Articles About Terrorist Activities

To tell the truth President Gül’s visit to Baghdad could have been a one-day trip. He arrived in the capital of Iraq on Monday and completed almost all of his meetings by that evening. But the delegation stayed one more day. I asked one authority for external affairs, “Why did we stay two days?” “To make the Iraqis happy,” he replied. Everyone would come in the morning and return hastily the same day because of security concerns.

The Turkish delegation prolonged its stay to get the message across, “We trust you. We are here to support this country’s stability and territorial integrity.” The overnight stay and Gül taking his wife on this trip were identified as a sign of bringing relations back to normal. Read the rest of this entry »

Police arrested three suspected Kurdish separatists accused of a bombing that killed eight children and two adults in 2006, a police source said Monday.

The three are suspected members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the local police source said.The source said the suspects took part in the deadly attack at a bus stop in the busy town center of Diyarbakır, in southeastern Turkey, in September 2006.

The PKK denied responsibility and condemned the attack, which was claimed by a little-known hardline group calling itself the Turkish Vengeance Brigade. Read the rest of this entry »

Turkey’s Premier Tayyip Erdogan said he wished that the terrorist organization would lay down arms.

“We will be in a positive approach (to searches for a solution of terror problem), just so the terrorist organization lays down arms,” Erdogan said in a program broadcast on private ATV channel.   

Erdogan said that Turkey would welcome good will of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani regarding terrorism.

“I told him that we would fulfill our responsibilities if he was able to launch and achieve initiatives, just so peace was ensured in the region,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »

The Turkish military said Friday it expected the PKK not to be supported in its activities in the neighboring country, commenting on remarks made by the Iraqi president on a possible call for the terror organization to lay down arms.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani announced that Kurdish political groups based in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Europe are expected to make a call to the PKK to lay down its arms in April at a conference to be held the northern Iraq city of Arbil, in remarks published in the Turkish press Wednesday. 

The Turkish military said Friday its stance toward the issue is known by related state organs. Read the rest of this entry »

President Abdullah Gül when talking to journalists recently used a sentence that attracted the attention of many people.

“In 2009 pleasing developments will take place regarding the Kurdish issue,” he said.

I, too, was curious.

What did the president mean?

The other day a small group of journalists understood what he meant when he was talking to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Read the rest of this entry »

Four members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, died in three days of Turkish air raids in northern Iraq last week, a PKK official said yesterday.

“Four fighters from the party were killed during the latest attacks by Turkish aircraft which targeted Zab and Zagrus,” close to the border, said PKK member Rush Wolat.

The raids took place on March 11, 12 and 13, he told reporters by telephone.

“The Turkish military also launched an offensive against the PKK two days ago and it is continuing, near Cudi and Dersim,” (Cudi and Tunceli in Turkish) in eastern Turkey, Wolat added, without elaborating. The Turkish military announced that its warplanes had targeted PKK hideouts in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq on Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »

The military says the separatist PKK is failing to convince its recruits to stay and credits its own increased air operations since it carried out a large scale ground offensive and the provisions for surrender in the Penal Code for this success

Propaganda from the terrorist PKK organization, to dissuade deserters from the organization does not work, as evidenced by the number of terrorists who have surrendered to security forces, according to the military.

Brig. Gen. Metin Gürak, head of the General Staff Communication Unit, briefed reporters Friday about testimonials from terrorists who recently escaped from the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

A planned excavation to uncover the bodies presumed buried in the state-owned BOTAŞ petroleum company’s pipeline wells was postponed yesterday for security reasons, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Şırnak Bar Association President Nuşirvan Elçi said the local prosecutor had told him the planned dig was postponed due to security concerns. A Silopi court had ordered the excavation take place between March 5 and 11.

The investigation of the wells is part of the inquiry launched after a former informant from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, Abdulkadir Aygan, claimed many people had ben murdered by anti-terrorism squads in the 1990s and then buried in the BOTAŞ wells. Read the rest of this entry »

Close to 375 PKK terrorists have been killed or injured in the past five months in Turkey’s military operations against the terror organization and internal power struggles within the PKK, the army said on Friday.

“We have confirmed through various sources that since October 2008, the terrorist organization suffered close to 375 casualties in northern Iraq, either dead or wounded, as a result of air raids and artillery fire,” military spokesman Gen. Metin Gurak was quoted by Anatolian Agency as telling a weekly briefing. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like yesterday…

Ten years have past since Öcalan was captured in Kenya. I’m sure you will remember. We first were astonished and could hardly believe it when Prime Minister Ecevit announced that Öcalan had been brought to Turkey. Within the past 10 years many articles, even books have been written on the period Öcalan left Syria and was captured. Developments were picked to pieces for detail. But publications in the 10th anniversary of his capture provide us with new information. We examine developments in a healthier way and, more importantly, obtain correct and better data. Read the rest of this entry »