TRKNWS-L NEWS from Vic McDonald

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From: newsdesk_aps_nl at apsf.aps.nl (newsdesk at aps.nl)
Subject: TRKNWS-L NEWS from Vic McDonald


Kurds stone police, Turks protest in Swiss cities

    BASLE, Switzerland, March 19 (Reuter) - Kurdish protesters pelted police
with stones and police replied with teargas after authorities closed down a
Kurdish cultural centre in this Swiss city, officials said on Sunday.

    The disturbances in Basle late on Saturday followed fire-bomb attacks on
Turkish travel agencies in two other northern Swiss towns and demonstrations
in Zurich over alleged police violence in Turkey.

    In neighbouring Germany Turkish businesses were firebombed for the six
consecutive night in attacks linked by German police to Kurdish unrest.

    A police statement in Basle said the Kurds, chanting slogans in support
of the Kurdish (communist) Workers' Party (PKK), blocked traffic near the
city's old town and responded with volleys of stones when a riot squad tried
to disperse them.

    A policeman and a policewoman were injured but the 200-odd protesters
later agreed to leave the area, the statement said.

    Earlier on Saturday, police fired rubber bullets after Kurds in the
cultural centre threw missiles in a bid to prevent the building being
forcibly evacuated and six people were detained.

    Police said they moved against the centre after the Kurdish association
which ran it ignored a deadline to leave because fire and other safety
regulations had not been observed.

    The fire-bomb attacks took place early on Saturday in the towns of Aarau
and Saint Gallen, and followed similar incidents earlier last week in Basle
and Zurich.

    Police said no-one was hurt although there was extensive damage in both
attacks, believed linked to tension between the large ethnic Turkish and
Kurdish communities in the eastern part of Switzerland.

    A man of Kurdish origin had been detained after the incident in Aarau,
police there said.

    In Zurich, Turkish Moslem Alawites and Turkish and Kurdish communists
staged separate demonstrations to protest against police violence in Istanbul
and Ankara and the Turkish army's drive against Kurdish separatists.

    In the suburb of Oerlikon, about 2,000 Alawites from all over Switzerland
marched in protest at the violence in Turkey over the past week in which
leaders of the community in Istanbul say at least 30 people died.

    Similar marches were held in German, Austrian and French cities on
Saturday.

    The Alawites, who follow a moderate version of Islam, say Turkish police
targetted them in demonstrations after Islamic fundamentalists attacked
coffee shops in an Alawite area of Istanbul, sparking riots.

    The Oerlikon protesters declined to join the extreme left-wing protest in
central Zurich. ``We want a social democracy in Turkey, not extremism,'' one
told Swiss television. Both marches passed off without incident.

    Kurds in Basle interviewed on Swiss television said the police had used
undue violence in the incidents there. ``They seem to be treating all Kurds
the same, whether we are moderates or not, just like the police in Germany,''
one said.

    Basle, in northern Switzerland, is close to the border with France and
Germany. Switzerland has given shelter to many Kurds from Turkey, but has
recently begun to crack down on foreigners who fail to observe residence
rules.

    It also has a large population of Turkish workers, especially in
German-speaking towns in the northeast.
REUTER                       Transmitted: 95-03-19 08:29:54 EST

Turkish violence seen spilling over into Germany

    By Michael Christie

    BONN, March 17 (Reuter) - Violence rocking Turkey for the past week has
spilled over into Germany as Kurdish militants take advantage of it to sow
discord in the largest Turkish community in northern Europe, experts said on
Friday.

    They also warned a series of arson attacks on Turkish targets in Germany
could escalate before next week's Kurdish New Year in a repeat of last year's
self-immolations, motorway blockades and violent clashes between police and
Kurds.

    ``The Kurdish militants are out to sow discord,'' said Faruk Sen,
director of the Centre for Turkish Studies at Essen University. ``I'm very
afraid that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is trying to split the Turkish
community here.''

    A wave of fire-bomb attacks on Turkish offices and mosques in Germany
persisted for a fourth consecutive night on Friday.

    Police have in the past blamed such attacks on the separatist PKK, which
has waged a 10-year war against Ankara for an independent Kurdish homeland.

    The PKK was outlawed by Bonn in November 1993 after a series of
spectacular raids on Turkish targets across Europe. Germany, home to two
million Turks, among them 400,000 Kurds, has always been a hotbed of PKK
activity.

