US embassy cable - 05ANKARA2837

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 002837 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/18/2029 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PINS, MOPS, PHUM, TU 
SUBJECT: ABSENT GOT LEADERSHIP, TURKISH MILITARY LAUNCHES 
MAJOR ANTI-PKK OPERATIONS 
 
REF: A. ANKARA 02525 
 
     B. AFOSI DET 522 INCIRLIK AB 
     C. IIR 1 663 3629 
 
(U) Classified by Polcounselor John Kunstadter; reasons: E.O. 
12958 1.4 (b,d). 
 
(U) This is a joint Adana/Ankara cable. 
 
1.  (C) Summary:  Contacts report heavy Turkish military 
presence in southeastern Turkey.  Adana PO reports that, 
while rural flows of recruits to the PKK may be occurring, 
contacts are not seeing a similar phenomenon from urban 
areas.  Absent any Erdogan government strategy for dealing 
with the Kurds, the PKK or the southeast in general, Turkish 
military is countering renewed PKK insurgency with major 
field operations.  PKK, reportedly trained in much more 
sophisticated bomb-making by Ansar al-Islam in n. Iraq, 
continues to smuggle not only C-4 and A-4 explosives, but 
also RDX, into Turkey for expected urban operations.  A 
leading Kurdish politician and long-standing contact notes 
widespread conviction among Kurds that deeper elements of the 
Turkish State are using the PKK and jailed leader Ocalan to 
disrupt formation of viable Kurdish political alternatives 
and to put the Erdogan government under pressure.  End 
summary. 
 
Continuing Attraction of the PKK 
-------------------------------- 
 
2. (C) Consulate officers met with Hakkari attorney Rojbin 
Tugan on May 6 in Adana.  Tugan was pessimistic about the 
chances of a moderate Kurdish political force counteracting 
the political "hegemony" of the PKK among the Kurdish 
population in the Southeast, and even in neighboring Iran, 
any time in the near future.  The PKK represents most of the 
people in southeastern Turkey, she claimed; she has heard 
reports from towns in Hakkari, Sirnak and Mardin about dozens 
of young people leaving to join the PKK in the Qandil 
mountains.  Many go out of Kurdish solidarity in the face of 
GOT inattention to more moderate Kurdish demands for cultural 
recognition, she believes, rather than due to identification 
with PKK ideology.  Embassy Ankara contacts in the southeast 
and leading Kurdish politician Hasim Hasimi have made the 
same point to us. 
 
3. (C) While Tugan has heard of strong support for the PKK in 
provinces bordering Iraq, contacts in Diyarbakir on May 9-10 
had different perceptions of the PKK,s recruiting ability. 
Contacts there who work regionally did not rule out rural 
flows of recruits in provinces near the Iraqi border, such as 
Hakkari and Sirnak, but did not think the organization was 
getting people from urban areas in the numbers it had in the 
past.  (Note:  They also pointed out a slow, but steady 
village return process in some areas of southeastern Turkey 
which are distant from traditional conflict areas. 
Government officials in Diyarbakir, Van and Dogubeyazit noted 
this slowly progressing trend as well, but did not overstate 
it to PO.  End note.) 
 
4.  (C) Seymus Diken, an advisor to the Mayor of Diyarbakir, 
along with Sahismael Bedirhangoglu, President of the 
Southeast Businessman,s Association, recalled times in the 
1990s when "whole classrooms" from Dicle University would 
head south to join the PKK.  "That just doesn't happen 
anymore," they claimed.  Additionally, they are hearing less 
about people giving financial and material support to the 
organization, they said, and when they do hear about, less 
financial support is flowing than in the past. 
 
Come on, people, there's a problem here 
--------------------------------------- 
 
5. (C)  Tugan, while at pains personally not to endorse the 
idea of amnesty, legitimately pointed out that many people 
convicted in the past by the now-abolished State Security 
Courts, which did not meet EU standards, have lost their 
right to appeal their cases to the ECHR, as Ocalan did, 
because too much time has passed.  In the absence of an 
amnesty, she said, the state must at least acknowledge a 
problem.  "Erdogan can't even bring himself to utter the word 
'Kurd'," she claimed, adding, "Come on, people, there is a 
problem here." 
 
