TURKISH ARMY CONTINUES TO MUTILATE CORPSES

"We are deeply rooted in the mountains and hearts of the people of Kurdistan. We are able to live another 50 years like this."
~ Murat Karayılan.

I remember that last spring and summer two Turkish journalists pushed for a dialog on the Kurdish situation. Hasan Cemal wrote a series of articles from Kandil which were published in Milliyet. Later, both Hasan Cemal and Cengiz Çandar hosted a discussion live on Turkish TV from Diyarbakır, in which they spoke to Kurdish leaders and--surprisingly--actually seemed to listen. Until I find out otherwise, at this point I have to give them credit for trying to open a public dialog on the situation.

Of course, at the time, DTP members were being rounded up by the AKP government for two simple reasons: 1. They were Kurds; 2. The DTP had badly beaten the AKP in the March 2009 local elections . . . in spite of all the bribes AKP had dispensed to villagers in the preceeding months and in spite of Katil Erdoğan's hypocritical show at Davos.

Now Cengiz Çandar has called out Beşir Atalay, the Interior Minister (the ministry responsible for Turkey's domestic "security" affairs), on this whole "democratic initiative" farce, stating correctly that "[t]he democratic initiative is not going anywhere." I would add the fact that the "democratic initiative" was stillborn.


Çandar describes the signs of the times:

First of all, the military concentration continues at the Şemdinli border line. The Kurdish administration in Iraq is pressurized. Fighter jets bomb northern Iraq. In the presence of the United States and Arbil, efforts are being made for the handing over of 248 outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, militants over to Turkey. The pre-1990 conditions settle in the Southeast again. We are going back to a state in which people are fed up with check points and barricades.

If these are called “efforts,” there were more of them in the 1980s and the 1990s. The point we have reached is crystal-clear.

Yes, indeed, I agree. The point that we are at is excruciatingly crystalline.

And then Çandar quotes a recent editorial by Radikal's Oral Çalışlar:

“Here is a letter for you: ‘I am sending photos and information. They belong to guerillas who died in the clashes that took place in Şemdinli. They were handed over to the Şemdinli Municipality as they were. People are washing the bodies in the river.’ I couldn’t look at the photos, burned young bodies in pieces… the Günlük daily has been publishing the photos for a few days. In another letter, an article published in Günlük daily was sent. It is on the same topic. ‘…The images the cameraman recorded are detailed. The cameramen who recorded every single detail of the corpses of the guerillas will leave their mark in the history. That’s for sure. Or rather, the cameramen record acts of violence the state is involved in against Kurds, Kurdish bodies, corpses in the 21st century… I cannot look at the photos. My eyes are shut. Yes, we are at the end… where humanity ends. In the 21st century such acts are flat violence. Their goal is to destroy the willpower of the Kurdish people, scare away Kurdish women and the Kurdish youth.’ For days, funeral ceremonies are being held for the PKK members in Hakkâri, Şemdinli, Diyarbakır, Van and in many other southeastern cities. Groups to pick up the bodies are waving placards writing ‘Welcome our martyrs’ on them. The corpses are not being returned to the families. They are buried at the scenes of encounters. For this reasons, demonstrations are held, people fight against police officers. The PKK members who are killed in the regions mostly driven by a political trend advocating the Kurdish identity are welcomed not as ‘terrorists’ but as ‘martyrs.’ They are treated like martyrs. This is the latest picture in the Southeast… In other words, a completely different psychology and public opinion is settling in the region…”

Indeed.

The daily Günlük has a photo of one of our guerrillas who's body was mutilated and had something to say about the situation:

HPG member Özgür Dağhan's family was shocked when they went to the morgue to identify their son, who was killed in a clash in Gümüşhane. Özgür Dağhan's head had been completely deformed. The things remaining from his head were some hair and his teeth.

[ . . . ]

The family saw that inhumane act not only against their son but in two more HPG members' bodies. There weren't any deformations on the other parts of Dağhan's body, which indicates he was caught alive and was tortured after he was killed.

The article goes on to say that the bodies of Hamit Ulaş and Bayram Dün, HPG fighters who were killed in Karadeniz and Diyarbakır Silvan on 23 June, had also been tortured. Their heads were also smashed and the bodies tortured.

At Dağhan's funeral, which saw a turnout of thousands of mourners, BDP Diyarbakır Provincial Chairman Nijad Yaruk asked, "What kind of fire is that in your heart to make you attack the bodies of dead people?"