    In the latest attacks, police said petrol bombs were thrown into Turkish
travel agencies, cultural clubs and a mosque in at least four cities in the
states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. No one was hurt.

    In Turkey, officials lifted a curfew in Istanbul's Umraniye suburb, the
latest flashpoint in four days of rioting that killed at least 17 people
after gunmen fired on coffee shops of the minority Moslem Alawite community.

    ``It is clear that extremist groups such as the PKK are taking advantage
of the unrest in Turkey and are terrorising the Turkish minority in
Germany,'' Sen told Reuters.

    ``I fear the violence will escalate,'' said Udo Steinbach, an Islam
expert at the German Oriental Studies Institute.

    ``It's man versus man, it's one Kurd against a Turkish baker, one Kurd
against a Turkish travel agency,'' Steinbach told RTL television. ``And I
fear the police will have a problem because the longer it continues, the more
impossible it will be for them to put a stop to it.''

    German security sources said leaflets signed in the name of the Alawites
were found at the scene of some fire-bombings.

    Sen said the Alawite community in Germany had denied involvement and that
it was a PKK ploy to make Turks take up arms against the Alawites.

    One security official said this was ``speculative'' but added that many
Alawites were Kurds and sympathetic to the PKK.

    ``We see a diversity of interests behind the attacks,'' said the offical,
who asked not to be named.

    He suggested that political discord between left- and right-wing Turkish
groups lay behind some of them.

    But most, he said, could be blamed on the PKK or related splinter groups.


    ``At first it was a coordinated PKK campaign against Turkish travel
agencies. They started targeting tourists in Turkey and now they've come to
the source. After all, it's the holiday booking season.''

    Eckart Werthebach, president of Bonn's BfV domestic security agency, said
in a newspaper interview the PKK, despite being banned, was the greatest
extremist threat in Germany.
 REUTER              Transmitted: 95-03-17 17:40:06 EST

Stockholm arsonists attack Turkish tourist office

    STOCKHOLM, March 19 (Reuter) - Unknown attackers set fire to a Turkish
government tourist office in the Swedish capital overnight, after a week of
violent unrest in Turkey itself.

    Sweden's TT news agency said police patrolling bars in the city centre
shortly after midnight discovered small fires burning at the office of the
Turkish State Travel Bureau and called for a patrol car which put them out.

    TT said damage was slight and added that security was stepped up at a
Turkish Airlines office elsewhere in the city.

    Travel agencies were among the targets in a spate of fire bombings
against Turkish offices and mosques in German cities last week.

    German authorities have in the past blamed such attacks upon the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which is fighting a 10-year war for Kurdish
independence from Ankara.

    Stockholm police did not say whom they suspected of carrying out Sunday's
attack. Turks, among them Kurds, make up one of Sweden's biggest immigrant
communities.

    Turkey suffered a week of bloody ethnic turmoil.

    At least 17 people died in Istanbul riots which exploded after unknown
gunmen sprayed coffee shops used by the minority Alawite sect and on Saturday
Kurdish rebels killed 15 Turkish soldiers in an ambush in the mountains of
eastern Turkey.

    German security sources said that leaflets signed in the name of the
Alawites were found at the scene of the fire bombings there but local Alawite
leaders said they were PKK forgeries designed to split the Turkish immigrant
community.

    Turkish affairs experts said the situation was complicated by the fact
that some Alawites were themselves Kurds and sympathetic to the PKK.
   REUTER       Transmitted: 95-03-19 08:38:54 EST


Alawites protest in Germany against violence
    By Christopher Zoerner
    COLOGNE, Germany, March 18 (Reuter) - Thousands of supporters of Turkey's
minority Moslem Alawite community marched in several German cities on
Saturday to demand an end to violence against the group in Turkey.

    Organisers said other Alawite demonstrations were held in Vienna,
Innsbruck, Zurich and Paris.

    In Cologne, police said about 25,000 people took part in a march called
to denounce an attack by unknown gunmen on Alawite coffeeshops in Istanbul.
The incident sparked four days of riots in Turkey this week in which at least
17 people died.

    Police, edgy after a series of firebomb attacks against Turkish property
in Germany that have been blamed on Kurdish extremists, said Saturday's
Cologne march went off peacefully.

    But five people were detained during an Alawite protest in the financial
hub city of Frankfurt after they displayed banners of the banned Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), police said.