Bolu Brigade Back in Hakkari? 
----------------------------- 
6. (C)  Tugan stated that the current military presence in 
Hakkari is higher than it has ever been, despite the fact 
that so far she has not heard of a corresponding PKK 
mobilization into Hakkari province from Qandil mountain.  The 
Bolu commando brigade, accused of gross human rights 
violations in the 1990s, and the Kayseri Jandarma brigade, 
have reportedly been deployed in the region, and she said 
there has been a return of checkpoints, at which troops treat 
the local population "rudely", in places and numbers that 
have not been seen since the state of emergency (OHAL) 
period.  Tugan claimed that even EU Ambassador Kretschmer was 
advised by the military not to travel from Diyarbakir to 
Hakkari recently, due to a lack of security in the region. 
 
7.  (C) In a May 11 conversation with Adana PO in Van, the 
representative of UNHCR,s Van field office (strictly 
protect) corroborated Tugan's observations about the 
increased military presence in Hakkari province.  Upon the 
recommendation of security officials, UNHCR staff recently 
called off a fact-finding trip to Yuksekova, where they had 
hoped to check upon the conditions of recent returnees from 
the Makhmour camp in northern Iraq.  They reported seeing 
frequent aircraft activity overhead heading south, and also 
noted frequent cuts to the mobile phone network in the area, 
beyond what might be considered normal disruptions in 
coverage, when forces were reportedly undertaking activities. 
 PO experienced one of the cuts to the network himself on the 
morning of May 12. 
 
Military Deployments 
-------------------- 
 
8.  (C) PKK attacks and GOT operations continued apace during 
PO,s May 9-12 visit to the region.  On May 13, just the day 
after PO,s departure from Dogubeyazit, three security forces 
were wounded in a "gun and bomb" attack there.  On May 13, 
two Jandarma members were killed and three injured in a PKK 
attack in Bingol apparently as Consulate LES transited the 
province. 
 
9. (C)  While PO was traveling in the region, larger than 
usual Turkish rotary lift was observed in Diyarbakir, where 
four UH-60 and two UH-1 helicopters were in clear view at a 
Diyarbakir military airport.  In Van, a single UH-60 was 
observed at the Van civil-military airfield, but there were 
clearly visible support arrangements in place for a larger 
number of tactical helicopters which at that time of day may 
have been active elsewhere nearby.  Contacts consistently 
spoke of brigade sized deployments of Turkish Army forces in 
Hakkari and eastern Sirnak.  Some mentioned that Bolu Brigade 
by name.  There have been press reports of additional 
Jandarma units in battalion strength brought into the Bingol 
area from elsewhere in Turkey.  Additionally, during the 
evening of May 9, there were several hours of heavy Turkish 
F-16 flight activity at the Diyarbakir civil-military airport. 
 
10. (C)  An Embassy Ankara source with deep contacts in the 
military and intelligence agencies told polcounselor May 16 
that the Turkish military has launched a two-part operation 
involving 28,000 troops.  One v-shaped movement is sweeping 
southward through Tunceli, the other v-shaped deployment is 
sweeping westward in the Tatvan-Bitlis-Bingol area.  Our 
source reported that, as of May 15, twenty security forces 
and forty insurgents had been killed and a number of 
insurgents had been taken prisoner "in condition to be 
interrogated."  Six more security forces were reported killed 
May 17. 
 