In addition to these recent mutilations, Selahattin Demirtaş also forwarded information to Katil Erdoğan on the TSK's mutilation of Rojhelati guerrilla, Abbas Emani, from Zaman:

BDP leader Nurettin Demirtaş [sic. Note: It's not Nurettin Demirtaş but Selahattın Demirtaş who is the BDP co-chair referred to here--Mizgîn] earlier this week sent a CD to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan filled with images of Özgür Dağhan, who was recently killed in Gümüşhane, and Abbas Emani, an Iranian militant who was allegedly killed when he was captured in Batman five years ago. According to the BDP’s claims, PKK member Emani was captured by the Special Forces. He was interrogated and then executed near a vehicle parked in front of a gendarmerie post. Later, his body was dragged to the site of a clash between the military and PKK terrorists, where it was mutilated by Turkish soldiers.

Demirtaş also enclosed a note to the prime minister that said: “These incidents [corpse defilement] are common, to our knowledge. Are you thinking of apologizing to the people and the families and punishing those responsible?” He said many witnesses in the area had confirmed the truth of these acts of disrespect for the dead.

I might add that I personally know people who can confirm similar behavior from the 1990s. There's more at Zaman from Mehmet Dağhan, the father of Şehîd Özgür Dağhan, via Taraf:

The Taraf daily spoke to Mehmet Dağhan, father of Özgür Dağhan, who said: “When my son was killed I went to Trabzon to identify him. They showed me about 10 pictures. There was blood on his face in the picture, his hair had been neatly combed and he was vaguely smiling. I said it was my son. Then I went to the Council of Forensic Medicine’s (ATK) morgue to identify the corpse. They brought my son’s body. His skull had been smashed and burnt. His body was completely black. I said I was not able to identify him. I talked to the prosecutor who was following up on the autopsy. He was about the same age as my son, and he was very nice to me. He was very respectful. He showed me pictures. There was not a blemish on his body in those pictures. He was dead, but his body was intact. It is natural for him to die in a clash. But later, I don’t know if they charred his body with gasoline, chemicals or some kind of acid. You wouldn’t even do this to an animal.”

Of course, none of this is new behavior on the part of NATO's second largest army, nor of Turkish state officials charged with the remains of guerrillas. As Heval Selahattin said, "These incidents [corpse defilement] are common, to our knowledge." Earlier photos of atrocities carried out against guerrilla corpses were posted on Rastî in March 2008 and in August of the same year, I posted information that appeared in the daily Taraf on the same subject:

Terrifying confession of a sergeant


"They threw a PKK member from a helicopter . . . A police special operations member raped the dead body of a female PKK member . . ." Former sergeant Çakan wrote this, including the name, date, and place, in his book; however, he was the one prosecuted.

Former Sergeant Kasım Çakan assembled information in his book on murders he witnessed which were committed by unknown perpetrators while he was on duty in The Southeast. Demanding that Çakan's book be accepted as an informant's document, Çakan's publisher, Mehdi Tanrıkulu, made a criminal complaint against the soldiers and police named in the document.

Being a Soldier While a Sergeant

Kasım Çakan, who used to work in the East and Southeast as a sergeant, compiled information about incidents that happened to him just after he was discharged from the army, in a book called Being a Soldier While a Sergeant. While Cakan wanted the incidents mentioned in his book to be considered as an informant documentation, Istanbul's chief prosecutor charged Çakan and his publisher with the charge of "making terror propaganda" [Article 7/2 of the new and improved Anti-Terror Law]. The trial of Çakan and Tevn Publications owner, Mehdi Tanrıkulu, is still ongoing.

A criminal complaint

Publisher Mehdi Tanrıkulu made a complaint to the Istanbul chief prosecutor's office based on the writing in the book. Tanrıkulu did so with the rationale that starting an investigation about such incidents would reveal several murders by unknown perpetrators.

More on that is available here. Other photos documenting TSK atrocities can be found at this page at Yeni Özgür Politika. Atrocities committed by TSK have also been disclosed by TSK conscripts in Nadire Mater's book, Voices from the Front (Turkish title: Mehmedin Kitabı).

While Katil Erdoğan was, no doubt, crying his eyes out in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the victims of the Srebrenica massacre:

I remember all the martyrs of Srebrenica with great respect and hope that they are all in heaven, Erdogan said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that the massacre of 1995 in Srebrenica dealt a heavy blow to human dignity.

