Assessment of PKK and Its Activities

The Turkish assessment of PKK was particularly based on legal documents and official declarations. Apart from the USA and the UK, the PM Yılmaz stated that France and Germany, where the Kurdish population was high in numbers, had prohibited the activities of the PKK and its subsidiaries since the beginning of the 90s.

Accordingly, through the decree of the German Federal Court of 12 January 1990 a warrant was issued, and “Öcalan was named as wanted for the crimes of murder and for managing a terrorist organization”⁵⁸².

Contrarily, the Greek MPs took a cautious attitude toward Öcalan and his organization –PKK– and avoided associating them with terrorism. Buttressing the opinion that Öcalan was the ‘political leader of a tormented ethnos’, the Greek MP Kounalakis exemplified Germany as a country which refrained from taking legal action against him, and instead, upheld his claims. Öcalan was accused of murdering a disenchanted member of PKK, who quitted the organization and was killed in Russelsheim, and running a terrorist organization that was forcibly raising money for itself from the Kurdish origin businesses in Germany⁵⁸³. In 1990, Germany authorized an arrest warrant, but “did not internationalize [it] toward other countries, [and] keep it within Germany”⁵⁸⁴. In Kounalakis’s words; “Germany, which had issued an arrest warrant against him for the murders committed by PKK on its territory, did not dare to pursue his extradition, because it just did not even want him to be tried, let alone gave him to Turks”⁵⁸⁵.

However, in the Turkish parliament, all the European countries including Germany were considered law-abiding. Supposedly, they recognized PKK as a terrorist organization following the irrefutable evidence that revealed PKK’s and Öcalan’s entanglement in terrorism. In addition to their terrorist activities, PM Yılmaz

582 Minutes of Grand National Assembly of Turkey, 20^th Term, 20^th Session, v. 65, (18.11.1998): 464, https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/tutanaklar/TUTANAK/TBMM/d20/c065/tbmm20065020.pdf. [18.09.2018].

[Yılmaz, ANAP, the then PM].

583 Denis Staunton, “Germany Will Not Pursue PKK Leader’s Extradition”, The Irish Times, 21 November 1998, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/germany-will-not-pursue-pkk-leader-s-extradition-1.217211 [20.10.2019]; Saygı Öztürk, “Sadece 5 Cinayetten Aranıyor”, Sabah, 25 November 1998, http://arsiv.sabah.com.tr/1998/11/25/R03.html. [20.10.2019].

584 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 9^th Term, 3^rd Session, 81^th Sitting, (16.02.1999): 4459, https://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/a08fc2dd-61a9-4a83-b09a-09f4c564609d/ES0216.pdf.

[23.05.2018]. [Pangalos, PASOK, the then FM].

585 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 9^th Term, 3^rd Session, 96^th Sitting, (12.03.1999): 5287, https://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/a08fc2dd-61a9-4a83-b09a-09f4c564609d/ES0312.pdf.

[24.05.2018]. [Petros Kounalakis, SYN, the then MP].

underlined that they were also involved in organized crimes such as “narcotics trafficking, arms and human smuggling, money laundering, extortion, abduction of children”⁵⁸⁶ and an attempt to recruit militants to obtain financial resources needed to commit ‘terrorist acts’. Reportedly, Sputnik Operation, which was conducted with coordination of some European countries in September 1996, for example, clearly disclosed PKK’s link with ‘organized crimes’. Yılmaz, by categorizing drug trafficking as a ‘crime against humanity’⁵⁸⁷ and registering PKK’s relation with the

‘global illicit drug trade’, listed several other reports and declarations. Accordingly, reports of the 1995 and 1996 by the US state department and department of justice confirmed that all the attributions of PKK mentioned in the Turkish parliament were exactly true. Yılmaz stated that “in these reports, it was emphasized that the European drug trafficking cartel controlled by PKK terrorist organization”⁵⁸⁸. Simultaneously, in Europe, the Paris Institute of Criminology which was the oldest French research institute for criminal law and criminology proved PKK’s drug network in Europe.

Moreover, in the final report of “Sub-Commission on Illicit Drug Trade and Related Problems in the Middle and Near East, [which] gathered in Beirut between 29 June and 3 July 1998 under the United Nations Drug Control Program”⁵⁸⁹, declared PKK as a ‘narco-terrorist organization’.

In general, PKK was related to narcotics in the Turkish parliament whereas in the Greek parliament, the Greek MPs refrained from using the abbreviation PKK and instead preferred calling the movement as the ‘Kurdish organization’ or as ‘liberation movement’. No discussions were held by the Greek MPs about the categories of PKK

586 This opinion maintains its validity; that during the conduct of this study some Kurdish mothers started to stage a sit-in demonstration in front of the HDP building in Diyarbakır, a southeastern Turkish city, demanding the release and return of their children who were claimed to be kidnapped by PKK.

See, “Diyarbakir Mothers: 50 Days of Waiting,” TRT World,

https://www.trtworld.com/video/insight/50-days-on-mothers-in-diyarbakir-still-wait-for-their-children/5db067a56e2a1a00111d1474 [04.12.2019]; İclal Turan, “Turkey: Mothers’ Sit-in against PKK Continues”, Anadolu Agency, 30 October 2019, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/turkey-mothers-sit-in-against-pkk-continues/1630989 [04.12.2019]; “Kurdish Mothers: HDP Takes Revenge on Children for

Not Supporting Party”, Daily Sabah, 24 November 2019,

https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/2019/11/24/kurdish-mothers-hdp-takes-revenge-on-children-for-not-supporting-the-party. [04.12.2019].

