to destroy the Kurdish nation. The AKP is an extremely ambitious political structure. To gain full power, they said "yes" to destroy Kurdish nation. This will be revealed even more when the time comes. This is why all the Kurdistan powers should see the true side of the AKP party.

Last year when Turkish chief of general staff Yasar Buyukanit started his duty, he gave a speech, which he repeated later at a press conference at different dates in the USA and Turkey, where he declared what was the strategy of the Turkish policy towards Kurdish problem. That strategy was not just to destroy the PKK, but at the same time destroying the regional government in South Kurdistan. "Clarifying the PKK is not enough, Kurdistan strategy should be elimination". Clearly these terms were used. Also the AKP held the same perspective. From now on, the Kurdish people's freedom is is to be fought militarily, politically, socially and culturally. This is the policy of colonisation and weakening of the AKP and the government which are one and the same. There is no other power.

Mr Talabani has said that "the DTP have four MPs from Diyarbakir, and the AKP has eight, this shows that the AKP is in the future of this area". He has also said things like it has been proved that the AKP is not a racist party. There is a mistake in numbers, but it is Turkey's anti-democratic approach which discriminates against Kurdish people, and puts a barrier which stops the true representation of the people's choice in parliament, with a 10% threshold, that led the DTP not to go to the elections with all its candidates in Diyarbakir.

The anti-democratic practice is clear here and cannot be ignored. DTP could not get more than four MPs. If there were more, this would have caused confusion and would have been a barrier for others to be elected. It is for this reason the DTP could have not have had all of Diyarbakir's seats, due to the 10% threshold. Wrongly evaluating Turkey's anti-democratic practices could lead someone to wrong decisions. In respect of this, the oppressive policies of the Republic of Turkey against the Kurdish people must be seen in every aspect.

A group of Kurdish MPs have gained seats in the parliament. This is a victory of the Kurdish freedom movement. This was achieved through a lot of hard work. Many obstacles were put in the way to stop this popular power reaching parliament. They went there by overcoming these obstacles. For this reason at the present this group is under attack. Many cases have been opened against this group to take them out and make them ineffective. These MPs are encircled and are under psychological pressure. If Kurds on the outside "carry water to the well" of the Turkish government, this will not help the Kurdish case. For this reason, they must support a national politics and support the democratic struggle of the Kurdish nation in Kurdistan.

Considering the struggle in Northern Kurdistan as a struggle against democracy will not be stating reality. The struggle of the Kurdish nation is a legitimate struggle. Its use of weapons for self-defense is legitimate. Young Kurdish people are being killed with chemical weapons and shot down every day. Without doubt, these young people are going to defend themselves, against tanks, cannon balls and chemical weapons. What can they do other than defend themselves against a situation like this?

Despite this, in October 2006 a ceasefire was declared.

People from Kurdistan and international forces were aware of this, but no one stopped the attacks of the Turkish military. None of the democratic forces in the US, Iraq or Turkey tried to stop the assassination of the Kurdish youth by the Turkish military. The present situation aims to eradicate the will power of the Kurdish people, this is evident, and a right politics cannot be carried out without seeing this.

*****************************

According to Firat News, thousands of peşmêrge forces equipped with heavy guns have been sent to the border (to Karavole, Çiyaye Bexer, Sinava, and Beçika in Zaxo) by the KRG.

In an attempt to impose an information blackout within North Kurdistan, the Ankara regime has shut down Özgür Gündem for another 30 days. This is the fifth time ÖG has been shut down and is not permitted to publish inside Turkey, and it will make 60 consecutive days of censorship against the paper.

Northern Kurds are in mourning today for the loss of Kurdish author, Mehmed Uzun, who lost his battle with stomach cancer this morning in Amed. The Canadian Press carries the announcement in English. Özgür Gündem has an announcement in Turkish and Azadiya Welat in Kurdish.

DEEP DENIAL

"The AKP agreed on using the military, from military side and AKP's political side to destroy the Kurdish nation. The AKP is an extremely ambitious political structure. To gain full power, they said ' yes' to destroy Kurdish nation. This will be revealed even more when the time comes."
~ Murat Karayılan.

