Turkish Kurds: some back the state
Though embattled, not all Kurds support the militant Kurdistan Workers Party.
from the July 6, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
On Sunday, four masked ex-PKK members, one of them a woman and all of them claiming to have just "escaped," told journalists in Sirnak that the guerrillas were fleeing the northern Iraqi camps. "In the last few days, the rumors of a cross-border operation have triggered fear within the [PKK]," one said. "All the camps have been emptied." The ex-rebels also claimed to have witnessed two US armored vehicles delivering weapons to the PKK in northern Iraq, giving ammunition – apocryphal or not – to some Turkish claims of secret US support for the PKK.
The toll rose Wednesday with reports that two PKK fighters had been killed by Turkish troops while trying to lay a mine in eastern Tunceli Province, and that a pro-government village guard had been killed in nearby Bingol.
Gungor says the 1987 attack on his family caused him to "grow in his hate" against the PKK and to join the village guards. "Like all Sirnak citizens, we were in the middle," says Gungor, whose desk is watched over by a portrait of modern Turkey's secular military founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. His office organized a June 9 anti-PKK rally, which drew some 5,000 people, almost all of them Kurds, to the streets.
"Sirnak people hate PKK terrorism," says Gungor, as a video of the rally plays on his computer. "Though Sirnak is small, there are many people [at the rally] – they are cursing terrorism."
Contrary to the view of many Kurds and their lawyers, Gungor claims that Kurds and Turks share "equal rights" and that "we can't see discrimination."
"We are all Kurds living under the same flag; if they choose, they must accept that Turkish sovereignty," says Gungor. He says the PKK fight is pointless: "There was no cease-fire. They said they gave up their arms, but in fact never gave them up. If they find any excuse, they fight."
The renewed violence has brought a host of applications to join the village guards, to bulk up the 12,000 already attached to Sirnak region. Gungor asserts that people who "go to the mountains" and join the PKK are "tricked and forced" to go.
"Sirnak citizens are really innocent, [so] they are easily tricked," he says. "We have many who were tricked in the 1980s and 1990s – generally the poor."
This hillside town – adjacent to one of three areas near the Iraq border where the military established special closed zones for the next four months – has lost 325 citizens to the conflict.
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