587 Bekir Aksoy of The True Path Party was another MP who had the same opinion that PKK carried out crime against humanity: “They are the brain of drug trafficking, by transfering the narcotics from the Middle East and Afghanistan to the Europe they commit crime against humanity”. See, Minutes of Grand National Assembly of Turkey, 20^th Term, 23^rd Session, v. 66, (24.11.1998): 239, https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/tutanaklar/TUTANAK/TBMM/d20/c066/tbmm20066023.pdf. [18.09.2018].

588 [Yilmaz, ANAP, the then PM] Minutes of Grand National Assembly of Turkey (T.B.M.M. Tutanak Dergisi 18.11.1998), 463.

589 Minutes of Grand National Assembly of Turkey, (18.11.1998): 463. [Yılmaz, ANAP, the then PM].

acts and their conformity to international rules and conventions, but both Greek foreign ministers of the term (Theodoros Pangalos and Georgios Papandreou, respectively) distanced the PASOK government from the conduct of PKK⁵⁹⁰. According to their declarations Greece had great sympathy for the Kurdish issue in terms of fundamental human rights and minority rights, and had ever and never supported terrorism, let alone drug trafficking:

[GR] “[F]or us the treatment of the Kurdish problem has always been in line with our principles, we are against the separatist movements, the armed rebellion and the acts of terrorism and violence, but we are in favor of protecting minorities, human rights and democratic freedoms”⁵⁹¹. [GR] “[T]he PASOK government supports the struggle of people whose fundamental rights are being violated. Our support, of course, doesn’t necessarily make us -it certainly doesn’t make us- supporters of any act of one or other Kurdish organization. [...] The main criterion of our attitude towards Kurdish [issue] was, is and will be human rights, minority rights”⁵⁹².

Both Turkish interior ministers of the term –Aktaş of 1998 and Bayar of 1999– had the same point that the West, in fact, for a long time either overtly or covertly, had ignored PKK and ‘exploited it for Turkey’s dissolution’ until they discovered its clear link with narcotics. In Bayar’s words: “Apo’s drug smuggling caused a handicap for him and in this respect PKK became unwanted in the West”⁵⁹³. Reportedly, PKK and Öcalan were unwelcome not because it was proved and realized by the West that they were the rebel forces fighting for terror purposes and not for humanitarian purposes (like human rights); but because they were ‘drug runners of Europe’. In Aktaş’s words:

“PKK separatist terrorist organization has committed major crime[s] not only against the Turkish people but also against humanity; it holds the large part of the world's drug trafficking by the networks it manages”⁵⁹⁴.

MP Aksoy stated that granting a political identity to such a person would contravene the European norms and values which Europeans were long being proud of, and the

590 In December 1993, when PASOK MPs attended to Turkey’s DEP party congress and declared their full support for the Kurdish movement, the bilateral relations strained. See, Sönmezoğlu, Türk Dış Politikası, 609.

591 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, (16.02.1999): 4467. During her parliamentary speech, MP Alexandra Papariga of the KKE used quotation from an interview of the FM Pangalos, criticizing his position. The full lenght excerpt is as follows: “[Y]our today’s interview shows what the government’s policy option was. You said, ‘I want to start by saying that for us the treatment of the Kurdish problem has always been in line with our principles, we are against the separatist movements, the armed rebellion and the acts of terrorism and violence, but we are in favor of protecting minorities, human rights and democratic freedoms.’ It’s a stack of things that everyone can get what they want.”

592 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, (05.03.1999): 5053. [Papandreou, PASOK, the then FM].

593Minutes of Grand National Assembly of Turkey, 20^th Term, 51^st Session, v. 70, (09.02.1999): 72, https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/tutanaklar/TUTANAK/TBMM/d20/c070/tbmm20070051.pdf. [18.09.2018].

[Cahit Bayar, the then Minister of Interior Affairs].

594 Minutes of Grand National Assembly of Turkey, (24.11.1998): 259. [Kutlu Aktas, the then Minister of Interior Affairs]

new concept of NATO, and international treaties, as well⁵⁹⁵.MP Köse, with the same fashion, referring to Article 13 of NATO’s Alliance Strategic Concept adopted on 7-8 November 1991 in Rome⁵⁹⁶ and to Article 4 of the Washington Treaty,⁵⁹⁷maintained that Turkey’s request on the delivery of Öcalan was also in accord with NATO’s several resolutions, and underscored the double standard Turkey faced with regard to the European concepts; supposedly, Europe was in no position to lecture Turkey on human rights anymore⁵⁹⁸:

[TR] “Distinguished members of the parliament, the greatest jurisprudence tragedy of the century has been staged in Italy, which is claiming to be the cradle of modern law. Those who host the bloody murderer of 30 thousand people, in a sea-facing villa, before the eyes of the whole world, should never mention ‘law’ and ‘human rights’. If the rule of law, which is considered to be the greatest value of the contemporary world, is put aside persecutors will continue to be preferred to victims”.

Italy's resistance to extraditing Öcalan to Turkey caused peremptory indignation in the Turkish leadership. PM Yılmaz asserted that if Italy was to insist on assessing PKK not as a terrorist but as a political organization, this wrong and criminal conduct of Italy would not be left without retribution.

5.1.2. Standpoint and Accountability of the International Organizations and