Articles About Terrorist Activities

Hurriyet

Istanbul’s chief prosecutor said the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, was behind the explosions in Istanbul’s Güngören district in July that killed 17 people and wounded 154 others, private news channel CNNTürk reported yesterday.

The indictment said the PKK was responsible for the explosions.

Prosecutor Murat Yönder said in his indictment that two of the suspects should stand trial for potential sentences of life imprisonment for “destructing the unity of the state and integrity of the country.”

The other seven suspects will be tried for being a member of the PKK/Kongra-Gel terrorist group and for keeping explosives. The trials will be held at an Istanbul court soon.

Source: arama.hurriyet.com.tr/arsivnews.aspx?id=10591021

Hurriyet

Two members of the outlawed PKK organization surrendered to security forces in Cukurca town of Turkey’s southeastern Hakkari province on late Saturday, Dogan News Agency reported.

Two terrorists, who are said to be relatives, had joined the PKK three months ago, DHA also reported, adding they escaped from PKK’s Zap camp located in northern Iraq.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, including the EU and the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurriyet

Paris anti-terror prosecutors are hunting for two members of the outlawed PKK organization, suspected of kidnapping a young woman near Paris to force her to join the terrorist group, judicial officials and reports said Thursday.

An armed man and woman seized the 21-year-old Turkish woman in a street in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, north of Paris, and bundled her into a car on December 7, according to witness accounts.

An hour later her family received a telephone call from a man suggesting that he belonged to the PKK, which is waging an armed campaign for self-rule in Turkey’s southeast, officials said.

According to Le Parisien newspaper, the man said he kidnapped the young woman, whose first name it gave as Cemile, to force her into joining the PKK. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurriyet

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said Thursday that the government was keeping all options open against the terrorist PKK organization, the Anatolian Agency quoted him as saying during an official visit to Mexico.

“In our struggle against this organization we’re using many tools, including the military,” Babacan said at a joint press conference with his Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa following their meeting in Mexico City, when asked about Turkey’s fight against terrorist organization PKK by a Mexican journalist.

He also said that the government would keep all options on the table in the struggle with the PKK adding that terrorism was an international problem and no country could be indifferent to such an issue

The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, including the EU and the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurriyet

A total of 1,049 members of the terrorist PKK organization, including 670 killed, 214 captured and 165 surrenders, have been neutralized within the context of the struggle against terrorism since the beginning of the 2007, until Dec. 10, according to the figures released on the Turkish General Staff’s website.

The Turkish army neutralized the highest number of terrorists in February with a total of 266, according to the army’s statistics.

The figures also showed that 120 terrorist PKK members took advantage of the “effective repentance” law and surrendered to the country’s security forces. 

The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, including the EU and the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

Sedat Laciner, Turkish Weekly

* Drug Smuggling, Organized Crime and Terrorism

Some claim that Turkey is one of the transit countries of drug trafficking and therefore she is not a consumer country; so the fight against narcotics should not be one of the main concerns of Turkey. Even, within some conversations, it is possible to encounter certain arguments claiming that narcotic money has an additional value for Turkey. Data on drug usage verifies the fact that Turkey is not a crucial drug consumption market; it is mostly a transit country. Due to drug smuggling, billions of dollars have entered the country. However, this is not the entire picture. To categorize Turkey solely as a “transit country” is not sufficient. It must be noted that in the mean time, Turkey has emerged to become one of the crucial narcotic centers of the world. As each drug bag passes through Istanbul or other Turkish cities to reach Western Europe it turns back as terror, organized crime, street violence and loss of government authority in Turkey.

Besides, this process has been continuing on for decades; the drug-violence-degeneration triangle has insidiously raised the prejudice against Turkey internally. It is important that drug trucks that pass from Turkey should be stopped so as to re-construct order in Turkey and more importantly to re-gain government authority. In this study we will focus on the connection between PKK terrorism and drug smuggling. Although certain renowned sources of Turkish, European and American descent and other media reports reveal that PKK members control the European drug cartel and that they even used children to sell drugs, the connection is not a well-studied one. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Hancock MP

There is nothing romantic about terrorism, and nothing nice about terrorists. They are evil people who commit evil acts. Although they claim to be fighting for human rights, every time they attack, their attacks take away the human rights of, in some instances, the very people whom they claim to represent. The uselessness of such action must be seen to be believed, and, all of us here should enthusiastically support the prevention of its continuation.

The Iraqi Government has fallen well short of the mark in terms of delivering a response to terrorist-based activities which then spill into another country. That also applies to the Kurdish Regional Government and the Coalition forces. If the authorities are ever to secure law and order in and establish principles of justice for the people, they cannot ignore what is happening on their northern border with Turkey. They cannot allow terrorist camps to be established in the first place, and they certainly cannot allow them to continue in operation. It is not acceptable for them not just to sustain the terrorists themselves, but to allow them to plan and carry out atrocities across the border. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurriyet

Five members of the terror organization PKK surrendered to the Turkish security forces, the army said on Monday.

Four PKK terrorists surrendered to the Turkish security forces in southeastern province of Sirnak, while another surrendered in eastern province of Hakkari, the General Staff said in a statement posted on its website. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurriyet

The terror organization PKK said Monday it would halt attacks within Turkey for nine days in honor of the Feast of the Sacrifice, news agencies reported.

Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice, began on Monday and will end on Thursday.

The PKK has repeatedly carried on attacks on Turkish soldiers, as well as civilians.

In September the PKK also pledged to halt attacks to mark the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. However the PKK terrorists killed 17 soldiers in an attack on a military outpost in eastern Turkey during the Ramadan holiday.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, including the EU and the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurriyet

A percussion bomb exploded in front of a bank in central Istanbul on Saturday, wounding two people.

The device, which was probably homemade, was placed in a garbage bin near a state bank in the working class district of Fatih and caused no other material damage. 

Percussion bombs make a loud noise but usually do little damage.

The injured were two passers-by, news agencies said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The area was cordoned off to keep traffic away after the blast in case of a second bomb attack.

In July a double bomb attack killed 17 people in a crowded area of Istanbul, the first blast caused by a loud percussion bomb and the second a more powerful explosion that ripped through the crowd. Turkish authorities attributed that attack to the terror organization PKK. Read the rest of this entry »