[ . . . ]

The victims of the Srebrenica massacre lost lives for their homeland, honor and humanity. They were massacred in a bloody, ruthless, lawless, and wild war, Erdogan stressed.

[ . . . ]

Erdogan referred to the International Court of Justice in The Hague which ruled that what took place in Srebrenica was a genocide.

Now, this is the same son-of-a-bitch who has never bothered to shed a tear for Kurds but, in fact, was the one to authorize the murder of Kurdish women, children and elderly during the Amed Serhildan in 2006. This is the same son-of-a-bitch who refuses to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. This is the same son-of-a-bitch who replied to Heval Selahattin's letter and CD thusly:

"They have sent me a letter on [BDP] letterhead with a CD attached, stating that the situation of these corpses was a crime against humanity and asking what are we going to do about this. Is it left to you, BDP, to advocate for an organization that has been declared a terrorist organization by a majority of the world's countries? . . . Where are we going to put the armless, legless veterans in GATA [Gülhane Askeri Tıp Akademisi--TSK's hospital in Ankara] then?"

So this murdering son-of-a-bitch continues to ignore the incidents which are endemic to NATO's second largest army. He lies about PKK being a "terrorist" organization according to "a majority of the world's countries"--only state-sponsors of terror like the United States and Turkey and their little f***ing lapdogs in the EU think that PKK is a "terrorist" organization and these bottom-feeders are hardly "a majority of the world's countries". And then this son-of-a-bitch, Recep Tayyip Katil Erdoğan goes on to deflect any accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity by referring to some "armless, legless veterans in GATA". Oh, and I can guarantee you that the sons of Katil Erdoğan are never going to be found among those GATA unfortunates, nor will they ever be quoted in any future Mehmedin Kitabı, and you, dear reader, can easily guess the reason why.


Here's how Heval Selahattin responded to the Murderer's idiotic statement:

"This is an unfortunate statement. If a PM is thinking this way then he has lost his legitimacy. It is a confession that he is not the PM of a certain part of the country. . . . We do not distinguish the dead bodies, the pain. There is not your pain or my pain. There is our pain. Guerrillas are also the sons and daughters of this country. They are all our people. The parents of guerrillas are also citizens of this country. But if a PM is doing this then he will pass into history as the PM defending brutal treatment on dead bodies."

Well, all I can say is that Heval Selahattin is a much better man than I. As far as I'm concerned, what this comrade said.

LIES AND LOBBYISTS

"If you can't drink a lobbyist's whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women and still vote against him in the morning, you don't belong in politics."
~ Unknown.

A friend in Amed (Diyarbakır) sent a link from Yüksekova Haber which says that Katil Erdoğan is planning a trip to Amed on 21 February in support of the AKP mayoral candidate Kutbettin Arzu. According to Yüksekova Haber, Katil Erdoğan may reveal a "new incentive package" for the region.

Everyone take a trip in the time machine with me back to almost one year ago when Katil Erdoğan was talking the same BS in the NYTimes:

Turkey’s government is planning a broad series of investments worth as much as $12 billion in the country’s largely Kurdish southeast, in a new economic effort intended to create jobs and draw young men away from militancy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The program is intended to drain support for the militant Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, by improving the lives of Turkey’s impoverished Kurdish minority, Mr. Erdogan said in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday.

[ . . . ]

Mr. Erdogan is still identifying funds for the economic effort, which was started years ago by a previous administration but languished. The state will invest between $11 billion and $12 billion over five years to build two large dams and a system of water canals, complete paved roads and remove land mines from the fields along the Syrian border, he said.

Plans for the project will be completed within two months, he said, at which point construction on the two dams will begin. He said he had dedicated one of his deputy prime ministers to visit cities across the largely Kurdish southeast to work on it.

“Everything we can see in the western part of the country we can see in the east,” he said.

Yeah, right. Tell me another one.

As I mentioned at the time, not even the extremely pro-status quo, pro-terrorist Jamestown Foundation was fooled by Katil Erdoğan's hot air:

It is unclear whether, in his interview with the New York Times, Erdogan was being disingenuous in presenting the promised $12 billion as a new initiative or whether the reporters were unaware of the project’s background and thus assumed it was a new initiative. In fact, the dams, water canals, and roads form part of what is known as the Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP), which was first formulated in the 1970s and began to be implemented in the early 1980s.

