ROME, 06/11/2001 (ANA - L. Hatzikyriakos)
The Italian newspaper "Repubblica", in a two-page report entitled "The kingdom of 'Al Qaeda' is in Cyprus-The accounts of bin Laden are in the occupied territory and the organization's weapons, money and members pass from there", presents many testimonies on the situation prevailing in the Turkish occupied northern Cyprus and on the presence of Islamist terrorists.
The newspaper says that according to a CIA report "Al Qaeda" channeled about 500-700 million dollars through the Turkish-occupied territory in Cyprus over the 1992-1998 period, which were destined for the Balkans.
A total of 21 local banks and 48 offshore companies are currently located in occupied territory. Bin Laden's brothers Hassan and Saleh, who have the bank accounts of three registered offshore companies, are active there, it was added.
But the Turkish-occupied territory in Cyprus is not only the center of the money-laundering and economic activities of bin Laden, the paper said.
According to rumors heard, about 10 of the 200 Arabs or Afghans, who according to "Newsweek", left Kandahar over the past few weeks, passed from there.
If these rumors are to be believed, the Italian paper writes, the Moslem volunteers going from Europe through Zagreb and Sofia to the "holy war" being carried out in the mountains of Afghanistan gather in an Islamic academy in occupied northern Cyprus.
According to Turkish TV private channel NTV (20.9.01, 15:00 hours) Usamah Bin-Ladin, who is the number one suspect in the terrorist attacks launched on the United States, went to Turkey twice during the period he was sought by the Interpol with the red bulletin. Bin-Ladin came to Istanbul aboard his eponymous private plane. Reportedly, he was not faced with any difficulties on his arrival. These visits had been reported by the Washington Post, which based its reports on CIA sources.
Usamah Bin-Ladin's plane took off from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and arrived in Turkey on 28 August 1996. According to official records, he stayed in Turkey for 33 hours. He first landed at Adana Sakir Pasa Airport and then flew to Istanbul. He left Turkey the next day for Jeddah. Besides the crew, he had one other person with him.
Bin-Ladin's first visit to Turkey was during the Welfare Party-True Path Party coalition government.
His second visit took place in 1998. It was about six months before the bombing in August 1998 of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
According to the records, once again Bin-Ladin landed at Adana first and then in Istanbul. That was on 17 February 1998. According to the passenger manifesto of the HAVAS company that serviced Bin-Ladin's plane, the only two passengers were Bin-Ladin who was registered as Muhammad Usamah and another person called Al-Savaf. This visit took place during the Motherland Party, Democratic Left Party, and Democratic Turkey Party coalition government.
It is reported that Bin-Ladin, who is being sought by the Interpol with the red bulletin ever since 1994, was not faced with any difficulties during either of his visits.
It is a matter of curiosity why, in both visits, Bin-Ladin chose to land at Adana Airport first. According to aviation experts, Bin-Ladin's private plane had to land in Adana for refuelling.
There are interesting elements in Bin-Ladin's visits; one of them is the State Airports Administration document, which shows that the private plane arrived in Turkey. A copy of these documents that must be drawn up each time a private plane lands in Turkey must be sent to the Ankara State Airports Administration Directorate General. The document on Bin-Ladin's first visit was not sent to Ankara but to the Secret Documents and Circulars File in Istanbul.
Another interesting point concerns the receipt for the fee charged in return for the ground services given to the private plane. The form's number was left vacant. Furthermore, it was not processed through the computer but was filled by hand. In this way, Ankara could not see it in the on-line system.
Great info a_Turk. Thanks for the heads up Travis.
Al-Qaeda is the enemy. The USA is not going after terrorisim that is domestic. The USA is not launching a war on the Real IRA or the Basque sepratists or Sri Lanken Tigers. It is al-Qaeda that we are going after and Turkey is stinking infested with those cells. We want to help Turkey purge itself of those suckers, you seem to want to stick your head in the sand and hide from the truth. It is ok, plenty of Americans in Washington have links to al-Qaeda to and we will get to them also.