Abdullah Gül is in deep denial. He refuses to admit that HPG whacked a pack of Bolu commandos:

Sunday’s attack by terrorists that left 13 Turkish soldiers dead was carried out by a splinter group of the terrorist organisation the PKK, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said late Tuesday.

The attack in Sirnak was a result of an individual group within the PKK, Gul said during a visit to the Constitutional Court.

“It was not a collective act but appears to be an individual incident within the organisation,” he said.

The attack by a splinter group suggested that the PKK was in the process of breaking up, Gul said.

I guess Gül's manhood is threatened by the fact that Kurdish gerîlas knocked off a team of monsters that are celebrated for their prowess at murdering civilians and destroying villages. Of course, the more that HPG carries out very successful operations like the Bolu whacking, the more recruitment will spike. Of course, we know that HPG did kill the Bolus, a fact that even American "anti-terror" sites are admitting:

The TMYK [Supreme Anti-Terrorism Board] meeting came two days after the PKK killed 15 Turkish soldiers within 24 hours on October 7-8. Thirteen of the fatalities came on the afternoon of October 7 when a large force of PKK militants ambushed an 18-man Turkish commando unit in the Garbar Mountains in Sirnak province, close to Turkey’s border with Iraq. Three other commandoes were wounded.

HPG posted an update yesterday. In addition, ever since Gül's visit to the Turkish military in The Southeast, intense operations have been carried out, particularly in Şirnex (Şırnak). How, then, do you have a "splinter group" appear in the middle of such operations?

More proof of Gül's being sucked into a vortex of denial were his comments on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee's recognition of the Armenian Genocide:

President Abdullah Gul said the decision was unacceptable and had no validity for Turkey, which has always denied any genocide took place.

[ . . . ]

"This unacceptable decision of the committee, like similar ones in the past, is not regarded by the Turkish people as valid or of any value," Mr Gul said, according to the Anatolian news agency.

If the recognition of the Armenian Genocide has "no validity for Turkey" or is not valid or "of any value," then why do the regime's lackeys foam at the mouth at the mention of it? Why does it go to extraordinary steps of bribing US lawmakers to keep the resolution out of Congress? Why begin massive propaganda campaigns against other countries that pass such resolutions?

Gül needs to get professional help.

The Ankara regime is beginning black operations in Kurdistan's capital, Amed (Diyarbakır). On Wednesday, someone threw a bomb into a tailor's shop in which some police had entered. One police was killed, two wounded, and six other people wounded. The attack occurred around seven in the evening in Sur Municipality on Gazi Street near the Yenikapı.

In the rush to get to the scene of the bombing, a police panzer ran over and crushed a 69-year-old woman.

The likely suspects here are members of TİT (Türk İntikam Tugayı). Last year on 12 September (the anniversary of the 1980 coup), TİT carried out a bombing in Amed which the media also tried to blame on the big, bad PKK. Unfortunately, the morons at TİT briefly posted how they did the blast, complete with photos of the bomb. As soon as Western news sources picked up this information from DozaMe and KurdishInfo, TİT's website was pulled off the Internet and the information denied by the regime.

We should expect to see more black operations conducted by the regime in its frenzy to discredit PKK and justify an intensification of its long-standing policy of genocide.

MULLING THE INVASION

"Truly there are no huge differences between the AKP's and the military's stragetic politics. The military's aim is to destroy the Kurdish people and their movement physically. They believe they can achieve this exclusively by using violence. The AKP uses not just military means, they are also doing it in a political way. Their political aim is to destroy the Kurds politically, militarily and culturally."
~ Murat Karayılan.

Most of the news today had to do with Turkey planning the invasion of South Kurdistan. You can check some of the major news agencies on this at Reuters or the Guardian. These are basically phony reports that push the Ankara regime's propaganda on Beytüşşebap and fail to mention that the dead TSKers were, in fact, Bolu Commandos. No mention of Bolus is significant because the Bolu Commando Brigade is notorious for its war crimes and commission of atrocities, and the Ankara regime knows that no one is going to get worked up over the whacking of a bunch of Bolus.

