Turkish report: Officials ordered bombings, killings

[english at ozgurlluk.xs4all.nl]

Jan. 29 1998

Turkish report: Officials ordered bombings, killings 

   ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkish officials spent vast sums on assassins and were
involved in murders, kidnappings and bombings -- many targeting Kurds --
according to a report released yesterday that confirms years of accusations by human
rights groups.

Security officials ordered the killings of prominent Kurds and allowed police officers
to carry out summary executions, the report said. The government also was behind
the bombing of the Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem in 1994 and the killing that
year of a Kurdish businessman who helped finance it, the document said.

The report, parts of which were leaked last week, focused on incidents from 1993 to
1996, under the government of former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller. She and Turkey's
current prime minister, Mesut Yilmaz, who commissioned the report, are old
political enemies.

The 120-page report was published yesterday in Turkish newspapers, minus 11 pages
withheld for security reasons. Even though it said that hitmen were on the
government payroll long before 1993, it implied that Ciller was responsible for the
abuses.

Ciller has responded by calling the report a "children's storybook," and has said she
would stand by the "heroic sons of this country who fought with their lives for the
unity of the nation."

According to the report, Turkey spent $50 million on assassins. The report identified
30 people killed by security forces and concluded that government agents had carried
out many of Turkey's 14,000 "unsolved" murders, particularly those of suspected
Kurdish rebels and businessmen who allegedly helped the rebels. "We have been
saying all along that the state was involved in political murders," Jonathan Sugden of
Amnesty International said in a telephone interview from London. "They were
routinely denying all of this. Now they have acknowledged them all

-- 
Press Agency Ozgurluk
For justice, democracy and human rights in Turkey and Kurdistan!
Website: http://www.ozgurluk.org         
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