[ . . . ]

One only has to fly over the region to see the effect of GAP on agriculture in the Tigris and Euphrates basins, transforming large tracts of what was previously semi-arid land into cultivated fields. In areas such as the Harran plain, annual yields of cotton, wheat, barley, and lentils have tripled. However, GAP has had a greater impact on agricultural productivity than on employment. Even though it has undoubtedly created jobs in local service industries, GAP’s overall impact on employment in southeast Turkey has been minor.

As well as being the poorest region in Turkey, the southeast also has the highest rate of population increase. Even in some of the richest areas in the GAP region, the pace of job creation has lagged behind the growth in available workforce. In most of the cities of southeast Turkey the unemployment rate is double or triple the 9.9% average in the country as a whole. Among young people in the cities of southeastern Turkey, unemployment often reaches 50-60%. There is no reason to suppose that, even if they can be completed, the Ilisu and Silvan dams and their associated irrigation systems will have a major impact on employment in the region.

[ . . . ]

Many Kurds already resent not only the displacements resulting from GAP, but also what they regard as the resulting destruction of their heritage through the filling of the dams, which are also used to produce electricity for the rest of the country.

It is also difficult to see how the completion of a project that was originally formulated in the 1970s will be interpreted as demonstrating the AKP’s commitment to the region. Perhaps more significant, although it is impossible to be sure of the precise impact of the two-thirds of GAP that has been completed to date on recruitment to the PKK, what is certain is that it has not prevented it. Whatever else the PKK and other militant organizations in southeast Turkey – which is also the main recruiting ground for violent Islamist groups – may be short of, it is not recruits.

We didn't buy it then; we don't buy it now. If Katil Erdoğan unveils a "new incentive package" in Amed on the weekend, it will be the same, old, warmed-over crap.

In other news, it looks like the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has had complaints filed against it by some ethics "watchdog" in DC:

Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate urging an investigation into whether the Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region (ANCA-WR) and the ANCA Endowment Fund violated their status as charitable organizations, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

Both ANCA-WR and the ANCA Endowment Fund, which share offices and a common website, have participated in political campaigns in violation of federal tax law, which specifically bars groups organized under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code from participating in political campaigns. Nevertheless, on October 24, 2008, ANCA announced its endorsements of 15 candidates for the United States Senate and 211 candidates for the United States House of Representatives and published these endorsements on its shared website with ANCA-WR: www.anca.org. ANCA also endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket for the presidency.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) requires agents of foreign political parties to register with the Department of Justice, periodically report and describe their activities aimed at influencing policies of the United States and to disclose the dissemination of information, including testimony before Congress.

Just a few short weeks ago, Turkish parliamentarians scrambled in the wake of Katil Erdoğan's Davos temper tantrum in order to contain the fallout with Jewish lobby groups . . . and the Armenians:

The Ruling Justice and Development Party's, or AKP’s, Cüneyt Yüksel and Suat Kınıklıoğlu, and the Nationalist Movement Party's, or MHP, Mithat Melen, were in the United States between Jan. 29 and Feb. 6 to lobby against any genocide resolutions.

Following their talks with U.S. officials, as well as a roundtable meeting with representatives from 10 Jewish organizations, the AKP deputies drafted a report emphasizing the "Jewish lobby-Armenian alliance" and submitted it to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The report included a host of other topics relating to Turkey, ranging from Turkish-Armenian relations to the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the Davos summit, as well as Turkey's bid to join the European Union, and further reaching topics such as terrorism and international security.

The deputies warned that the heated panel debate with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos, which ended when Erdoğan walked off stage after being interrupted by the moderator, drew the Jewish lobby in the United States closer to Armenian lobby groups.

[ . . . ]

The deputies highlighted a campaign prepared to be launched by four congressmen in the U.S. House of Representative in support of the Armenian thesis and warned, "Armenians believe an opportunity to pass the draft resolution has emerged after Davos."

The report called for lobbying activities and encouraged deputies to visit Washington more frequently.

The four congressmen are named elsewhere:

In a message to fellow members of Congress, Reps. Adam Schiff (D.-Calif.), George Radanovich (R.-Calif.), Frank Pallone (D.-N.J.) and Mark Kirk (R.-Ill.) are urging them "to re-affirm the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide by cosponsoring a bipartisan resolution" on the subject, according to a February 10 electronic letter made available to the Armenian Reporter.

