Turkish Displeasure
October 27, 2007
In a televised speech at a symposium in Istanbul on Saturday, Oct 27, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized European countries for failing to arrest and extradite wanted Kurdish militants to Turkey.
Istanbul has regularly asked countries to do more against the PKK which is considered a terrorist organization both by the European Union and the US.
"Unfortunately no EU country has extradited members of the PKK to Turkey, despite labeling it as a terrorist organization," Erdogan said.
"The fact there has been no improvement shows clearly how sincere our Western friends are on this issue. Erdogan criticized what he called an approach of "your terrorist is good, my terrorist is bad."
"We want to see our western friends by our side in our fight against terror," he told the conference. "Those who overlook terrorism are in cooperation with terrorism."
A spat with Austria over PKK
Erdogan did not mention any European nation by name. But he did refer to a recent row with Austria over its refusal to arrest a senior PKK member who then boarded a plane to northern Iraq, news agency AFP reported.
PKK treasurer Riza Altun emerged in Austria in July after fleeing France, where he was indicted in February for terrorist activities and barred from leaving the Paris region, the agency said.
The PKK is an outlawed nationalist Kurdish guerrilla group waging a bloody campaign for self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1974. It took up arms against Turkey in 1984, aiming to create an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The PKK accuse Turkey of oppressing Kurdish culture and suppressing Kurdish nationhood. For its part, Turkey says the PKK has been launching attacks on Turkish targets from secret bases in the mountainous and semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Europe not doing enough to rein in PKK?
Erdogan's comments came after Turkish-Iraqi talks collapsed in Ankara late Friday to avert a major cross-border operation into northern Iraq.
Turkey's parliament recently authorized the military to carry out cross-border offensives against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq after a surge in attacks on Turkish soil. The move has fueled US fears it could destabilize the relatively peaceful north of Iraq and the wider region.
Erdogan, under growing public pressure, has repeatedly said Turkey will not tolerate any more attacks by the PKK, which has killed about 40 people in the last month.
Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops, backed by fighter jets, helicopter gunships, tanks, and mortars, on the Iraqi border and the military has recently carried out limited operations into northern Iraq against the PKK but no major land incursion.
Turkey has long accused EU countries of tolerating PKK activities and failing to close organizations associated to the outfit. Istanbul says the PKK obtains much of its money through drug trafficking, people smuggling, extortion and money laundering in Europe where it has an extensive network of activists.
In the 1990s, many Kurds were granted political asylum in Europe.
Germany's Turks slam media portrayal of PKK
The renewed spotlight on the Turkish-Kurdish conflict has also stirred passions among Germany's 2.2 million-strong Turkish community, the largest outside Turkey.
A meeting of 16 Turkish groups in Germany this week came to the conclusion that the PKK is played down in the German media.
"The press would be well-advised to be more precise in its formulations," Kenan Kolat, head of the Turkish Association in Berlin and Brandenburg (TGB), said in an interview with Spiegel Online. "If the PKK is played down, the people think that the German public support them," Kolat said.
Germany's largest Turkish-language newspaper, Hürriyet wrote this week that "the German media have a blind spot when it comes to the PKK, referring to repeated descriptions of the organization as "Kurdish rebels," "PKK members", "separatists" and "radical Kurds."
The website also quoted the German Green party's Cem Öcalan, a Member of the European Parliament, as saying that "this terrorist organization makes the job of democratic Kurds impossible."
High-profile members of Germany's Turkish community called in Thursday's edition of Hürriyet on Europe to change its "indifferent position and to condemn these attacks on Turkey."
This week, Belgian police also arrested over 100 youths of Turkish in Brussels after clashing with police during a banned anti-Kurdish demonstration.