Meanwhile, HPG has raised the body count of dead Bolus to twenty-one and has raised some gerîlas from the dead, namely Heval Nuda Karker and her comrades.

The US continues to remain irrelevant to the situation.

The BBC has an interesting quote from a columnist at Zaman:

Sahin Alpay, a columnist on Zaman newspaper, says the attacks are "definitely creating an atmosphere where there are calls for severe repressive measures, possibly a push for military intervention".

"But that would be really crazy," he adds.

"Everyone knows most of the PKK is based inside Turkey. It's a distortion to pretend this problem is imported from abroad."

Which, of course, is true if you take the time to examine the geography of Kurdistan. Considering that the average height of the mountains in the Zagros are almost 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in elevation, and that the highest peak is almost 15,000 feet (4,500 m), it becomes obvious that it is difficult, if not impossible, to leave Qendil after breakfast, knock off a few Bolus and regular troops at Mt. Kato, Beytüşşebap in the afternoon, and then be back at Qendil for bedtime. So there's no massing of guerrilla forces at one location deep inside South Kurdistan and then sending those forces off to North Kurdistan with any regularity. The nature of guerrilla warfare would not permit such operations, nor are they consistent with HPG/YJA-Star's structure and methods.

Anyone who claims othewise has not been to The Region or is lying.

The only report today that brings up the subject of geography is, amazingly enough, TIME:

But even if Erdogan gave Turkey's military the green light, going across the border has its problems. The PKK bases in northern Iraq are deep in the mountains, a long way from the Turkish border. The PKK forces are in the remote Qandil Valley near Iran, and the Turkish army would have to penetrate deep into Iraq and travel through several Iraqi cities before reaching it. By that time the PKK's mobile guerrilla units would have most likely have snuck away to fight another day. And even if the Turkish air force got U.S. permission to cross into Iraq, air strikes have a limited effect on a guerrilla insurgency. Additionally, the attacks against Turkish military and civilians were apparently perpetrated by PKK operators within Turkey.

Of course we know that the "attacks against [ ] civilians"--a reference to the Beytüşşebap massacre--was a TSK operation.

More amazing comments come from Ilnur Cevik, of all people:

We have lost 13 soldiers in a PKK attack in the southeastern province of Sirnak. The nation is stunned. This time it was not a roadside bomb. It seems to have been an ambush where the PKK militants managed to kill our soldiers designed to wipe out the PKK inside Turkey. in the midst of a "major military operation"For days we have been reporting that the military has launched a major fall operation to inflict as much harm to the PKK as possible before winter sets in. The operation was also designed to prevent PKK militants from escaping back into Iraq. The military even increased its security zones to make life more difficult for the PKK.

After all this you would think the PKK would find it difficult to move inside Turkey. Yet, we see that the PKK militants can roam around the region and inflict serious harm on our soldiers.

[ . . . ]

We call these people terrorists and we are frowned upon if we do not do so. However, it is time we all realized the facts and lived with realities instead of nationalist cliches.

[ . . . ]

. . . [W]hat we see in eastern and southeastern Turkey is not terrorism. It is clearly some form of warfare which should be taken seriously and which should not be regarded as an act of terrorism.

Soldiers are legitimate targets in war, and that's what we've had in North Kurdistan since the foundation of the Ankara regime. Those who cry for dead Turkish soldiers should get a grip on reality and go after those who perpetuate the seemingly endless conflict. Obvious people like Gül, Büyükanıt, and Erdoğan, for starters, but also all those dirty Deep Staters who should have been prosecuted in the 1990s. Who was prosecuted for Susurluk? No one, so go ahead and start with them. Add to the prosecutor's list old terrorist TSKers like Altay Tokat and Erdal Sarızeybek, who openly admit they terrorized the population of The Southeast.

Then there are people like Joseph Ralston, Edip Başer, and all their friends at Lockheed Martin who, one year ago this month rejected both a ceasefire and the offer of a democratic solution as well as any suggestion that there might be an opportunity in looking at the IRA's model for a resolution--and for what? A few billion greenbacks, that's what. Behold the Pimps of War. It's the likes of them that were planning the scenarios at the Hudson Institute, as Hevallo reminds us today.