    Germany's 1.8-million-strong Turkish community has been unsettled by the
firebombings, which police warned could increase with the approach of
Tuesday's Kurdish New Year. The date is a traditional focus of guerrilla
activity by the PKK.

    Organisers from the Union of Alawite Communities in Europe estimated the
turnout at the Cologne rally at about 50,000.

    ``We will not forget the massacre,'' Ali Ritzan-Gulcicek, the group's
chairman, told the crowd. He called for international solidarity to end
repression of Alawites in Turkey.

    Its spokesman, Hidir Teml, urged Chancellor Helmut Kohl to use Bonn's
influence with Ankara to help protect the Alawites.

    Security was tight for marches by Alawites and Kurds in other German
cities.

    About 700 people marched in Frankfurt and 300 gathered in the northern
port city of Hamburg. Police said around 500 protestors demonstrated
peacefully in Hanover on Friday night.

    Alawites, whose relaxed practice of Islam has long made them a target of
hardline Islamists, constitute about one third of Turkey's 60 million people.


    They complain Turkey does not respect their religious rights and say
state money only goes to build mosques for the majority Sunni population and
fund Sunni religious education.

    Police remained on alert across Germany after arsonists attacked Turkish
targets for a fifth consecutive night. No one claimed responsibility but
police have blamed Kurdish militants, fighting Turkey since 1984 for an
independent homeland in the southeast, for the fire-bombings.

    In the southwestern city of Stuttgart, about 200 Kurds urged the Turkish
government to stop repressing their kin. In Munich, around 150 Kurds
demonstrated against Bonn's decision to resume deportations of Kurdish
refugees to Turkey.

    Interior Minister Manfred Kanther ended a moratorium on such deporations
this week, saying Kurds were generally not subject to persecution as a
minority group.

    In Switzerland, Basle police fired rubber bullets in a clash with Kurdish
squatters and a Kurd was detained after a fire-bomb attack on a Turkish
travel agency in the town of Aarau.

    Officials said the incident in Basle, where another Turkish agency was
attacked this week, began when police tried to evacuate premises illegally
occupied by a Kurdish cultural association.

    In Austria, about 300 people demonstrated outside the Turkish embassy in
central Vienna around midday and dispersed peacefully after a couple of
hours, Vienna police said.
Transmitted: 95-03-18 13:52:21 EST

Swiss police clash with Kurds, use rubber bullets
    BASLE, Switzerland, March 18 (Reuter) - Swiss police fired rubber bullets
on Saturday in a clash with Kurdish squatters in Basle and a Kurd was
detained after a fire-bomb attack on a Turkish travel agency in the town of
Aarau.

    The incident in Basle, where another Turkish agency was attacked earlier
in the week, occurred when police moved in to evacuate buildings illegally
occupied by a Kurdish cultural association, local officials said.

    Police said they had given an ultimatum to the Kurds to leave the
buildings by early Saturday but it had been ignored.

    The Swiss news agency ATS said police fired rubber bullets after people
in the buildings pelted the police with missiles and chanted slogans
denouncing them as ``fascists.''

    Police said they detained six people, who were later released. Several
others in the buildings were injured in the clashes which were watched by
some 200 Kurdish demonstrators who later dispersed.

    Basle is close to the border with France and Germany in northern
Switzerland.

    The fire-bomb attack in Aarau, east of Basle, caused serious damage to
the travel agency -- mainly serving Turkish immigrant workers -- but no-one
was injured, police said. They said the detained man was of Kurdish origin
but gave no further details.

    Soon after the Aarau incident, which occurred early on Saturday, another
Turkish-owned travel agency in the nearby town of Saint Gallen was damaged
when assailants broke its windows and threw in a petrol bomb.

    Police said men were seen lurking near another Turkish agency in the town
but ran off when challenged.

    Police said there had been similar attacks on Turkish travel agency
offices in Basle and Zurich earlier this week. Swiss authorities believe the
incidents are linked to Turkey's domestic drive against Kurdish separatists.

    Switzerland has given shelter to many Kurds, mainly from Turkey, but has
recently begun to crack down on foreigners who fail to observe residence
rules.

    It also has a considerable population of Turkish workers, especially in
German-speaking towns in the northeast, and there is considerable tension
between the two communities.
REUTER             Transmitted: 95-03-18 12:34:50 EST

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