The PKK are a Marxist/Nationalist group and not Islamic in its foundations. Unlike say Turkey's Hezbollah group that is linked to Turkish government officials and the Turkish military. What some in Turkey did is what some in the USA did, ue the Islamists to do the dirty work for them until the blowback happens.
You can fool some Americans some of the time but not all Americans all of the time. There are links to al-Qaeda and fundamentalist Islam within the Turkish halls of power that run deep:
Hezbollah murders shock Turkey
A series of gruesome murders committed by Hezbollah, a radical Islamic organization, has shocked the Turkish population and re-ignited the dispute between Turkey's secular institutions and the pro-Islamic Virtue Party, which could face closure.
In the past two weeks, the discovery of 49 bodies, tortured and executed by fundamentalists, has shocked Turkey. It followed a shoot out on January 17 at a luxury villa on the Asian shore of Istanbul, used as a headquarters by the group. At the end of the clash between police and Hezbollah militants, which lasted over four hours, Hüseyin Velioglu, the group's leader, lay dead. Two of his associates, captured alive, led investigators to a first mass grave in another suburb of Istanbul, where ten bodies were found buried in a basement.
Further arrests led to other macabre findings in various cities around Turkey: Konya, Adana, Tarsus, Antalya, Diyarbakir, Ankara..... Among the mangled and tortured corpses were the remains of several Islamist businessmen who had disappeared in recent weeks and months. The police also found Konca Kuris, an Islamist feminist, kidnapped in the Southern city of Mersin some 18 months ago and later executed, apparently for expressing publicly her liberal interpretation of Islam. Torture sessions, and even the execution of some of the victims, had been carefully documented on video tapes seized by the security forces.
Since the latest crackdown on this shadowy organization started two weeks ago, over 900 militants have been arrested. But the investigation into this shadowy group, which was born in South-eastern Turkey in the 1980s and wanted to establish an independent Islamic Kurdish state, is only just beginning.
Two more bodies, apparently of young men who had stepped into a Hezbollah safehouse by mistake and were recently killed, were found on January 31 in Diyarbakir, a day after the remains of four others were unearthed in the same city.
The savagery with which Hezbollah militants treated their victims, who were mostly Kurds, and pious Muslims with a different understanding of Islam, has not only shocked Turkey, but also raised some uncomfortable questions. In the early 1990s, Hezbollah activists, who wanted to set up an independent Islamic Kurdish state, had open war against the Kurdish rebels of the PKK whose marxist-leninist ideology clashed with their own religious views.
During this dark period of Turkey's recent history, between 1,500 and 3,000 people were victims of "mysterious murders" whose perpetrators were never caught. At the time, there were widespread rumors in the region about links between Hezbollah and state officials. Journalist Ugur Mumcu, who was himself the victim of a "mysterious murder" seven years ago, had then suggested that Hezbollah was used as "counter-guerilla" in the fight against the PKK. "As long as these murders are not solved and these attacks continue," Mumcu wrote, "the state will not be able to shake off such accusations, whether they are just or unjust, right or wrong."
In recent days, these allegations have come back to haunt Turkey. Many people have questioned how an organization such as Hezbollah, already well known for its brutal methods ten years ago, could have operated without being detected, in a region heavily patrolled by the security forces. In the second part of the 1990s, a number of Hezbollah militants were arrested, but by then the organization had already spread to other regions of Turkey.
Mesut Yilmaz, the leader of the Motherland Party, one of the partners in the governing coalition, expressed his doubts publicly. "My belief is that Hezbollah could not have done what it did without the cooperation of certain traitors within the state and the support of logistic intelligence from abroad," he told his parliamentary group. Turkey accused Iran of backing Hezbollah. Posters of Ayatollah Khomeiny and Iranian Hezbollah were prominently displayed in the village of Yollac, where foreign reporters encountered Hezbollah members in 1992.