Good. Let them come. Let them climb those peaks of Kurdistan and find their graves as they have done many times before. Let them remember, as they cross the border, that there are 20 million Kurds at their back, 4 million in front of them, 5 million to their left, and almost 2 million at their right.

To paraphrase: An invasion of South Kurdistan will be an invasion of Amed.

HELICOPTERS AND HUSH MONEY

"Hush Money. Noun: (Informal) A bribe paid to keep something secret."
~ American Heritage Dictionary.

There was an interesting article on the aftermath of the Beytüşşebap massacre published last Friday by Özgür Gündem, which I had bookmarked in order to point out. Today I noticed a portion of it was translated on Info-Turk. Besides, a friend passed me the information in email, all of which reminded me to post something about it.

The original article has been summarized at Info-Turk as follows:

Former DEP MP Selim Sadak who visited the relatives of the people killed in a massacre in Beytüşşebap said that the families told him that they knew the people who massacred their relatives. Sadak said that peasants told him that it was not done by PKK and the families knew the names of the perpetrators.

Sadak said: “A helicopter approached the crime scene after the incident but it leaves without taking any of the injured. How come there are no bullet shells in the area where 12 people were shot? There were water bottles and food tins on the crime scene? Who were using them? Why were those cleaned afterwards?

The occupants of the helicopter had a good vantage point of the area surrounding the massacre site. If HPG gerîlas had committed the massacre, why didn't the occupants of the helicopter see them and pursue them? Why didn't the helicopter fire at them? Oh, by the way, there is no such thing as an unarmed helicopter in The Southeast.

Selim Sadak added that if the official investigation of the Beytüşşebap massacre were legitimate, the names of the perpetrators would already have been made public. I would add that not only would the names of the murderers be public, the murderers would already be in custody.

Sadak is quoted as referring to other massacres that were committed by the regime and then blamed on PKK, Such as the Gevaş massacre in Wan in 1993 and the more widely known Güçlükonak massacre. Earlier the comparison with Güçlükonak was made on Rastî, and Hevallo has done the same.

The Özgür Gündem article goes on say that with each passing day it becomes clearer that the regime is responsible for the massacre, particularly since Erdoğan and the AKP have offered hush money, overtly and covertly, to the families of the victims. AKP ministers have already visited the families and gave them Erdoğan's money, but the exact amount remains a secret. The state-appointed governor of Şirnex (Şırnak) gave each family 2,000 YTL.

The state which has deprived the Kurdish people since 1923, has created a dire economic situation, has forced Kurds through economic deprivation to take up unofficial military service with the state through the Village Guard system, and has pursued a brutal war against the Kurdish people, now comes to bribe them for their silence.

The very people who have created the economic conditions of extreme poverty in The Region, now pretend to come as economic saviors to twelve individual Kurdish families. Well, after all, it is only hush money.

More questions about the massacre come up than are answered, but these are not appearing in Turkish media. The Beytüşşebap massacre is being buried by the guilty, something that the parliamentary human rights commission will no doubt see too. The only trustworthy one on that commission is Akın Birdal and he is outnumbered by the commission's AKP, MHP, and CHP members. On the bright side, IHD, Mazlum Der, and KESK will conduct their own, joint investigation and their results will be the ones to watch for.

Hevallo is circulating a petition against the Ankara regime's use of cluster bombs against the civilian population of South Kurdistan. Take a look at his post on the matter and sign the appropriate petition. There is one for citizens of the UK and one for all others. Both petitions will be given to the British prime minister.

ROASTING IN HELL

"On 13 February 2006 the Forensic Medical Institute released the results of DNA tests which confirmed that the remains were those of the missing 11 villagers. They had been buried in the place where they had been detained for days by the Bolu Commando Brigade before they disappeared never to be seen again."
~ Amnesty International

At least 13 Bolu Commandos (contra-guerrillas) were dispatched to the nether world today by the freedom fighters of the HPG. At this point it is not clear how many wounded contras there are, but let us hope that there are many of them and that they will soon join their comrades in hell.

Not bad for a day's work.

