The increasing tempo of attacks in Turkey ?eight bombings in three months (Terrorism, WAR Report, and WAR Report) and two more against tourist resorts in the last year?is concerning (Advisory and Advisory), especially in the lead-up to Turkey’s main tourism season. Further, attacks traditionally spike in the spring, once the winter snow has melted and cleared mountainous border passes. The eight attacks have been claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (KFF, Group Profile), a little known group until this spate that has called on Kurds to cause “fear and chaos” across the country and has posted bomb-making instructions, using fertilizer, clocks, and radios, on its website.
The group is calling on tourists to stay away from Turkey. Its website reads: ” Come to duty now with the motto: ‘revenge, revenge, revenge.’ We will not recognize any rule. Everything and everywhere are targets for us. From now on, our attacks will continue and become more violent?Everywhere in Turkey, the bombs will explode, the assassinations and sabotage actions will take place.” In addition to targeting tourism, the site also notes that judges and prosecutors who work?employing “judicial terrorism”?against the Kurds would also be fair targets.
The group is believed to be a splinter from the larger Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK, Group Profile). And, their existence underscores a militant, anti-Turkish sect that is willing to launch deadly attacks to make their point. The PKK began fracturing in 1999 with the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and resounding defeats further demoralized the group’s members. The PKK called a ceasefire, which they violated in 2004 when the Turkish government refused to negotiate with it, calling the group a terrorist organization. The group also often employed land mines in the southeast to attack military targets. The US and the EU both continue to consider the PKK a terrorist organization.
The KFF formed that same year in an effort to rally disaffected PKK members to action. The KFF pledges allegiance to Ocalan and has not been countered by the PKK, a standard move by the PKK against those seen as rivals. They cull their membership primarily from Kurds who left urban areas in the 1990s and retain only a few hundred active militants. This, then, might explain the group’s targeting of mostly western urban cities and tourism hubs. The KFF may be allowed to continue because the PKK simply does not have the militancy or activism it once had; it also helps diversify Kurdish targeting. In fact, according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, an expert on the Kurdish rebellion, “This is a strategy to keep its cause alive by agitating young, unemployed and unhappy Kurds living in big metropolises.”
Clashes with the Turkish military and follow-on riots early in 2006 left 40 guerrillas, numerous soldiers, and 16 protesters dead. In early April, authorities raided homes in Ankara and detained 20 suspected Kurdish militant youths who were thought to be planning additional firebomb attacks with drums of gasoline. More recently, on April 21, the Turkish military sent upward of 10,000 soldiers and tanks to the southeast and Iraqi border to quell Kurdish attacks and unrest. Turkey has also called on the US to crackdown on rebel bases in Iraq, but US preoccupation and priorities are elsewhere, namely with countering Iraqi insurgents (see this WAR Report) versus disrupting what is nominally a stable part of Iraq.
The resulting spate of attacks comes at a time when Turkey is being considered for European Union admission. Turkey must continue to improve its human rights record. It has also softened its grip on Kurdish cultural rights, to include broadcasting once banned Kurdish-language programs and offering Kurdish language courses. Further, the judicial system is being tested by five journalists and their controversial objection to a judge closing a conference on mass killings of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire; this case is a pivotal one on ensuring Turkey’s freedom of the press and its readiness to join the EU. Just as is being witnessed elsewhere in Europe, Turkey’s integration of its cultural minority group continues to cause friction, although open talks like one in March , on the tension are a step in the right direction. These are steps in the right direction to more fully integrate Kurds into the Turkish landscape; however, Kurdish militants may not have the patience to see reforms be implemented. Since the PKK first launched attacks in 1984, some 37,000 people have died in Kurd-related violence.