Mustafa Yilmaz, a former social-democrat deputy, who was a member of the parliamentary team which investigated the spate of "mysterious murders", said in a recent interview that the report the group had submitted to the National Assembly warned that radical organizations such as Hezbollah and the Islamic Great East Raiders Front (IBDA-C) - which recently caused violent incidents in an Istanbul jail where various weapons and explosives were later found - were more dangerous than the PKK, because the strong religious feelings of the local population provided fertile ground for such groups. The report was however never discussed in parliament.
The current debate has angered Turkey's powerful army, which has strenuously denied any links between Hezbollah and the state. "To link directly or indirectly the merciless murder network Hezbollah to the Turkish armed forces is a slander (without) sense or logic," the general staff announced in a written statement.
The leader of the pro-Islamic Virtue Party, Recai Kutan, in an unusually strongly worded speech, took exception to this allegation and suggested that the defenders of secularism - a poorly hidden reference to the army - had gone after ordinary pious Muslims, rather than after the real culprits.
Kutan's speech elicited a stinging reply from the military, which surprised many Western observers. Now that Turkey is entering the European Union accession process and has to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria for membership, the role of its army in the political life of the country is under scrutiny.
"The latest events have openly proved once again that the threat of radical Islam continues," the general staff said in a statement. "Political parties which represent this mentality have been closed down three times by the constitutional court." The timing of the chief of staff's angry reply made the warning ominous, since the Constitutional court is currently examining a request by Turkey's top prosecutor to have the party closed down.
During its monthly meeting held on January 31, the all-powerful National Security Council, made up of top generals, the head of state and government ministers, pledged to fight radical Islam until the very end, and again denied any links with between the state and the terrorist organization. "Efforts to link the state and its security forces with the monstrous organization were evaluated as an attempt...to protect and hide the real criminals", announced the NSC in a written statement published at the end of the meeting.
As the Kurdish conflict dies down, gruesome events are forcing Turkey to look back. Just as the Susurluk inquiry, three years ago, left question marks and suggested that some people linked to the state had been involved in illegal activities, the Hezbollah investigation is raising uncomfortable issues. It had also revealed to the public the existence of thousands of ruthless and well armed fundamentalist militants, who have brutally murdered dozens, if not hundreds of victims.
1 February 2000
Read also:
More skeletons found in Turkey's political closet
David O'Byrne MET correspondent in Istanbul
Most of us have at some time wondered what on earth the people next door were up to.
Few, however, have been treated to the kind of revelations now emerging in some of Turkey's larger cities following last week's police round up of suspected members of the local Islamic fundamentalist group Hezbollah.
"We really had no idea until we came home and saw all the TV cameras and police cars," says John Moorcroft, a long-time resident of Kavacik, a quiet Istanbul suburb overlooking the Bosphorus Straits.
The occupants of the building 20 meters down the road had apparently aroused little suspicion from any of their neighbors – none of whom realized that they were living next door to the headquarters of an alleged terrorist organization responsible for hundreds of unsolved killings.
Police launched the assault after receiving intelligence reports that the building was being used by men suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of seven businessmen in Istanbul over the past few months.
It took a four hour gun battle before police could capture Hezbollah's inconspicuous nerve center, which included a stockpile of machine guns and explosives.
More importantly, the haul included computer systems containing details of Hezbollah operations, planned targets and terrifying videos showing the interrogation and torture of victims of the group's long running campaign of kidnapping and violence.
Subsequent raids on other houses used by Hezbollah in Istanbul, Ankara, and the central Turkish city of Konya have already revealed 28 badly decomposed bodies, with three more being found buried outside the southern town of Tarsus.
And with new bodies being discovered almost by the hour, few doubt that the final toll will be far higher.
The remains were reported as being naked, bound hand and foot and showing signs of torture.
Some reports claimed that in most cases death had apparently been caused by strangulation, which according to the group's extreme Islamic beliefs would prevent their souls from entering heaven as martyrs. Other reports claim that some victims appeared to have been buried alive in sacks.
