According to intelligence reports, the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), a branch of the PKK, asked its members to take to the streets and “bring the serhildan [Kurdish for uprising] to the maximum.” The plan involves organizing councils, communes, cooperatives and “academies” that will work to build “Kurdistan.” The next stage consists of staging a massive uprising, to be followed by preparing for a “revolutionary war of the people.” The creators of the plan seek to create confusion ahead of the June 2011 elections and hold that such mass demonstrations and chaos in the region will contribute to the successful election of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).
In line with the plan, PKK supporters began to step up acts of violence in the region on Tuesday, protesting PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan's imprisonment on the anniversary of his capture in Kenya in 1999. Eighty percent of the storeowners in the southeastern province of Batman did not open their shops on Tuesday, as dozens of people have been detained in demonstrations in the past three days.
There were clashes between pro-PKK protestors and police in many provinces, some of which turned bloody. In Mersin, a Molotov cocktail thrown into a restaurant heavily injured a 45-year-old man as he was having dinner. Suphi Beylen, whose hands and face were severely burned, is still receiving treatment for his injuries. In another case, 16-year-old Sedat Baykara lapsed into a coma after he was hit on the head with a stone thrown by demonstrators in Mersin.
Diyarbakır, which intelligence reports say is the center of the PKK's subversive plan, has also turned into a battlefield in the past few days. On Thursday, nearly 3,000 demonstrators who gathered in front of Diyarbakır's BDP branch marched towards Koşuyolu Street and threw stones at shops along it. They also threw Molotov cocktails and set an armored police vehicle on fire.
Diyarbakır Police Chief Mustafa Sağlam said 46 protestors, including nine minors, were detained in Diyarbakır for their involvement in acts of violence. Many others, who were planning to stage terrorist attacks, have been detained across Turkey.
Commenting on the PKK's recent acts of violence, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was quite harsh in his address at the Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) Expanded Provincial Leaders Convention yesterday. The prime minister labeled recent pro-PKK demonstrations as “efforts to design Turkish politics” and pointed to the terrorist organization's links to other “dark forces.” “There have been some recent efforts to turn the streets into areas of conflict. These are activities of the terrorist organization to influence the election process. They aim to design Turkish politics. The PKK cannot achieve anything with these activities. The PKK and its extensions have adopted the role of a subcontractor, as they do ahead of every election. It once again won the bid to undermine the government by scaring the public,” he said.
Recalling that recent indictments filed against illegal gangs have revealed the PKK's cooperation with “some dark forces in and outside of Turkey and already recognized gangs,” Erdoğan vowed to foil this latest attempt to create chaos in the country.
What the prime minister implied by “already recognized gangs” was the Ergenekon terrorist organization, whose suspected links to the PKK have been included in the Ergenekon indictment based on strong evidence. Ergenekon is a clandestine organization nested within the state that aims to foment chaos in society, leading to a military takeover. Indictments prepared as part of the Ergenekon probe thus far have frequently mentioned the “cooperation” between Ergenekon and illegal organizations active in Turkey with a motive of stirring up chaos in society to enable and legitimize a military takeover. The PKK, the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) and the Turkish Hizbullah are among these terrorist groups.
‘Violence to further rise in February, March'
Despite the high expectations that came as a result of the PKK's October declaration of a cease-fire until the elections, intelligence reports have warned that the organization may break this cease-fire in the spring and escalate violence across the country in an attempt to influence the election process.
Adem Yavuz Arslan, Ankara representative of the Bugün daily, which has been reporting on these intelligence reports for the past few days, says the recent developments come as no surprise. He points to Öcalan's remarks late last year, when he said the cease-fire expires in March, not June and that the cease-fire period was a tactical maneuver of the PKK, rather than a move to contribute to peace in the region. “This is the organization of their system. The organization gains strength logistically. They train militants and transport weapons and explosives to big cities to stage terrorist activities. That is what happened this time too,” he told Today's Zaman. Stating that intelligence reports he obtained show that 200 KCK militants are currently being trained in the Kandil Mountains, where the outlawed PKK has command camps. “Intelligence reports show tough times await us in the spring months, since the organization has already mobilized explosives and militants across the country,” he says.
Some security analysts also drew attention to the fact that the PKK has taken advantage of the cease-fire to stabilize its units. The PKK has retreated to northern Iraq every winter since 1984 because of random Turkish military operations. In the spring it takes at least 45 days for the PKK to enter the country and set its bases up, a process that postpones the intense fight until mid-May. This year, however, the PKK issued orders to remain in the country and is guarding its bases more strongly than ever.
What does PKK want?
Terror experts say the PKK aims to corner the AK Party in the elections both in the west and the east and destabilize the country. According to Arslan, the PKK is working on a lose-lose situation for the AK Party by stepping up violence across the country. “As violence escalates in the east, the AK Party will lose the support of the region as the Nationalist Movement Party [MHP] and the Republican People's Party [CHP] receive less support there. On the other hand, with provocative and terrorist acts in the eest, voters will refuse to support the AK Party, and the CHP and MHP will get more votes, while the AK Party loses power,” he explains.
There are also comments that the PKK wants a coalition government after the elections and thus is trying to prevent the AK Party from once again coming to power as a single party. Chairman of the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK) and renowned security analyst Sedat Laçiner is also of the opinion that the PKK aims to put the AK Party in a tight spot with acts of violence ahead of the elections. “They will create the image that the government failed to take necessary measures in the face of terrorist attacks and street clashes and try to leave the government helpless ahead of the elections. The votes of the AK Party may go down by 5 to 10 percent due to rising terrorism. The deep state will also benefit from this situation. The plan of the PKK and its accomplices is to bring back the coalition governments,” he said.
Terror and strategy expert Önder Aytaç also underlines that the PKK aims to prevent the AK Party from receiving the majority of the votes, which would allow the government to draft a new Constitution easily. He says the PKK leads these efforts but that it is not alone. Noting that March will be a critical month, he says these circles want the nation to hold the AK Party responsible for the rising terrorism in the country,” he said.
Eastern civil society up in arms against PKK violence
The PKK-sponsored tension in the region has drawn strong reactions from civil society organizations in the eastern and southeastern provinces, whose representatives have called on the organization to stop violence. They say forcing shop owners to close their shops, setting cars on fire and damaging the property of locals bring no benefit to anybody.
“Enough is enough. We cannot discuss our problems in an environment where there is no peace. These incidents put locals in a difficult situation,” says Fahrettin Akyıl, president of the Diyarbakır Commodity Exchange.
Van Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman Zahir Kandaşoğlu also says the Kurdish issue cannot be solved by damaging shops and breaking windows. “These demonstrations are harming the Kurdish people,” he said.
