KURDISTAN: The “Dirty War” The Price of Wanting Freedom?

“Planning the Paris Massacre while holding meetings in Imrali is telling of the character of the AKP government.” Çiyager Nuncan, ANF, Tuesday, 9 January, 2018

 

“…Because there are death squads looking to disband Turkish and Kurdish opposition members. There are cases in Germany and Belgium, and these are all tied to France. We must unearth all of these, and looking at all these incidents, we will see how afraid the French government is when it comes to these groups and death squads attempting to murder the opposition among European countries.” Antoine Comte (Paris Bar Association member and lawyer for the three assassinated revolutionary Kurdish women)

 

Disturbing revelations are coming from the Kurdish media as the Kurdish Liberation Movement releases information from their interviews/interrogation of the Turkish Intelligence agents captured by the HPG, (the armed wing of the Kurdish Workers Party – PKK) in northern Iraq (in the Dukhan area near Sulaimaniyah) on August 3 of last year and only recently brought to the world’s attention.

 

Last Autumn Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu confirmed the kidnapping of the two senior Turkish intelligence officers. The men were alleged to be planning the assassination of a senior PKK figure, most likely Cemil Bayik, like Sakine Cansiz, one of the original PKK founders and reported to be in the area. It is assumed that the August 23 expulsion order for the PUK’s (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Iraq) long-time Ankara representative Behruz Galali (over alleged collaboration with the PKK) by Turkey was also a response to the capture.

 

Saadi Pira, a senior PUK official, said in August last year that Turkey had conducted a “failed operation” in Sulaimani that inflicted damage on Turkey. While Turkey confirmed the arrest of the two, it did not give details of what they were doing in the Kurdistan Region.

 

Diyar Xerib, a senior PKK member, also said in August that the MİT operation the two were involved in was supposed to take place in the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani province, stronghold of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

“’No doubt the PKK can publish news about the arrest of the MİT officials who wanted to make the Sulaimani area a place to carry out their dirty operations, the biggest of which was to assassinate a prominent PKK official,’ Xerib said then. He said they were refraining from publishing the men’s details at that time because this would have put the PUK in a difficult situation.”

 

Now, as a new year begins, ANF News has released a statement from the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) naming the 2 operatives:

“Erhan Pekçetin is the head of MİT’s most strategic department of domestic ethnic separatist activities, while Aydin Günel is the human resources director of MİT, inside and outside the country. These two people have direct or indirect information about all the works and operations of MİT as they undertake major responsibilities and have close relations with other departments.”

 

The information now being released is disturbing to say the least and at this time of the year, around the January 9th anniversary of the assassination in Paris of the three Kurdish activists: Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Doğan and youth movement member Leyla Şaylemez…

 

Paris Assassinations Planned

 

“Top two officials who were captured by the HPG confessed that the Paris Massacre was planned by the Turkish intelligence agency with approval from the highest authority.” (ANF, January 10, 2018)

 

…And in particular the information surfacing that the murder of the activists was planned during the important peace talks with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan on the prison island of İmrali.

 

Der Spiegel had written in 2014: “The triple murders in January 2014 of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) activists in Paris may ultimately emerge as one of the most audacious political killings to take place in Western Europe in years. New suspicions — although they are still only that — suggest there may be Turkish intelligence links to the slayings, a development that, if proven, could have serious repercussions for relations between Ankara and Europe.”

 

In an interview with one of the captured MİT agents made public, Erhan Pekcetin was quoted as saying:

“These kind of assassinations are critical. It requires a decision from high ranking officials and only a few cadres know about it… The note of action should go to the desk of the director of the agency. I don’t think that he will decide himself, he will direct it to the president. Because these actions can create international problems. It was a time when the peace negotiations were taking place. The note of action was probably prepared by the director of the branch office, not by Ayhan Oran. Then it went next to Ugur Kaan Ayik’s desk. His superior’s superior is Sabahattin Asal, who was deputy director of the agency, it possibly went to him. Sabahattin Asal was attending the peace negotiations along with Muhammed Dervisoglu. Then it possibly went to the desk of Haluk Ozcan the deputy director of the General Affairs Department. And after that it ends on the desk of the director. This is how an action note is transferred within the agency. This action was not an action that could be done by a deputy director. It should go up to the director and get approval.”