Not to worry, though; an agreement appears to have been reached between the Turks and the American pro-Israel lobby:

Last week, two members of the Turkish parliament from the ruling party, Suat Kiniklioglu and Cuneyt Yuskel, were in the United States to lobby against the resolution. According to the Jamestown Foundation's translation, the two, having met U.S. officials and Jewish-American leaders, told Zaman newspaper that the "pro-Israel lobby will stay neutral if a genocide resolution is brought to the Congress; in case a resolution passed, Turkey should not hold Israel responsible as such a policy would make the Congress upset; and in order to prevent such genocide resolution, Turkey should open its Armenian border."

So, is the news today about the ANCA complaints a coincidence or a conspiracy? Remember, the lobbying "problem" wasn't a problem when Lockheed Martin lobbyist--registered with the Senate under the Lobbying Disclosure Act--Joseph Ralston was appointed as "special envoy to coordinate the PKK for Turkey".

FOOD PRICES, DROUGHT, AND GAP

"The evidence suggests that the GAP project has not delivered the growth and the benefits promised by the State to everyone in the region, because it has not adequately tackled the effects on women, children and men of an unequal land distribution in a landlord system (doubling as a political/religious system), the effects of armed conflict (including forced displacement), lack of provision of literacy in Kurdish and the export of much of the electricity and other goods generated out of the region."
~ The Cultural and Environmental Impact of Large Dams in Southeast Turkey.

Hevallo mocks the Queen and the Turkish first lady in a dialog that positively drips black humor. He's also got a post on Ahmet Türk's recent statement that has been twisted out of all recognition by the Turkish media. There's also been an objection to the hype at Kurdish Aspect. Taraf has carried a bit of clarification of Türk's statements, which appeared in an interview with Soranî-speakers who may have been with PUK Media. Türk is a Kurmancî speaker. Basically, Türk says that PKK is not the cause of the Kurdish question in Turkey, but is a result of the Ankara regime's longstanding policies. In the Taraf article, Hasip Kaplan, DTP Şirnak parliamentarian and Kamuran Yüksek, DTP's vice chairman, were present with Ahmet Türk during the interview in South Kurdistan, and both back up Türk's clarification.

On another subject, the dramatic increase in global food prices is no longer news to anyone who has to shop for food. In North Kurdistan, the price of rise increased from about 1.2 YTL/kilo last year to 5 YTL/kilo during the first part of this year. The AKP government blamed this increase on commodities speculators and encouraged the population to substitute bulghar for rice. As a result, the price of rice in North Kurdistan seems to have stabilized for the time being at around 2 YTL/kilo.

However, it's not only commodities speculators who are affecting the prices of food staples, as described in Britain's Independent at the beginning of the month:

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.

Prior to its article on agribusiness criminality, the Independent ran an article on the myth (or PR campaign?) of the high yields of genetically-modified crops.


Then there's the myth of the IMF and the devastating results of its food policies--designed specifically to enhance the profit margin of agribusiness:

The food crisis is essentially a structural problem. It goes much deeper than this kind of perfect storm scenario that a lot of people have been painting. It has to do with three decades or more of structural adjustment programs, trade liberalization policies that have forced many countries to dramatically alter their food production and to shift to becoming, in many cases, import-dependent. So there's been this move to push production into places that they say is more efficient, and the advice given by agencies like the World Bank and the IMF has been to say, "Let others look after your food production. They can do it more efficiently. You focus on other things."

[ . . . ]

And in the midst of all this, in the global food system that's been created over the last few decades, we have some corporations that sit in the middle of it all and who really have taken a stronger and stronger position in managing the food system. They're the ones who are profiting immensely now from this food crisis. So even though we're in a situation where millions of people can no longer afford to fulfill their basic food needs, you have corporations making record profits, a company like Cargill, which is one of the world's biggest grain traders.

Of course, the temporary relief provided by a boycott of rice and subsitution of bulghar in North Kurdistan may be short-lived, as North Kurdistan (as well as South Kurdistan) is currently suffering through a severe drought. Things are so bad that farmers from Mardin have petitioned DTP to request that the TBMM declare the regions around Mardin as disaster regions. The Mardin area produces 22% of Turkey's barley, wheat, chickpea, and lentil crop and the drought is killing these crops.

It's ironic that Mardin's farmers should be calling for a declaration of a disaster region when GAP has been operating since the late 1980s with the promise of irrigating The Southeast. Yet it's only the area around Urfa that benefits from GAP irrigation while the rest of The Southeast thirsts for water not only for crops, but for the peoples' livestock as well.

So much bullshit, so little time. But, then, what this really is is the continuation of Ankara regime policies to destroy the livelihood and culture of the Kurds of Turkey.