Kurdish militants killed six people in two attacks in southeast Turkey last week, further exacerbating the crisis in Ankara's ties with Washington. Gareth Jenkins reports from Istanbul Separatist Kurdish militants killed four people in a raid on the village of Yenikoy in southeast Turkey last Thursday amid signs that elements within the Kurdish Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK) are losing patience with the organisation's four-year-old unilateral cease-fire and are fearful that a planned repentance law might split the already weakened organisation. The raid came two days after another group of KADEK militants killed two Turkish soldiers in a failed attempt to assassinate a local governor. KADEK, formerly known as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), announced a unilateral cease-fire in August 1999 following the capture, trial and imprisonment of its leader Abdullah �calan earlier the same year. Before his capture �calan had led a 15-year-old armed campaign for greater autonomy for Turkey's 12-15 million Kurds, which had cost over 35,000 lives. Following the announcement of the cease-fire the PKK withdrew nearly all of its armed units from Turkish territory, but kept 5,000 militants under arms at camps in the mountains along the border between Turkey and Iraq. However, some units stayed behind in Turkey where they have sporadically clashed with the Turkish security forces. In recent months, the number of clashes has increased as KADEK members have become increasingly frustrated at the Turkish authorities' failure to respond to their cease-fire by easing restrictions on the expression of a Kurdish identity. Even though successive Turkish governments have amended laws forbidding broadcasting and education in Turkish, bureaucratic restrictions mean that in practice the bans are still in force. In May two KADEK members were killed in a firefight with the Turkish security forces near the village of Yenikoy in Bingol province. Other KADEK militants claimed that the villagers had alerted the Turkish army to their presence, an assertion which has been vigorously denied by the villagers themselves. In late June at a meeting in Hamburg, Germany, Muzzefer Ayata, a member of the KADEK Central Committee, warned that Yenikoy would be punished. According to a statement by the villagers, last Friday six KADEK members entered Yenikoy, kidnapped four men, forced them to march a kilometre outside the village and then executed them. The Turkish parliament is currently discussing a repentance law under which all KADEK militants who have not been involved in violent attacks will be eligible for a pardon. Military sources estimate that the law would cover around half of all the KADEK militants currently under arms. Last Tuesday KADEK laid an ambush for the convoy of the Turkish governor of the predominantly Kurdish province of Tunceli. Although the governor escaped unharmed, two of his bodyguards were killed and several others wounded. In a statement released after the attack, KADEK claimed that the assassination attempt was both a response to local operations by Turkish security forces and a warning to the government. "The Turkish army must abandon its claim that it has won the war and defeated the guerrilla and the government must abandon the distraction of the repentance law and pass a law allowing brotherhood, unity and real social peace." The two attacks came at the same time as military officials from Turkey and the US were meeting in Ankara to discuss the repercussions of the US operation in northern Iraq on 4 July in which 11 Turkish soldiers were detained for 57 hours by US troops on suspicion of complicity in arming local Turkomans and planning the assassination of the Kurdish mayor of Kirkuk. Turkey has kept around 5,000 troops permanently stationed in northern Iraq since the mid-1990s, ostensibly to monitor the activities of KADEK but also to deter the Iraqi Kurds' own political ambitions. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the US has repeatedly told Turkey to end its military presence in northern Iraq, insisting that its own troops will take care of KADEK. But Ankara remains unconvinced. Turkey intelligence claims that US officials have met secretly with KADEK representatives in an attempt to hammer out a modus vivendi, which they claim would provide the organisation with a safe haven from which it could launch attacks into Turkey with impunity. The charges have been repeatedly denied by US officials. "I can assure you that all US forces in northern Iraq are under strict, and I mean strict, orders not to have any contact with KADEK," said a US State Department official. "But it is possible that a US patrol has, unwittingly, come across a group of Kurds who later turned out to have been members of KADEK. In fact, I would be surprised if that has not happened given the chaos in northern Iraq. But it would not have happened knowingly or officially." Yet the Turkish military in particular remains unconvinced; and the attacks last week will make them even less inclined to take the Americans' word that they have everything under control.