Lest anyone become teary-eyed over the untimely deaths of these monsters in the Bolu Commando Brigade, let's review a little history:

The Bolu Commando Brigade, for example, was reportedly responsible for numerous violations of the laws of war, including village destruction, indiscriminate fire, and "disappearances." Relatives of victims of several extrajudicial executions and "disappearances" in Diyarbakır province in 1993 named the Bolu Commando Brigade as the perpetrating unit. The European Court of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of violations of the right to life in two clusters of "disappearances" reportedly involving Bolu commandos. One case was the "disappearance" of eleven Kurdish inhabitants of the village of Alaca in Diyarbakır province in 1993 (Akdeniz and others v Turkey). The second was the "disappearance" of three men from the village of Cağlayan in 1993. Relatives said that soldiers from the Bolu Commando Brigade took the men away (Orhan v Turkey). None of the perpetrators of these incidents have been brought to justice.

Or, from a former Turkish soldier's account in Nadire Mater's book, Mehmedin Kitabı or the English version, Voices from the Front: Turkish Soldiers on the War with the Kurdish Guerrillas:

Five of us with leftist inclinations were labelled as terrorists. We were honest and people liked us. I never went into a skirmish, but before I went to the Orduevi, the Bolu commandos camped close to our unit and showed us videos of the operations they had participated in. In one of those videos, they asked a terrorist lad something like "Where are the others?" You can't hear it well because the helicopter is too loud. Anyway, they tell him that he will be set free if he tells the truth. I am summarising for you what I can remember. The child tells them things. The filming stops at that point. Then they throw him out of the helicopter. They kill him right there. That is what I witnessed. I saw transparent things in their hands and asked what they were. They were using them as key-chains. One of them said: These are ears, man. I asked: What ears? Apparently, they cut off the ears of the terrorists they kill and put them in Coca-Cola until the cartilage comes out. Then they use them as key-chains. I mean they, too, have lost it.

Okay, let me ask this again: Who are the real terrorists?

And there's something on how contra-guerrilla forces like the Bolu commandos were established in Turkey, from Serdar Çelik.

Whoever sheds a tear for these bastards deserves the same fate.

Military operations in the Şirnex (Şırnak) region remain at intense levels, as they have been since Abdullah Gül's recent visit to the military in The Southeast. Is that a coincidence? Most likely not. AKP and the Turkish military are in agreement over the genocide of the Kurdish people, an agreement that began to show itself during the Amed Serhildan in March 2006, when Erdoğan declared an open shooting season on Kurdish women and children. Gül's blessing for an increase in operations, including black operations, is, no doubt, an olive branch extended to the military, who opposed Gül's presidency.

I would also like to think that HPG's whacking of the contras is revenge for the contras massacre in Beytüşşebap. And that may not be so coincidental after all, since it was the contras (especially the Bolu Commando Brigade) who used to disappear people back in the 90's. Maybe they just finished reading Erdal Sarızeybek's book and liked the idea of dressing up like PKK.

Poetic justice.

There is some breaking news in Zaman about the extension of OHAL regions in The Southeast. Before the July elections, OHAL was declared in Şirnex (Şırnak), Sêrt (Siirt), and Culemêrg (Hakkari). It was recently extended until December, and now it's being extended to include an additional twenty-seven OHAL zones.

Now, there is something else to ask oneself: Was the Beytüşşebap massacre carried out by the Ankara regime to help justify the extension of the OHAL? Inquiring minds want to know.

I will definitely post more info on this when it becomes available.

To the hevals: Bijin û Serkeftin!

HPG STATEMENT ON TURKEY'S USE OF CLUSTER BOMBS

"Cluster bombs are designed to strike large troop concentrations or to penetrate armored vehicles and, under international humanitarian law, their use should be limited to areas where there are no civilians."
~ Global Security.

A statement by Dr. Bahoz Erdal, HPG (People's Defense forces) Headquarters Commander on the use of cluster bombs by the Turkish state in North and South Kurdistan:

We have stated for years that the Turkish state itself has not acted according to international agreements to which it is a signatory. We have often submitted much evidence on this issue to international institutions, however these were not taken care of.

