http://www.turkishweekly.net/columnist/3388/children-of-terror-the-case-of-the-pkk.html
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
The number of children killed by PKK terrorist organization deliberately is more than 300 since 1984. Actually, we may add ‘stone or molotov cocktail-throwing children’ to the number of victims. The Turkish government has been making efforts to protect the terror victim children via the bills whereas the PKK do not abstain to push them in front of the police with stones and bombs.
In recent days a bomb aiming the police exploded in the hands of a kid, who was encouraged for terror attack by the PKK, and he was seriously injured.
We know that 90% of the PKK militants at the mountains consist of the children. Thousands of children between the ages of 12-18 are under arms for so-called Kurdish rights. The recent Ertugrul Mavioglu’s interview from Kandil endorses this claim. Mavioglu, journalist, says that “most of the militants are teenagers.” The photos from Kandil Mountain are the very evidence. The kids who are at the ages to be at high school or even primary school posed with weapons. The guy they ironically protect an old man, Murat Karayilan who is 60 years old as the other leader cadre of the PKK.
The leader cadre is quite healthy and not injured for years while the thousands of PKK children lost their lives in the armed conflicts. The militant children have a quite short life at the mountains; most of them die before the age of 25.
***The first salient thing for the visitors of the PKK camps is “child terrorists”. The Times correspondent Matthew McAllester who visited PKK camps in 2006 also made observations in the same way. He says PKK’s girl militants were 15 years old. He further writes that “Zilan, 15, may not be big enough for her uniform but she is ready to use her Kalashnikov against Turkey.”
Washington centered CDI similarly wrote that “In 1998, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) was believed to have 3,000 child soldiers in its forces, more than 10 percent of which were girls. Reports indicate that the PKK has used children since 1994 and even developed a children’s battalion named Tabura Zaroken Sehit Agit.
A child as young as seven was reported in the PKK’s ranks.” (R. Stohl, CDI, 2002). According to P.W. Singer minimum 300 people out of 3,000 is only consisted of girls and age of children falls to 7 in child terrorists (P.W. Singer, Children at War, University of California, s. 19).
At the beginning of this year Berlignske Tidende from Denmark wrote that many children are hold in the camps and this is children rights violation. Then UNICEF investigated the subject.
PKK Kidnaps Children for Terror
A father named Zulkuf K. who lives in Belgium’s Anvers city applied to the Belgium police asserting that his 15 year old son whom he could not get any information for 3 months is abducted by the PKK. Authorities determined that his son is abducted to Northern Iraq, firstly given a ‘physiological training’ (obviously brain washing) then taken to the armed military training. Father is desperate because he knows that Belgium police would not do anything.
According to the UN Reports Zulkuf K. is not the only one. There are many families like that. Hence according to some reports not only the Kurdish origin children but also the German families’ children are abducted by PKK.
Authorities say that the abducted children are not only used in terror events but they are also used in sabotage, seizure, and courier and in drug events.
Belgium Brussels ruler Patrick De Coster said that youths are forcefully brought to the terror camps by PKK after the PKK operations at the beginning of this year. P.W. Singer tells that Kurdish immigrant’s children in Europe are firstly taken to the so-called training camps in Sweden then recruited by the terror organization. 15 March 2006 dated SWD newspaper wrote that the teenagers at the age of 15-18 are abducted from European countries and they are brought to the terror camps in Northern Iraq.
According to the newspaper before the training the girls are exposed to torture and sexual abuse. It is possible to give numerous examples. Nevertheless there is no need to this while there are videos aired at the net. If you take a look for view of the guerillas put in YouTube by PKK, you could see how PKK constituted a children army.
The essential number of militants consists of children under the age of 18 at the scenes. It is very hard to find people over 30 among the rest. However the leader cadre is always composed of 50-60 years old people.
***It is asserted that there are 20 million Kurdish people in Turkey. If the PKK is at the mountains for the sake of Kurdish rights then why only children are at the mountains to fight over this 20 million Kurdish people? Is not this situation weird? How many children will lose their future in order to save the PKK leaders at their 60’s? Can a person even a terrorist be that morally corrupted to hide behind children in order to shoot?
It is obvious that PKK is not only pushing Turkey and the region into misery but also the Kurdish children. If PKK really wants wellbeing of Kurdish people, it must say goodbye to the weapons even only for these children victims.
4 November 2010
Showing posts with label PKK activities in the EU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PKK activities in the EU. Show all posts
Monday, 8 November 2010
Sunday, 21 March 2010
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.
www.usak.org.trwww.turkishweekly.netwww.usakgundem.com
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.
www.usak.org.trwww.turkishweekly.netwww.usakgundem.com
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