Turkey Promises To Compensate Kurds After Years Of Terror

Turkey's Kurds could soon be compensated for the state terror they endured during 15 years of armed insurrection in the south-east under new legislation aimed at boosting the country's bid to join the EU. Ankara's moderate Islamic government has proposed plans to compensate those who suffered at the hands of the security services during the campaign to defeat the separatist Kurdish Workers Party, PKK. Human rights groups estimate that as many as 1 million ethnic Kurds were victims of the 1984-99 conflict.

Presenting the draft bill, the justice ministry also promised to make amends to Kurds who had been subjected to violence by the outlawed PKK.

The law provides compensation for people who have suffered "both from acts of terrorist organisations and from measures taken by the state in the struggle against terror", it says.

Victims and their families could claim for damage ranging from injuries to death, as well as the destruction of property, livestock and crops. No figure has yet been given for a compensation deal.

The measure was announced days after Romano Prodi urged Turkey to forge ahead with reforms in the first visit by a European commission president to the Muslim-dominated country in four decades.

The legislation, the latest in a package of human rights reforms Ankara has pledged to enact, is expected to be presented to parliament in the coming months.

"This is yet another example of how the EU accession process is helping [the Turkish prime minister] Tayyip Erdogan's government move forward with a very bold reform agenda," said John Sitilides of the Western Policy Centre, a Washington-based thinktank.

The Turkish government's unexpected about-turn follows years of martial law in the Kurdish-populated south-east. A state of emergency, limiting freedom of expression and movement, was finally lifted under EU pressure last year.

Until the PKK abandoned its armed struggle after the arrest of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999, the Kurds had been subjected to a campaign of state-sanctioned terror.

Human rights groups say torture and death, in the form of "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions, were commonplace. Fearful that ethnic Kurds were providing logistical support to the rebels, the army burned, looted and destroyed villages, displacing hundreds of thousands.

Human Rights Watch claims that by 1994 "more than 3,000 villages had been virtually wiped from the map and more than a quarter of a million peasants made homeless".

Helicopters, armed vehicles, troops and "village guards" - Kurds drafted by the state - were all used in the campaign.

"When Turkish police, gendarmes, or soldiers had difficulty in distinguishing between rural civilian populations and armed insurgents, they drove the peasantry off their land and burned down thousands of settlements to create free-fire zones in the countryside," Human Rights Watch's UK branch wrote in a recent report.

"Soldiers torched villagers' homes, destroyed their crops and orchards and machine-gunned their livestock."

It said government return programmes were "a sham", devoid of sufficient funding or political will to regenerate the fragile peasant economy.

Human rights activists welcomed the legislation yesterday, but said they would reserve judgment on its effectiveness until it had been implemented.

Some suggested the move would serve the government by protecting it from compensation claims in the European court of human rights.

James Logan, a specialist on Turkey at the London branch of Amnesty International, said: "We obviously welcome any measure that brings some degree of justice to the victims of the widespread human rights violations that occurred in the south-east.

"However, such a bill would not bring to justice those who carried out and ordered extrajudicial executions, 'disappearances' and torture at the time. Such issues should not go unaddressed."

RE: "The two cultures are incompatible."

I've lived in Ankara. I worked with Turks for several years here and in Ankara. You are mistaken. They were among the very best people I've known and just as European IMO as any I met while living in Europe.

Of course, if you want to bring up remote villages or fundamentalist radical Muslims that's a different story. But that would be true of any culture's remote people and religious fanatics.

Meanwhile Amnesty International shed tears for PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan.

"JUNE 29, 1999 11:28 AM

"FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"CONTACT: Amnesty International

"Amnesty International Calls For A Retrial of PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan WASHINGTON - June 29 - Amnesty International calls for a full retrial of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan who was sentenced to death on 29 June 1999.

"'Abdullah Öcalan should be retried before a competent, independent and impartial tribunal and under conditions which ensure the strictest compliance with fair trial guarantees enshrined in national and international law,' the human rights organization said, adding that, 'he was sentenced to death at the conclusion of a trial that violated both national law and international standards for fair trials'.... " [end excerpt]

PKK was just a neighborhood watch group of citizens worried about crime in their neighborhood. Sure. Somewhere there's a group that's concerned about maimed and dead victims of Marxist terrorism. Somewhere.

I don't mean to caste aspersion on the Turks themselves and I believe that on an individual basis many of them would adapt quite well to western society, but at this point in time there are just too many fundamental differences between Islamic societies and the West for this to work imo.

I know you did not mean to disparage Turks. But believe me they've "adapt[ed] quite well to western society" starting back in 1923 when the modern secular Republic of Turkey was founded. Islam in Turkey was put through a reformation and they mean to keep it reformed.

BTW, there's a difference between a Muslim country and a country of Muslims.

We cannot judge all Muslims by CAIR and the 19. IMO.

I'm afraid you have misunderstood my intentions.

In the previous post, I was stating that many people in FR tend to lump Islamic states and states of Muslims together. I was agreeing with the other post in that Turkey is a modern nations compatible with the values of other Europian nations, and personally I would be quite glad to see it join the EU.

My profile consists of a paragraph taken out of a summary of the history of Albania, in order to explain my tagline.I am a Christian Albanian and find myself defending my nation against those in this forum who are Islamophobic. Whether the conversion of Albanians to Islam was forced or not is not relevant here. Personally I have several Turkish friends, and find that we have much in common culturally and linguistically, heritage ,no doubt, of the 500 years when Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire.

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