 

It is recognised that Turkey has long sought to either capture or kill senior PKK activists and has asked the United States for help, as in the past in the capture of Abdullah Öcalan, in locating them.  (Now his assistance may well prove helpful even though it apears he is currently being held incommunicando)…

 

Other MİT operatives are also said to have been captured by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party last year and:

“In short, these people provided very detailed information on the MİT’s activity in the South, in Rojava, in the North and in Europe. This information has been recorded. The PKK administration has launched operations in light of this information and carried out several operations in the last 5 months. At a certain point, they announced the matter to the public.” (ANF NEWS, 6 January 2018)

 

Analysing the information so far, ANF alleges:

“As it can be remembered, in 2014 a document and a voice recording by the MİT on the Paris Massacre had been published. This document had the signatures of 4 MİT administrators. One of them is S. Asal. According to the information provided by the MİT administrators captured by the PKK, this S. Asal is Sebahattin Asal. This man is a state “official” who was present in the meetings with the PKK and the meetings in Imrali along with Muhammed Dervişoğlu…Sebahattin Asal was always present in the Imrali meetings as the “official”. He introduced himself as “Ozan” in some of the meetings.”

 

The implications

 

Talks between the PKK and the Turkish Government lasted from the ceasefire of 21 March 2013 until July 2015, “with the renewed full-scale warfare in South-Eastern Turkey”. However talks with Abdullah Öcalan had started in December 2012 and on January 3, 2013, a civilian committee had visited the Imrali island for the first time. Six days later, the assassination of the three Kurdish women in Paris occurred.

 

Now, what is starting to become apparent: Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Şaylemez, were not killed by “those who want to interrupt the peace process”, they were killed by the “interlocutors” of this process in Ankara.

 

“The “peace process” itself was an operation. An operation to disband through meetings. And on one side of this process was the meetings, while on the other there were attacks. The commitees who went to Imrali and Oslo were also planning murders in Paris and Qandil at the same time.” (Amed Dicle‏ @ameddicleT)

 

Disturbingly:

“…They prepared the Collapse Plan in the summer of 2014. In the October 30, 2014 meeting of the National Security Council, the decision was made to disband the Kurdish Freedom Movement through a violent and dirty war. The reason the June 7 elections were held was that Tayyip Erdoğan wanted to be president, and he wanted a legitimate government to implement this policy of elimination. When he failed to achieve that in the June 7 elections, he ordered the November 1 elections in an atmosphere of war. With the fascist alliance he built, he declared himself the legitimate government in the November 1 elections and escalated the genocidal war.” (Çiyager Nuncan, ANF)

 

“Who is Sebahattin Asal, the man behind the Paris killings?” (ANF)

 

“With the information the KCK shared regarding the two high ranking MİT officials captured in August 2017, they exposed the name of the man who planned the Paris massacre: Sabahattin Asal. According to the KCK statement, he participated in the Imrali meetings in the name of the state along with Muhammed Dervişoğlu. Asal is an MİT administrator. One of the four signatures on the confidential document dated November 18, 2012 leaked in January 2014 belonged to a “S. Asal”. This name announced by the KCK matching the name on the document and the same man participating in the Imrali meetings show that the Turkish state’s role in the massacre goes even deeper. With this new information, the Paris Massacre case has entered a new era.” (Maxime Azadi, @MaximeAzadi)

 

Germany’s Die Linke MP (and Die Linke Hamburg Council Group Chairperson) Cansu Özdemir was also quoted in ANF:

“Özdemir also touched upon the hitman groups sent to Europe for assassinations made public by HDP MP Garo Paylan: “In the murder of three Kurdish women in the Paris Massacre, in uncovering the assassination plans against the Kongreya Civakên Demokratîk a Kurdîstaniyên Eurupa (European Kurdish Democratic Society Congress, KCDK-E) Co-chair Yüksel Koç, and most recently in the assassination attempt against football player Deniz Naki, we were able to see this. They want to murder everybody on this list they have, they want to silence and intimidate the opposition. Erdoğan wants to implement his bloody rule in the European countries. The German state has stayed silent in the face of this serious threat for years and prioritized their relationship of interest. If the German state had taken precautions, the assassination plans against Yüksel Koç wouldn’t have to be uncovered by Kurdish institutions and Kurdish society, the huge security institutions would have found it out and prevented it. If there had been precautions, if they had taken our statements and solid evidence seriously, maybe Naki wouldn’t have suffered such an attempt.”