For example, In 1996 and 1997 in North Kurdistan (Southeastern Turkey), across the border region in Çukurca, Çiyaye Reş, combat aircraft dropped numerous dispensers containing cluster bombs. I would also like to add that these kinds of bombs pose a very great danger to the population since it is not certain when and where they will explode. Because of these bombs, hundreds of Kurdish children have been killed, wounded, and handicapped.

Although these kinds of bombs are legally forbidden, they have been used in some parts of South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) again.

On 31 July 2007, between 19:00 and 22:00 hours, the areas of Haftanin in the Zaxo region, South Kurdistan, Perex, Şeşdara, Pırbıla, and Keşan were bombarded by enemy Howitzer shells, cluster bombs, and heavy mortars. Again, on 23 May 2007 in Zap, opposite the border from Çukurca, and in Çemco in the town of Şeladize, South Kurdistan, were bombarded with cluster bombs.

After these incidents, there were again attacks at times. Previously the bombs were dropped from aircraft but now they are delivered through artillery and mortar fire, making the work of the Turkish state much easier. Therefore these actions in these territories continue again and again. In particular, the newer cluster bombs come with parachute systems and a piece of rope, looking like toys, as if they are inciting the children to go and play with them. The areas where civilians live, such as gardens, large fields, and the forests where they collect wood, are at present very dangerous. The population is not in the condition to carry out their everyday life

For us, it is a primary task to educate and protect the people in the settlement areas, and particularly the children, against these dangers. Thus we support our people with all our strength against these cluster bomb attacks, which we judge an inhuman punishment of the Turkish state. However, we cannot reach all the areas.

We call all international institutions to attention, to clear the forbidden bombs from the areas and to prevent the Turkish state concerning its barbaric attacks against civilian settlement areas.

With regards,

Dr. Bahoz Erdal
Headquarters Commander
HPG (People's Defense Forces)

The following are videos of some of the cluster bombs found by the gerîlas. In the second and third videos, the gerîlas explain the dangers to the civilian population, echoing that which Heval Bahoz says in his statement. In the third video, the gerîlas have collected some of the bomblets in order to bury them.



Video 1:

Video 2:

Video 3:

For more on the various types of cluster munitions, check this .pdf chart.

Naturally, if these bombs had been found in Southern Lebanon, instead of Southern Kurdistan, the news would have been all over the front pages of the Western media. At this point, the only ones looking out for the civilian population in affected areas are the Kurdish freedom fighters of the People's Defense Forces.

FRIDAY NIGHT MUSIC

"If I ever die of a heart attack, I hope it will be from playing my stereo too loud."
~ Anonymous.

La Rumba de Barcelona por Manu Chao:

TURKEY'S KURDISH POLICY

"Turkey must be aware that we will be faced with an independent state in the north of Iraq when conditions are suitable. I can say that this would be a security problem rather than a political problem."
~ Yaşar Büyükanıt, Chief of General Staff.

The nice people at Info-Turk.be have translated IHD's statement on the Beytüşşebap massacre:

A minibus, in the rural area of Beytüssebap district of Sırnak province, was raked. 12 people (children, women and men) in the minibus were killed. At the moment, perpetrators of the attack are unknown.

The region has been declared as security zone a few months ago. As a result; entrance and exit is being kept under the control by security forces of the State. Media and public opinion, currently, do not have proper, right information about the attack.

So, as Human Rights Association (IHD) we are commenting the attack within the framework of our principal attitude that is; We are defending dominance of peace in our country. Keystone of peace is composed of human rights and freedoms, democracy and rule of law.

As IHD we are against attack, which targets civilian, without considering peace period or war period. We condemn the violation of the Article 3, which is about prohibition of arbitrary murdering and common in Geneva Conventions that are the most important documents of Humanitarian Law. We are against extrajudicial executions, which are violation of right to life, by the State organs.

We are against executions by organizations that use arm as a tool in their activities, too. The attack in Şırnak is inhuman and cruel.

IHD considers the attack as the one, which should be condemned and be against without regarding its perpetrators or aim. We are sharing sorrow of families whose relatives killed in the attack.

We demand for revealing perpetrators and bringing them to justice.

The Turkish version is at IHD's website.

