Recent Operations Against the PKK in Belgium, by Mehmet Ozcan

By Mehmet Ozcan
Saturday, 13 March 2010

In Europe, operations are made against terrorist organizations consecutively. The latest actions that were taken against the PKK and its different variations in Belgium, following operations in Italy, Germany and France, bear traces of serious transformation. The maneuver carried out on March 4 resulted in 22 people being taken into custody, including Remzi Kartal, who is responsible for the PKK in Europe, and his assistant Zubeyir Aydar, and later on 8 of them were arrested.

On March 8, the Belgian police seized Sezai Ucar, who was formerly responsible for the organization's Belgium operations, in Antwerp. As remembered, the manager of PJAK, Haci Ahmedi, who was captured in Germany, was also taken into custody upon the request of the federal prosecutors of Brussels. Furthermore, the Belgian broadcasts of Roj TV, which is the media organ of the PKK terrorist organization, have been terminated. The reason that the operations in Belgium led to detention and arrest is that the suspects had been previously involved in several crimes and terrorist activities.

Moreover, it is reported that these PKK members provided young people living in Belgium with an ideological education and took them to camps in Iraq and Greece to train them to be terrorists.

What is happening in Belgium?

While providing intelligence sharing, the US supports Turkey's struggle against the PKK terrorist organization. It should be noted that the US also puts pressure on European countries in the fight against terrorism. However, the most important thing is that the US accepts these PKK gang-leaders as criminals, just like drug barons, besides having their bloody hands in the terrorist organization. In addition, it declares to the world that these people are in a mafia-like crime structure.

The intelligence, the operations and the dialogue with their European colleagues by the security officials have increased recently. Thanks to this dialogue, it has been revealed that the PKK was hiding behind its political organization identity while orchestrating a dirty and bloody network.

One of the main reasons for these recent anti-PKK operations, which are beginning to spread throughout Europe, is that the evidence would convince the security units of European countries. The European wing of the PKK takes part in all kinds of activities that threaten the internal security of Europe, such as drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, weapons smuggling and human trafficking.

The members of the organization, who gained incredible mobility with the abolishment of borders within the EU, manage a huge stream of black money that extends throughout Turkey, Iraq and Iran. It should be noted that this fact has been previously identified to some extent by the European Union.

As remembered, it has been long time since the EU has included the PKK on the list of terrorist organizations.The Impacts of the OperationsHowever, it seems that a serious amount of time is required to see this acceptance of the EU from the perspective of member countries. In fact, the majority of these countries have already known that the activities of the PKK terrorist organization within their borders contain all kinds of organized crime activities.

If they do not know, this indicates serious security failing on their part. These countries began the operations when the activities of the PKK started to pose a substantial threat to their own internal security.

In starting operations, two external factors were effective: the pressure coming from the US and revealing of the truth by Turkish diplomatic officials. After this stage, it may be mentioned that there is an expected opportunity and a threat for the EU countries.

The serious operations carried out against the PKK reveal the likelihood of terrorist activities in these countries by the organization whose activities have been tolerated for years. The PKK may become the terrorist organization of these countries as well. Yet many of the members of the organization are citizens of these countries.

In this case what needs to be done is to pertinaciously fight against terrorism and increase cooperation with Turkey. If this can be done, since the PKK will not want to leave their prosperous environment, they would be forced to quickly cease their actions. You cannot find anyone from the organization's top level who would leave their comfortable life in Brussels or Paris and return to the Northern Iraq Mountains.

Even at the top level, it is almost impossible to find people besides a wretched few who would leave a comfortable living environment for the mountains. As a matter of fact, this situation is the biggest dilemma for the PKK right now.

Therefore, if the police continue to pertinaciously struggle with the protests and demonstrations that arise as a consequence of the operations, the PKK's area of activity in European countries will have been seriously narrowed.

The potential opportunity that will emerge after this stage interests millions of Turks living in European countries. There are around 5 million people of Turkish origin in the EU countries. Some of them have citizenship of the country in which they live, and some have kept Turkish citizenship.

Over the years, the vast majority of these people have been the living witnesses that the PKK has been supported by European countries, and in this regard they explicitly or secretly blame the countries. The last operations made against the PKK received a warm welcome by the Turkish citizens living in the European countries, some of whom had been victims of the PKK.

If these operations are continued and EU countries can prove their sincerity, they will conduce to an important change in the point of view of millions of Turks who are living in Europe. As a result, this could become an important catalyst in solving the integration problem between the immigrants and countries which are experiencing serious problems with respect to integration. As proof, it is enough to see the positive reflections of the committed operations on the Turkish community living in Belgium.

Assoc. Prof. Mehmet Ozcan
Director of USAK EU Studies


Turkish Weekly is an USAK Publication. USAK is the leading Ankara based Turkish think-tank.

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