Signalfire

July 27

Local officials said Monday 39 people had been detained after family conflicts escalated into riots in northwest Turkey overnight, Turkish media reported.

A fight broke out between two groups after three people were alleged to have stabbed six others in a coffee house in the city of Inegol in Bursa province and the conflict worsened after police detained the three suspects, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News reported on its website.

Local people gathered in front of the hospital where the victims of the stabbing incident stayed, demanding the suspects be handed over to them as they heard one of the families had a Kurdish background, the newspaper said, citing private news channel NTVMSNBC.

The crowd swelled to 1,000 people and violence erupted as some started to set fire to police vehicles and damage other properties, injuring 10 police officers, the report said.

Gendarmerie and police units were called in from the provincial capital of Bursa, but the rioting continued till Monday morning after police frequently opened fire into the air, it said.

Altogether 39 people were detained and sent to Bursa, the newspaper quoted Bursa Governor Sahabettin Harput as saying.

In a statement early Monday, Harput said it was sad that an ordinary security situation was provocatively interpreted as being caused primarily by ethnic differences.

Interior Minister Becir Atalay said Monday inspectors and intelligence units had been sent to the city to investigate the causes behind the riot, according to the report.

As Turkey’s biggest ethnic minority group, Kurds have been complaining about scant cultural rights and harsh treatment by security forces.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) announced a reform plan in July to expand rights for the Kurdish minority and end decades of the armed conflict between the Turkish government and the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).

The plan included such moves as removing restrictions on Kurdish language use and establishing a national mechanism to prevent torture.

Listed as a terrorist organization by the Turkish government, the United States and the European Union, the PKK took up arms in 1984 in order to create an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey.

Some 40,000 people have been killed in conflicts involving the PKK for the past over two decades.

27/07
ANKARA, Turkey — Armed men killed four police officers in southeast Turkey on Monday (July 26th) after opening fire at a police station in the town of Dortyol, in Hatay province. The gunmen were in a delivery truck with forged plates. Authorities said it is not yet clear whether the shooters were members of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Three people have been arrested.

The incident spurred clashes between Turkish and Kurdish protesters Tuesday forcing police to use tear gas to disperse them. Local media reported some of the demonstrators chanted slogans in Turkish in support of jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan. This caused Turkish protestors to attack and set on fire the local offices of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Parti. The unrest followed similar ethnic clashes in northern Turkey on Monday. (NTV, Anadolu news agency, Reuters, Milliyet – 27/07/10; Anadolu news agency, Reuters, Hurriyet, AP, AFP – 26/07/10)

Turkey has asked Iraq, the United States and Iraqs Kurdish administration to hand over nearly 250 Kurdish rebels operating from rear bases in Iraq, the Turkish Hurriyet daily reported.
The list of 248 includes rebel commanders like Murat Karayilan, Cemil Bayik and Duran Kalkan, and Ankara wants the handover to be “as soon as possible”, the newspaper said, quoting unnamed senior Turkish officials.
Turkey has also mooted a joint military operation “if necessary”, Hurriyet said.
“The net is tightening”, an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
According to experts, there are some 2,000 Kurdish rebels holed up in Northern Iraq from where they stage attacks on Turkish territory.
However, Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for Iraqi Kurdistan’s peshmerga fighters, could not confirm that the list had been handed over.
“These names are not those of people living officially in the [Kurdistan autonomous] region. They live in Turkey where they undertake their criminal activities”, Yawar said.
“The Kurdistan government can’t arrest them because they are not in the region… We are not part of the problem. We want the problem to be solved peacefully”, he said.
Peshmergas are former Kurdish guerrillas who fought against the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein and led a campaign for autonomy for the Iraqi Kurdish minority in northern parts of the country.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — considered a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community — has been waging a 25-year-old campaign for Kurdish self-rule that has claimed some 45,000 lives.
The PKK has significantly escalated attacks against Turkish targets after jailed rebel leader Abdallah Ocalan said in May that he was abandoning efforts for peace with Turkey and the rebels called off a unilateral truce last month.
Turkish General Ilker Basbug, the chief of the General Staff, recently strongly criticized Iraq’s Kurdish administration for failing to take action against PKK rebels.
More than 5,000 demonstrators clashed with police last Sunday in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir after a rally in support of Kurdish rebels.
Protestors gathered in the city to protest against Turkish security forces, whom they accuse of mutilating the bodies of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels killed in recent fighting, and not returning them to their families.
The protestors threw rocks and sticks at riot police, who responded with tear gas. At least 10 demonstrators were arrested.
An estimated 45,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms in 1984.

11 Jul

On Saturday, hundreds of Kurdish people marched in the streets of Istanbul to support the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and protest the killing of twelve PKK militants in clashes with the Turkish army last week. No casualties were reported on either side.

