One would think Ocalan could go no further in humiliating himself. But even so, the PKK leader was stabbed in the back. The hesitations and manoeuvring of the Italian, German, Dutch, Belgian and Greek governments created the conditions whereby on February 15 Ocalan was kidnapped from the Greek embassy in Nairobi, Kenya and abducted to Ankara.
In the process the Kurdish people have been declared fair game for the Turkish army. An unprecedented wave of arrests has taken place in the towns and villages of Turkey. In Istanbul alone, according to the Turkish human rights organization IHD, at least 400 members of the legal pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party have been arrested. The monstrous campaign of chauvinism unleashed in Turkey following Ocalan’s arrest speaks volumes. For days the PKK chairman was shown on television gagged and bound.
The Canadian Involvement:
The Kurdish guerrilla organization led by Abdullah Ocalan, whose arrest this week by Turkish commandos sparked riots around the world, has been sending agents to Canada since the early 1990s to raise funds and to hideout, according to an intelligence report obtained by the National Post.
The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has been waging a violent campaign for a homeland in Turkey, “now views Canada as a ’safe haven’ for PKK members who have overstayed their welcome in other countries,” says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service report.
“In Canada, the PKK began to form a notable presence in the early 1990s,” the report says. “The PKK’s development here has followed the pattern seen in Europe in the mid-1980s; the service believes the goal of the PKK in Canada is to gain control of the general Kurdish community for its own financial and strategic purpose.”
Intelligence officials say the PKK has tried to send senior members of its organization to Canada in the past few years in ”an attempt to vitalize the PKK in Canada.” But at least two of the attempts have been thwarted by Canada, which arrested the agents and initiated deportation proceedings against them.
The Israeli Involvement:
The wrath of the Kurds amid persistent accusations that Israel helped Turkey track down Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, whether true or not, is the price Israel has to pay for its blossoming defense alliance with Ankara, experts say.
Try as it might, Israel cannot shake loose the impression among the Kurds that it helped lead Turkish commandos in Kenya to their charismatic leader.
Ocalan himself said in a recent interview with the London-based Jane’s Defense Weekly that he believed the Mossad was tracking his movements on behalf of Turkish intelligence.
On October 13, OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Malka told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Ocalan had left his Syrian headquarters and had showed up in Russia.
Six days later, the Turkish prime minister announced this information, saying a “foreign security service” helped locate Ocalan. He did not name the country.
“It was clear from that moment the Kurds were looking at us differently,” said Alon Liel, a former top diplomat in Ankara and expert on Turkey.
“For months I have warned that the alliance with Turkey has presented Israel with red lines. We have married a bride with a problematic family. I am not against friendly relations with Turkey, but we have to know the problems it causes,” said Liel.
Four times at his press conference in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu denied that Israel helped in the capture of Ocalan. But this is not expected to change the impression among the Kurds that Israel’s defense establishment helped track down the PKK leader.
A Kurdish rebel leader told Israel Radio yesterday that the Mossad gave Turkey the information that helped its commandos locate and capture Ocalan, also known as “Apo.” Speaking before the assault on the Berlin consulate, the rebel leader said they have no intention of attacking Israeli targets.
Yet Ocalan’s PKK said the assault on Israel’s consulate in Berlin was the result of a “dirty war” conducted by Turkey and its ally Israel on the Kurds. “The incident in Berlin… is an example and result of this alliance founded on this dirty war,” PKK spokeswoman Mizgin Sen told the Belgium-based Kurdish Med TV channel.
The security agreement signed with Israel in 1996 provides for intelligence cooperation. Israel is also selling Turkey’s powerful armed forces materiel including night vision equipment as well as anti-rocket systems employed in helicopters.
Liel said that it was not difficult for the Kurdish rebels to see the “great romance” developing between Turkey and Israel, with such Israeli weapons and technology flowing to Turkey.
While not everything Turkey does or wants benefits Israel, the immediate payoff of the close ties has been lucrative defense contracts and, according to foreign reports, sharing of intelligence.
“There is no such thing as a free lunch,” said Prof. Efraim Inbar, head of the BESA strategic think tank at Bar-Ilan University. “We have to look at some alliances through their cost-benefits. The IAF is flying in Turkey and Turkish officials said that under certain circumstances we would be able to use their territory and that is of great deterrent value.
“We should not make enemies if it is not necessary, but on the other hand, what is at stake is a very important relationship. We should not be hysterical even if we have to pay a price,” Inbar said.
