Political murders haunt Turkey's Kurds

Political murders haunt Turkey's Kurds

By Aliza Marcus

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuter): Necati Aydin, a former union
chief and Kurdish activist, was last seen alive in the state
security court in Diyarbakir, in southeast Turkey.

He had been detained three weeks earlier on suspicion of
aiding separatist Kurdish rebels. Five days after the April 4
hearing, Aydin's corpse was found on a road at the city's edge.

Hundreds of people, many of them Kurdish nationalists, have
been murdered or have "disappeared" in the southeast in the last
three years of intensifying conflict between the Turkish state
and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The killings are so commonplace -- the interior ministry
counted 103 in the first five months of the year -- that they
receive only cursory coverage in the Turkish press. The ministry
said suspects had been detained for 23 of the murders.

Human rights groups have urged Ankara to investigate.
"The situation gets graver by the hour...death-squad-style
killings are reported almost daily; and there has been an
alarming increase in disappearances," said the London-based
Amnesty International in a statement issued in June.

This year, the U.S. State Department devoted a whole section
to the issue in its annual report on human rights in Turkey.

"Political murders and extrajudicial killings in 1993,
attributed to both government authorities and terrorist groups,
continued to occur at the relatively high 1992 rates," it said.
Anne Burley, Amnesty's director for the European region, said it
appeared that the security forces were involved in some of the
murders. Turkish officials strongly deny this.

"In some cases the person was detained immediately before the
killing and in other cases the person may have been threatened by
the security forces," Burley told Reuters.

The chilling series began in July 1991 with Vedat Aydin,
Diyarbakir branch chairman of the Kurdish-basd People's Labor
Party (HEP), who was taken from his home by men who said they
were police. His tortured body was found a few days later.

Victims since then have included some of Turkey's most
prominent Kurdish activists. Musa Anter, a writer, was shot in
Diyarbakir in September 1992. Member of parliament Mehmet Sincar
was gunned down in broad daylight in Batman a year later.

At least 70 members of HEP and its successor, the Democracy
Party (DEP) -- both now banned by the constitutional court --
have been murdered, as have several Kurdish journalists.

The Turkish authorities, denying any involvement by the
security forces, say the murders are the work of the PKK or the
result of a feud between the PKK and a shadowy Hizbollah group --
which have in the past agreed to halt the mutual killings.

"We know most are committed by the PKK, perhaps because the
person did not want to join the group, or to settle an old score.

The problem is we have trouble catching them," said Bekir
Selcuk, prosecutor at the Diyarbakir state security court.

Many Kurds in the region suspect that the security forces have
used Hizbollah to pursue an undercover war against PKK militants
and anyone else harboring nationalist opinions.

Last month, Turkish authorities cracked down on Hizbollah,
charging 35 of its militants with treason for seeking to set up
an Islamic Kurdish state. They were accused of involvement in 39
attacks in which 25 people were killed and 35 wounded in Batman
and Diyarbakir. Fifteen of them face a possible death penalty.

Kurdish sources say Hizbollah itself split in 1992, setting
off killings between one faction which advocates an Islamic
Kurdish state and another seeking a broader Islamic revolution.

Many of the murders may never be solved, but the list is still
lengthening, injecting new fear into a rugged region
traditionally prone to blood feuds between Kurdish clans.