Kurdish news

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

nl (V-MailServer 2.20)
           id VT14583; Thu, 17 Aug 1995 22:59:30 -0800



DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Aug 15 (Reuter) - Kurdish rebels have killed a top
gendarmerie officer in southeast Turkey despite tight security for the 11th
anniversary of their separatist campaign, security officials said on Tuesday.

Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas killed Colonel Ridvan Ozden, head of
the paramilitary gendarmerie forces in Mardin province, on Monday night, the
officials said.

The attack, in which two non-commissioned officers and a pro-government
village guard also died, appeared to be an act of defiance to counter
government charges the PKK is close to defeat.

"He is the highest-ranking member of the security forces killed in the
southeast in the last year," said an official at the regional governor's
office in the city of Diyarbakir.

He said security forces killed 13 guerrillas in Mardin in ensuing fighting
which continued into Tuesday morning.

Security measures had been stepped up in the region in case of a dramatic
attack by the rebels to mark the anniversary.

Police identity checks in Diyarbakir and controls of vehicles entering or
leaving southeastern towns had been increased in recent days. Soldiers' leave
in the region had been postponed.

More than 17,500 people have died in the rebels' insurgency which was
launched with the killing of two soldiers in separate attacks on August 15,
1984. The PKK was then only a few hundred strong.

Turkish political and military leaders refuse to negotiate with the rebels,
whom they describe as "terrorists."

Prime Minister Tansu Ciller has repeatedly said this year the security forces
were on the brink of ending the rebellion. The guerrillas have continued
attacks despite a big Turkish incursion meant to cripple key PKK bases in
northern Iraq in the spring. About 35,000 troops took part.

The PKK now has thousands of guerrillas in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq,
thousands of members and sympathisers among Kurds in Europe and close links to
a parliament-in-exile set up by Turkish Kurds in The Hague in April.

"The Kurdish revolution is now...the most serious international revolutionary
movement," the Marxist PKK's leader Abdullah Ocalan said in an interview
published in a pro-Kurdish daily on Tuesday to mark the anniversary.

Ocalan, believed to have been based in Damascus or the Syrian-controlled Bekaa
Valley in Lebanon since before 1984, compared the PKK's fight to the French and
Russian revolutions.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 rebel prisoners in Turkish jails have been on hunger
strike since mid-July to urge the government to hold talks with the PKK to end
the conflict.

Security forces killed three guerrillas near the rugged Iraqi border on
Tuesday, security officials said. Another rebel was killed in the southeastern
province of Bingol, they said.

(4)

ANKARA, Aug 15 (Reuter) - These were the leading stories in the Turkish press
on Tuesday.

YENI YUZYIL

- German federal officials believe the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla
group extorts 30 million marks from Turks and Kurds in Germany in 1994.

YENI POLITIKA

- It is forbidden to teach children peace. Forty-three teachers in southeast
Turkey are called upon to explain themselves for teaching human rights and
democracy in class.

- The action has become indefinite. A Kurdish hunger strike in prisons that
began on July 14 will continue indefinitely with wider participation.

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 * Origin: APS Amsterdam (aps.nl), bbs +31-20-6842147 (16:31/2.0)