Four Turkish security forces were killed in clashes on July 1 that broke out near the town of Pervari in Siirt province in the southeast of the country.

In recent months, the PKK has launched a number of attacks on military installations in the southeast, which have left over 50 Turkish soldiers dead.

And last Thursday, Kurdish militants attacked a police station in the town of Varto in Mus province of eastern Turkey, wounding four officers, an army source said on Friday.

The PKK militants launch their attacks from the Qandil Mountains in the areas under the control of Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani. Israel and Israeli firms also operate in the Qandil mountain range.

8 July, 2010

ANKARA: (KUNA) — Confrontations broke out Thursday between Turkish police and Kurdish demonstrators who gathered before the bureaus of Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, south eastern of the country, to protest Turkish military operations against outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels.

About 2,000 people gathered before the Turkish Hakkari-based bureau of PDP — that is represented in the Turkish parliament — to deliver a statement expressing their protest to the latest combat operations as well as the army’s rejection to hand over the bodies of rebels who fell during the latest military operations to their relatives, Anatolia News Agency (AA) reported today.

It added that shopkeepers in the province of Hakkari have joined the protest and closed their shops in solidarity with the prtestors, pointing out that demonstration was turned later turned into encounters between the protestors and the anti-riot police.

The confrontations erupted after the protestors hurled stones and cocktail molotov glasses at the security forces and forces responded with unleashing tear gas and hot water at them, according to local media outlets.

However, no casualties were reported as a result of these confrontations except for an officer who was injured during the mutural swap between the protestors and anti-riot squad, according to some local TV stations.

The Turkish south eastern provinces, where is a dominant Kurdish majority, usually see confrontations between pro-PKK rebel elements and security forces.

Further, armed confrontations take place in the areas bordering the mountains surrounding these provinces between the Turkish military and these rebels who fight since quarter of a century to establish an independent Kurdish homeland in the Kurdish-dominant areas.

KIRKUK Iraq/DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – A bomb planted by suspected PKK separatist rebels in Turkey and a technical fault in Iraq have halted pumping on the Kirkuk to Ceyhan pipeline, officials said on Sunday.

The bombing by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) added a new dimension to the threats against the pipeline, which carries around a quarter of Iraq’s oil exports, after the rebel group called off a 14-month cease-fire in June.

The explosion late on Saturday took place near the town of Midyat in Mardin province, near the border with Syria, Turkish security sources said. Crew workers from Turkey’s state-run pipeline operator BOTAS were working on Sunday to repair the pipeline so that pumping can resume.

On the Iraqi side of the border, a technical problem on the pipeline that halted pumping late on Thursday was taking longer to fix than expected, sources at Iraq’s North Oil Co said.

Iraqi oil officials said a technical team was continuing the maintenance and repair works, but gave no further details about when they expected to restore the flow of oil.

The 960 km (600 mile) pipeline carries an average 500,000 barrels of oil per day from Iraq’s northern oilfields around Kirkuk to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, where it is loaded onto tankers for export.

Sabotage and technical problems kept the Iraq-Turkey route mostly idle until 2007 following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Security has improved but insurgents still target the pipeline from time to time, and it also suffers frequent technical issues because of its age and poor maintenance over the years.

Attacks on the Turkish side of the border had to date been far less common.

In recent weeks, the PKK has stepped up attacks on the Turkish military after ending the cease-fire.

ANKARA, June 18 (Xinhua) — About 130 members of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) have been killed since March in military operations inside Turkey and in northern Iraq, where the PKK rebels take refuge, a Turkish military official said Friday.

The Turkish security forces are continuing to fight against the PKK militants both in Turkey and in northern Iraq, said General Fahri Kir, chief of domestic security operational department of Turkey’s General Staff.

He said 43 military personnel also died during those military operations since March, adding that 60 PKK members surrendered to the Turkish security forces.

Kir said that 545 PKK members left PKK in 2009, and they believed 148 PKK members broke away from the organization in the first five months of 2010.

On May 20 alone, more than 100 PKK militants were killed in air raids in the Hakurk area in northern Iraq, said Kir, adding that another 20 PKK members were killed in northern Iraq this week.

The military is cooperating with the United States on intelligence to locate PKK members, said Kir.

The PKK have intensified attacks on the Turkish security forces recently, killing dozens of Turkish soldiers during the last two months.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 to create an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey and has been listed as a terrorist organization by the Turkish government, the United States and the European Union.

Some 40,000 people have been killed in conflicts fuelled by PKK ‘s separatist campaign in Turkey.

Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — Tensions exploded during a violent demonstration in eastern Turkey Tuesday, resulting in the shooting deaths of two Kurdish demonstrators, an official said. Read more…

Sun, 13 Dec 2009
Clashes broke out between Kurdish demonstrators and riot police in Turkish southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where Kurds form a majority of the population. Read more…