 

Die Linke MP Cansu Özdemir:

“Deniz Naki was a target for the Turkish state because of his unwavering stance, identity, and statements on peace and human rights. These attacks are definitely not independent attempts. The armed attack on Naki was not to intimidate or threaten, it was to kill. They wanted to silence him, and intimidate other opposing factions through him. The German government hasn’t issued a statement yet, and their attempts to skew this issue openly encourages the Turkish government. If Germany doesn’t take this threat seriously even after this attack, there will be many people subjected to attacks.”

 

France’s Democratic Kurdish Council, the Kurdish Women’s Movement and France Solidarity with Kurdistan National Coordination held a joint press conference on the murders of Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Şaylemez five years ago in Paris. The lawyer to the three Kurdish women Antoine Comte spoke out on the infrmation currently emerging:

“This new piece of information will also be a new argument for the case to move forward. It is important. But more clear documents are needed: written documents, videos, testimony by individuals, etc. We will continue to pursue the legal process. On the other hand, regarding Erdoğan’s responsibility and the possibility of his trial, concrete evidence is needed for that. French justice has previously tried various cases on the presidents and ministers of Libya. Or, in the incident where 30 Basque people were killed in France, France ruled that the then-Interior Minister of Spain was responsible. We need concrete elements to launch a legal process. There needs to be not statements but rather elements such as photographs, documents and videos. During the Macron-Erdoğan meeting, journalists should ask if Erdoğan confirms his speech of April 2015 and what happened to the murderers, and whether Turkey will hand over the people tied to the incident to France and what position these individuals hold now…

 

There will either be impunity in the face of assassinations and murders like in the past, or this matter will be pursued with courage to have justice served.”

 

So now, if this is the way to ‘do business’, here in Europe – as elsewhere, now – as in the past – (remember the Dirty War, Argentina, 1974-1983 and Operation Condor in the majority of South American countries from the 1960s into the eighties, where people disappeared, were tortured, murdered, assassinated; or some of the activities of British Intelligence in the war in the North of Ireland during the 70’s and the 80’s?) – what hope today for those committed to peace?

 

It surely now behoves Turkey’s NATO partners (in particular those currently doing business with this opressive regime…to take a stand, despite their economic and commercial ties…in particular France, England and Germany…and to put their words and deeds – where their human rights legislation and their supprt for the rule of law is…

 

séamas carraher  

 

IMAGE:

Erhan Pekcetin and Aydın Gunel two top MİT  officials who were captured by HPG in Southern Kurdistan

Courtest of ANF (“fair use”)

https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/MİT -officers-confessions-about-paris-massacre-24116

 

REFERENCES:

https://anfenglish.com/features/who-is-sebahattin-asal-the-man-behind-the-paris-killings-24096

https://anfenglish.com/news/MİT-s-role-is-now-certain-france-should-take-action-24048

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/suspicions-grow-of-turkish-involvement-in-murder-of-pkk-activists-a-952734.html

https://anfenglish.com/features/what-did-the-MİT-administrators-pkk-holds-say-24047

https://anfenglish.com/news/erdogan-wants-to-implement-his-bloody-rule-in-europe-24145

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/ankara-confirms-capture-of-two-turkish-agents-by-kurdish-rebels-36150483.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-investigating-alleged-turkish-spy-a-1166215.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42603843

 

Dirty War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

https://ansionnachfionn.com/tag/britains-dirty-war-in-ireland/

https://madresdemayo.wordpress.com/the-dirty-war/

 

Video

https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/MİT-officers-confessions-about-paris-massacre-24116

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