Hevallo has taken the time to deconstruct the Ankara regime's initial lie about a seven-year-old being killed in the massacre. He also reminds us of the games played at the Hudson Institute, where quite a few scenarios for Turkish-occupied Kurdistan were concocted. I have to agree with him that it's entirely possible that a scenario like the one played out over the weekend in Beytüşşebap might be one of the results of the game plan hashed out by the perverted minds involved with Hudson.

In the meantime, Yaşar Büyükanıt has set up DTP as a target for the regime's assassins:

We are faced with a mentality which cannot bring itself to call a terrorist organisation terrorist, which calls members of this terrorist organisation "brothers", and which calls the Turkish Armed Forces "separatist".

Remember that DTP's Ankara office came under gunfire earlier this week.

Yaşar Paşa goes on to blame the incompetence of the TSK, in its fight against the Kurdish freedom movement, on those pesky human rights types, which is what he did in June.

And, as if it weren't enough to treat the Kurdish problem in Turkey (which the Ankara regime created) as a strictly security matter, Büyükanıt says that an autonomous Kurdistan in the South will "be a security problem rather than a political problem". It is clear then that the Ankara regime considers South Kurdistan as a "problem" in and of itself and has nothing whatsoever to do with PKK.

Land forces commander, İlker Başbuğ, who will succeed Büyükanıt as chief of the Turkish general staff, parroted the same idea earlier:

Land Forces Commander Ilker Basbug signaled Monday that the main worry of the Turkish Armed Forces regarding northern Iraq is the danger of the region becoming a center of attraction for Turkey's Kurds.

The area which is run by the autonomous administration of the Kurdistan Regional Government seems to be regarded as a main threat to Turkish unity.

"It is a fact that the developments in north of Iraq has given political, legal, military and psychological strength to the Kurds living in the region as they have never had or experienced before in the past. We must be careful about the developments in north of Iraq as these may give some of our citizens a feeling of belonging to this region," the Land Forces chief said.

The idea of Kurdish autonomy as a threat to the Turkish state will be the guiding principle of Turkish policy toward the South for the foreseeable future. The Ankara regime's fears of Kurds in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan getting uppity as a result of Southern autonomy is the reason for the renewed Dirty War in the North. TSK's massacre in Beytüşşebap is the practical expression of this policy. Expect to see many more similar TSK atrocities.

There's more on Büyükanıt's remarks about the "threat" of South Kurdistan at TNA which concludes with his remarks on the division of Turkey:

Let us be sure of one thing. No force can divide Turkey. No one has the power to divide Turkey.

Unfortunately, Büyükanıt is merely the most recent in a long line of fascists who, all by themselves, divided Turkey a very long time ago.

HARD QUESTIONS FOR THE DEEP STATE

"Who staged this act and why should be investigated."
~ Akın Birdal, DTP parliamentarian.

Hevallo has been doing a great job keeping up with developments in the Beytüşşebap massacre, including a post on the contradictions in news reports and touching on the history of Turkey's longstanding policy of psychological warfare against the Kurdish people. He's also got a link at the bottom of this post to an article at Zaman, in which Akın Birdal demands an investigation into the massacre.

Akın Birdal, for those who don't remember, served as the head of Turkey's Human Rights Association (IHD) and suffered an assassination attempt carried out by the Turkish state's own assassins. Birdal is now serving as a DTP parliamentarian from Amed (Diyarbakır).

We can say that Akın Birdal is an expert when it comes to sensing the regime's dirty business. Thus his suspicions are heightened in the case of the Beytüşşebap massacre and he draws a comparison with the regime's bombing in Şemdinli. He also notes that there have been some strange goings-on in Beytüşşebap in the last few months and believes that these were not coincidental. From Zaman:

“Who staged this act and why should be investigated. We cannot simply get out of this by saying the PKK did it. The PKK has not claimed responsibility for the attack. Strange things have been going on in the district for a while. The villagers there have certain doubts. The DTP mayor as well as the head of the party’s regional branch was taken into custody. All aspects of the incident have to be investigated thoroughly,” he said. Birdal also called on the European Union to examine the case.