Turkish sources close to the defense establishment said there was satisfaction in Ankara over the firm Israeli response in Berlin. “The Kurds made a big mistake there. Let this be a good lesson for them,” one source in Ankara quoted Turkish defense sources as saying.
“The Turks are always thanking me. They are living on the image, much of which is supplied by the banner headlines of the Turkish press, that we are helping them greatly,” Liel said.
The U.S. Involvement:
The United States worked for four months to help Turkey arrest Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish rebel leader, U.S. officials said. U.S. diplomatic pressure backed by intelligence gathering helped to put Ocalan in flight from a safe haven in Syria, to persuade nation after nation to refuse him sanctuary and to drive him into an increasingly desperate search for a city of refuge, the officials said. “We as a government tried to figure out where he was, where he was going and how we might bring him to justice,” a senior administration official said.
Like Turkey, the U.S. government, whose involvement in Ocalan’s capture was reported on Friday by The Los Angeles Times, considers Ocalan a terrorist. He leads the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has waged a violent
campaign against Turkey for 15 years, seeking autonomy for the Kurdish people. Some 37,000 people have died in that fight. The United States has an increasingly close military and intelligence relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally that lets U.S. pilots fly missions against Iraq from a NATO base in Incirlik. That military post also serves as an electronic-eavesdropping station for U.S. intelligence to spy on Iraq.
The Trial of Abdullah Ocalan:
Ocalan has been held on a prison island off Istanbul since Turkish commandos seized him in Kenya on Monday. The Turkish government accuses him of running a terrorist campaign to win independence for Kurds in southeastern Turkey.
Turkey accuses Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), of launching a campaign for autonomy that has killed more than 30,000 people since 1984. His lawyer, Britta Boehler, said Dutch attorneys have not been allowed to travel to Turkey, and Turkish attorneys who tried to see Ocalan were arrested.
A Dutch attorney for Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan said her client will not get a fair trial in Turkey and none of his lawyers have been able to see him.
“None of the lawyers so far has been able to be in contact,” Boehler said. “He has been captured now since Tuesday, and there is no access for any legal defense so far.”
Boehler said a trial likely will start next week, and she believed the Turkish government would move swiftly to convict Ocalan.
“I do not believe that he will get a fair trial according to standards like in Europe or the U.S.,” Boehler said.
Since this was the case the European Union has called on Turkey to allow international observers to attend the trial of the Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has called on Turkey to give Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan a fair trial and grant defence lawyers full access to their client, an Ocalan lawyer said.
Britta Boehler, the Dutch-based lawyer that heads Ocalan’s international defence team, told Reuters the ruling came through to her Amsterdam office on Thursday evening. She expected the court to make an official announcement.
Boehler and her fellow defence lawyers petitioned the European Court last month to intervene in Ocalan’s case.
The defence team complained that Ocalan’s detention by Turkey violated the European convention on human rights. He was seized lasts month in Kenya, where he had been holed up at the Greek embassy, and flown to Turkey to face trial for treason. “Not only has the European Court said Turkey must guarantee a fair trial, it has also said that Ocalan’s lawyers, including his foreign lawyers, must be allowed unfettered access,” Boehler said.
She and her colleagues tried in vain to see Ocalan soon after his capture, but they were turned away by Turkish authorities at Istanbul airport “We will have to see whether Turkey will enforce the ruling. We might apply to Turkey officially to allow us to see Ocalan,” Boehler said.
Ocalan s attorneys have also urged the U.S. and other western countries to secure a fair trial for the PKK leader.
The trial of the PKK leader has been postponed numerous times. A Turkish prosecutor announced that the treason trial of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan would begin May 31, 1999 on a prison island in the Sea of Marmara.
At a special state security court, presiding Judge Turgut Okyay cited “security reasons” for holding the trial on treason and separatism charges in a specially built court on Imrali Island, where Ocalan has been in solitary confinement since Turkish commandos arrested him in Kenya in mid-February. Okyay said foreign observers would not be permitted to attend the trial and that it would “proceed without pause” until a verdict is reached.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Ocalan for founding and leading the Kurdish Workers’ Party, the separatist guerrilla group blamed for the deaths of thousands of Turkish security forces, state employees and Kurds allied with the government over the past 15 years. Turkey has not carried out a death penalty in more than a decade and the court’s decision for Ocalan’s second-in-command does not bode well for the PKK leader.
The top lieutenant to rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was sentenced to death May 20, 1999 for masterminding hundreds of deaths in Turkey in a bid to win autonomy for the Kurds. Therefore, it s highly likely that the PKK leader will receive an identical fate.