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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 - 30 August 2000 Issue No. 496 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 - 30 August 2000 Issue No. 496
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters In sheep's clothing
By Gareth JenkinsTurkish warplanes killed at least 38 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 11 more in a bombing raid on northern Iraq settlements last week, according to the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), Ankara's closest ally in the independent northern Iraq Kurdish region.
"On Tuesday, 15 August, a pasture summer camp inside Iraqi Kurdistan, belonging to a number of Iraqi Kurdish herdsmen and their families, fell victim to the Turkish air raid," said a KDP statement. "We denounce this action which has led to the loss of so many innocent lives. We demand that this incident be thoroughly investigated and that the victims are properly compensated."
The claim was originally denied by the Turkish military. "It is out of the question for us to bomb civilians," declared a military official when the KDP first announced details of the attack late last Thursday.
But on the following day a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman admitted that the attack had taken place but he insisted that civilians had not been targeted. "Turkey carries out operations in northern Iraq from time to time as part of the fight against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party [PKK]," he said. "The necessary measures are always taken to ensure that the civilian population is not harmed."
Since imprisoned PKK leader Abdallah Ocalan announced a unilateral cease-fire in August 1999 all but 400 to 500 PKK militants have withdrawn from Turkish territory. But the Turkish military have ignored PKK offers of a negotiated settlement to the 16-year-old insurgency which has claimed over 35,000 lives, and Turkish security forces have continued to strike at an estimated 5,000 PKK fighters in camps in the mountains along Turkey's borders with Iraq and Iran.
The KDP, which controls northwestern Iraq, has traditionally cooperated with Turkey in attacks against the PKK in return for weapons which it has used in its long-running feud with the rival Iraqi Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which controls the northeast of the country. Torn between responding to local outrage at the Turkish air raid and preserving cordial relations with Ankara, the KDP claimed that the casualties took place "while Turkish warplanes were pursuing PKK targets."
But the claim has been angrily rejected by the PKK. "The Turkish military know very well that our soldiers do not set up camps on exposed plateaus like the one where the bombings took place," said a high-ranking PKK official, noting that the air raid took place on the 16th anniversary of the launch of the PKK insurgency on 15 August 1984. "This was a clear provocation aimed at sabotaging our efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict and provoking us into abandoning our cease-fire."
KDP-controlled Kurdistan TV showed the survivors, many of them small children, lying on hospital beds in the regional capital Arbil, their heads and limbs in bandages and slings. All denied having any connection with the PKK. Several claimed that Turkish jets had flown reconnaissance flights before the bombing began.
"We were grazing our animals in the summer pastures," said one woman. "Suddenly the planes flew over, then they flew back again and there were explosions everywhere. I don't know what happened then, but there was blood everywhere."
Over the last decade Turkey has frequently been accused of deliberately bombing villages it suspected of being sympathetic to the PKK, both in Turkey and the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, and of failing to distinguish between military and civilian targets. Last year, Iran claimed that Turkish jets had killed one Iranian soldier and wounded several others in a raid on the Iran-Iraq border region. Ankara said its warplanes had bombed PKK forces inside Iraq and refused to pay compensation.
Ironically, the killings came on the same day that Turkey finally signed two international agreements which, if implemented, would force it to lift its often draconian restrictions on cultural and political plurality. On 15 August Turkey signed the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantee the right to self-determination of all people, freedom of expression, and the freedom from discrimination on ethnic or religious grounds.
At present, Turkey's 12 million Kurds are forbidden to express a distinct Kurdish identity and the use of the Kurdish language is banned in both education and broadcasting. Thousands of women are effectively denied education and employment through the ban on Islamic headscarves in universities and the civil service.
The covenants still have to be ratified by the Turkish parliament before they come into force and many remain sceptical. "This is a long delayed step toward democratisation," said Ali Riza Yurtsever, a senior official of the People's Democracy Party (HADEP), Turkey's only legal pro-Kurdish party. "But we are not sure if they will be applied or not."