The Zaman piece then goes on to describe some of those strange events of the last few months, including the attempted assassination of Beytüşşebap's DTP mayor, Faik Dursun, whom Birdal says has been taken into custody by the regime.

Why was Faik Dursun and the DTP regional chairman taken into custody? Are they suspects in the crime? If not, why are they in custody?

Bianet has some reporting on the formation of a parliamentary committee to investigate the massacre. But, then, we all remember what happened with the parliamentary committee to investigate the Şemdinli bombing. We might very well say that the conclusion is already foregone.

However, what is interesting about the Bianet report is the inclusion of the questions DTP parliamentarian for Şırnak, Hasip Kaplan, has already directed at the Turkish Interior Ministry (which is responsible for security):

* Is there any evidence on which the official announcement is made? What is the evidence in the murders in Besagac village in the Beytüssebap district, the perpetrators of which are not known yet, on which officials have made announcements to the public?

* Seeing as the perpetrators of a similar attack in the Güclükonak district in 1994 were later found to be underground gangs, do officials not have to be more careful?

* Some people say that around 25 plain-clothes people were driving around in two white minibuses in the area and that they had flasks with them and were probably officials. Are the security forces investigating the area?

* Are the rumours true that two of the people shooting at our citizens at around 5 pm were masked?

* The area is difficult to access and also difficult to leave. After hearing of the event, what did security forces do?

* Considering the fact that the provinces of Hakkari, Sirnak and Siirt have been declared "security zones" and that around a hundred thousand soldiers are in the region, with tens of thousands of soldiers on operation in the area of the murders, why were there no security precautions which would have protected the road and the lives of our dead citizens?

* Are there plans to work on putting an end to putting our civilian citizen's security out to tender, to ending the village guard system, and to providing social rights and securities?

Obviously, those from The Region know better than to believe the propaganda produced for official consumption, domestically as well as internationally.

I guess, too, that's why DTP has become the target of the same creatures who did the Beytüşşebap massacre.

HPG STATEMENT ON BEYTÜŞŞEBAP MASSACRE

"There is no connection between the recent incident [in Beytüşşebap] and the guerrillas."
~ HPG Headquarters Command.

The Turkish Army Is Responsible for the Beytüşşebap Massacre


To the Press and Public:


On the day before yesterday, in the district of Beytüşşebap, province of Şırnak, twelve persons, including seven Village Guards, died by the strafing of a minibus. For notice, those responsible are the Turkish army and the illegal military organization, JİTEM.

Our freedom movement proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire one year ago on 1 October 2006. The Turkish military increased the intensity of its attacks for this proclamation and used all conceivable dirty methods of warfare.

Within this year, the Turkish army carried out 483 military operations. Chemical weapons and cluster bombs were used, as well as the systematic burning of forests. It came to war crimes before the eyes of the world public.

This war concept, which was intensified after the elections of 22 July, is a result of an agreement between the government party AKP and the military. Previously, it was already announced by military circles that the "extermination of terror" is attainable at the earliest by aiming at the "collaborators". Thus almost the entire society was set as the target. For this reason, after that, the course of action which followed showed that this method was implemented.

The dirty relations between institutions of the state, the army, and the government were uncovered by the the bomb attack on a bookshop in Şemdinli by the resident population. Those caught red-handed again implemented the network of gangs, JİTEM, informers, and the use of terror in Kurdistan, in order to intimidate the population. As strengthened Kontras were used in the form of Hizbullah in the mid-1990s, so today there are more organizations such as JİTEM and TİT.

The purposes of this approach are to isolate the guerrillas and to damage the prestige of the PKK. In Beytüşşebap, Village Guards were deliberately selected as the target of attack in order to break the passivity of these circles and turn them against the Kurdish movement.

In the consciousness of this reality, our HPG guerrillas put an emphasis on attacks against JİTEM in their latest actions. There is no connection between the recent incident [in Beytüşşebap] and the guerrillas. We call upon the public of Turkey to place no faith in this war propaganda which twists the facts. In addition, we continue to request the political parties, human rights associations, and democratic-civil-social organizations to examine the incident, and to find and to call to account its true authors.


HPG Headquarters Command

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!