Those murdered are believed to be some of the around 200 people suspected of being kidnapped by Hezbollah over the past few years, with some estimates putting the total number killed by the group at over 1,000.
These include the remains of Konca Kuris, who was kidnapped from her home town of Mersin in 1998 and whose interrogation and torture were recorded on video. As a prominent Islamic moderate, her support for a less restricting role for women in Islam cost her her life.
Although it uses the name Hezbollah, the group is thought to be completely separate from the group of the same name operating in Lebanon.
Turkey's Hezbollah is believed to have first emerged in the country's mainly Kurdish populated south east after the Iranian revolution of 1979.
"They found support among disaffected young people in Diyarbakir and the surrounding area, many of whom were sent to Iran for theological training," says Nilufer Narli, professor of politics at Istanbul's Marmara University and recent author of Turkish Islamic Groups.
Narli explains that the Turkish Islamist movement is largely divided into two parts. One is the Menzil group, which advocates a long period of Islamic education before Turkey is ready for a "jihad" and is broadly in favor of Kurdish nationalism as a means of achieving an Islamic state.
The Ilim group, on the other hand, supports an immediate armed struggle and is opposed to Kurdish separatism as contrary to the unity of Muslim peoples.
This brought it into armed conflict both with the Menzil group and with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which in the early 1980s began a violent campaign to establish a Kurdish state in south eastern Turkey.
The grisly secrets uncovered last week are believed to be the work of the Ilim group.
Although the police claim some 1,280 suspected Hezbollah militants were arrested over the past six years, some observers question how the group could have conducted such long running and high profile feuds with other extremist groups and yet remain at large for so long.
The left of center daily Radikal pointed out that a report into unsolved political murders prepared in October 1995 by the parliamentary investigation commission warned that Hezbollah was more dangerous than the PKK. The report, it claimed, had been submitted to the office of the speaker of parliament, but was never discussed.
Derya Sazak of liberal daily Milliyet pinpointed the problem as being the mentality that "those who have fired bullets for the state are as worthy as those who have been hit by bullets while defending the state," further suggesting that the state may know far more about many "mystery murders" than has so far been revealed.
When asked about allegations that Ankara had found it expedient to overlook Hezbollah while it conducted a campaign of violence against the PKK, President Suleyman Demirel was quick to refute the charges, dismissing them as "fabrication." Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit declined to comment.
Demirel also rejected claims that Iran was behind Hezbollah, pointing out that Iran and Turkey had been friends for hundreds of years. However, newspaper reports have claimed that Hezbollah leader Huseyin Velioglu, who was killed in last week's raid, had returned from Iran two months ago.
And few have failed to notice that the well planned assault coincided with the arrival of Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi on a state visit.
Turkey's Islamists have been quick make capital from such allegations of links between Hezbollah and the state.
Radical Islamist daily Akit quoted the deputy general secretary of the pro-Islamic Virtue party Lutf Esengun as saying that allegations of links between Hezbollah and the security forces should be investigated and that he would propose such an investigation to parliament.
But Virtue too faces difficult questions.
Most serious being whether some prominent party members had been sympathetic to the Hezbollah cause or had allowed themselves to be inadvertently co-opted.
Most serious were allegations that a prominent member of Hezbollah was employed four years ago in the prime minister's office during Turkey's short lived Islamist government on the recommendation of Virtue MP and then State Minister Fehim Aydak.
Prime Minister Ecevit has warned that there was a high probability of Hezbollah infiltrations into other state institutions.
There does seem to be an abundance of well-timed agitprop floating around that just happens to be tailor-made for dividing the antiterror coalition.
NATO did exactly the right thing in Bosnia (although a bit too late getting involved) and in Kosovo. The USA and Turkey are partners who have in the past and will in the future cover each other protect each other's interests.
Pile on as many loads of propaganda you want, but don't ping me anymore.