11. (C) Once the snows at higher elevations have melted, the 
military plans a major sweep through Hakkari and Sirnak 
provinces parallel to the border with Iraq, our source 
reported.  He noted that the PKK and another leftist 
terrorist group -- TIKKO -- are collaborating in Tunceli 
province.  As a result insurgent activity has reached such a 
high level that travel between Elazig and Tunceli is now 
possible only by escorted convoy and the area around Ovacik 
district in northern Tunceli province, the scene of 
prolonged, bitter fighting in the 1990's, is no longer under 
Turkish authorities' control after dark.  Given that (1) the 
current government has transferred or exiled the national 
police's (TNP) most experienced anti-PKK officers; (2) other, 
uncoordinated police arrests have disrupted the authorities' 
ability to keep track of the PKK courier network among bomber 
cells; and (3) Erdogan ordered the break-up of the 
interagency anti-terrorism operations coordination group in 
the National Security Council, the Turkish authorities are 
currently overwhelmed, especially in trying to track or break 
up PKK urban operations planning, our source said. 
 
12. (C) Our source also alerted us that, in addition to 
intensified smuggling of C-4 and A-4 into Turkey, the PKK is 
continuing to bring in RDX.  He says that use of A-4 in bomb 
attacks will lead to further leaks to the Turkish press by 
anti-U.S. elements in the security services that the U.S. is 
tacitly or more directly aiding the PKK.  Our source added 
that PKK bomb-making has increased significantly in 
sophistication owing in part to PKK insurgents' training by 
Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq.  The bomb which recently 
killed a police officer in the Aegean tourist center of 
Kusadasi was an example of highly sophisticated manufacture, 
he said: the bomb was wired to go off when the music player 
automatically shut itself off, breaking the circuit, at the 
end of a song. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
13. (C) Amidst the PKK's renewed aggressiveness questions 
linger about the PKK's connections to deeper parts of the 
Turkish State.  It is common knowledge among our contacts who 
have been involved in, or followed, counter-insurgency 
activity that at the PKK's founding meeting in the Ankara 
squatter district of Mamak in 1978, "every institution of the 
deep State was represented at the table."  It has also been 
reported in the press that Ocalan worked for the Turkish 
National Intelligence Organization while a student in the 
1970's.  In unguarded moments Turks will ask how it is that 
since at least the early 1990's the PKK has been able to run 
such significant amounts of narcotics through the 
heavily-monitored southeast to Istanbul and Western Europe. 
Good contacts -- and Cabinet ministers -- have asked us how 
it is that PKK terrorist leader Ocalan, incarcerated in the 
maximum security prison on the island of Imrali, was able to 
write a letter in May 2004 directly threatening the AKP 
government and have it delivered.  Many contacts, both Turks 
and Kurds, quietly wonder to us whether certain elements in 
the Turkish State, benefiting from the PKK's narcotics trade 
and the need to keep substantially larger security forces on 
active duty than would otherwise be necessary, would prefer 
not to have the PKK wiped out. 
 
14. (C) Pointing to Ocalan's statements in praise of the 
Turkish State since his capture, Hasim Hasimi and other 
right-of-center Kurdish politicians have long asserted that 
Ocalan made a deal with the Turkish State.  Hasimi points to 
Ocalan's recent neo-Marxoid, anti-American jargon about 
"confederalism without a state" as an example of 
incomprehensible rhetoric designed to keep Kurds in Turkey, 
Syria, Iraq and Iran off balance and wary of one another.  He 
notes to us that village guards in the southeast have told 
him they are under orders not to impede the infiltration of 
PKK guerrillas.  While conceding that the Turkish military 
might have wanted to draw guerrillas into Turkey, where 
military forces could corral them, Hasimi also thinks the 
military wants to use the increased PKK presence to put 
pressure on the AKP government. 
 
15. (C) With movements of additional military forces into 
areas traditionally associated with seasonal PKK activity, we 
expect sustained, intense clashes will continue.  In the 
absence of an Erdogan government policy toward the Kurds, the 
PKK, or the southeast in general, the Turkish military is 
left to address the renewed PKK challenge.  This failure of 
leadership and vision on the part of the Erdogan government 
is perpetuating the polarized political atmosphere.  End 
comment. 
EDELMAN