ATTACK ON ARARAT
Andrea Brandt, Conny Neumann, Marcel Rosenbach, Daniel Steinvorth
Der Spiegel
July 13 2008
Germany
For months Americans and Germans have, largely unnoticed, been taking
action against Kurdish activists. Thus, Kurdish organizations were
threatening "consequences" even before the kidnapping of three mountain
climbers. Is Germany again becoming a front in the Kurdish conflict?
It was just two words. No more. Sometimes they drove hundreds into
German streets and squares, sometimes thousands. Last December
in Duesseldorf it was even more than 10,000 people who gathered
under the slogan "Edi bese!" Many had it on banners, some even
had it written on their foreheads. Again and again, everywhere:
"Edi bese! Edi bese! Edi bese!" You might have noticed the Kurdish
demonstrators if they had called out their slogan in German. "That’s
enough!" But it is not likely.
The Kurds are an ignored minority; 500,000 live in Germany; it is
the largest diaspora group of this scattered people, which has been
fighting for an independent nation for decades now. As recently as 10
years ago they managed to get into the news, with autobahn blockades,
hunger strikes and self-immolations.
But since Turkish intelligence agents in February 1999 in Nairobi got
hold of the most famous Kurd with the help of the CIA, it has become
quieter around the Kurds in Germany. Since then Abdullah Ocalan, the
founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, has been in solitary
confinement on the Turkish prison island of Imrali in the Sea of
Marmara. No one talks about him any more, and nobody talks about the
Kurdish conflict. At least in Germany.
That is now over. Last Tuesday evening [ 8 July] around 2200 hours five
armed men appeared at a desolate camp on Mount Ararat They presented
themselves almost politely to a group of German Alpine climbers,
who were going to climb the summit of the legendary mountain here,
in the extreme east of Turkey.
Then one of the men, reported those who escaped, gave a speech in
broken English about the situation of the Kurdish people. After
that they disappeared into the dark with three hostages – with the
recommendation to those who remained behind that they should not move
from the spot until next morning.
Since then the Kurds have once again dominated the news, and since
then the experts remember that the Kurds in Germany have again been
ranting "Edi bese!" "That’s enough!"
The three sportsmen from Bavaria had unknowingly gotten caught
in the wheels of global politics. No one knew where they had
been abducted. In Berlin the Foreign Ministry crisis staff met
with professional routine. There have been plenty of kidnappings
recently. In Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Iraq and most recently on
the Somali coast. But so far the kidnapping experts at the Foreign
Ministry had not had to deal with the Kurds.
The hostage-takers were heard from the first time last Thursday. The
news from the "Popular Defence Forces" (HPG), the military arm of the
PKK who claim the credit, read like a battle cry. As long as Germany
dos not stop the "hostile policy against the Kurdish people and the
PKK" the tourists from Bavaria will not be released, the news agency
Firat, which is close to the PKK, announced.
The Federal Republic will not let itself be blackmailed, Foreign
Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Wolfgang Schaeuble, his colleague
from the Interior Ministry, immediately said in a statement. But the
public declarations can not hide that the PKK has suddenly regained
what they so dreadfully missed over the last few years: international
attention. The militant Kurdish organization, which has been banned
in Germany since 1993, seemed weakened and facing its demise, but
now it has once again forcefully moved into the foreground.
The security authorities know what that can mean. The kidnapping
changes, possibly dramatically, the security situation in Germany. The
country could once again become a secondary theatre of war for the
Kurdish conflict. Not a pleasant thought since in addition to the
largest foreign Kurdish diaspora Germany is also home to by far the
largest foreign Turkish community. Up to now there has also been
constant friction between representatives of the two population groups.
In this context Germans only have little influence over how things
continue to develop. Because the grand strategists of this game are
not in Berlin but in Washington and Ankara. The three harmless mountain
climbers from Bavaria had the misfortune of innocently happening upon
the board in this game. [passage omitted]
Germany is traditionally one of the most important retreat and
recruitment areas for the PKK, although it and its subsidiary and
partial organizations were banned as early as 1993 by then CDU
[Christian Democratic Union] Interior Minister Manfred Kanther.
Last year the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
[BfV] made the diagnosis that the PKK continues to have an "illegal
and conspiratorial body of functionaries" in Germany. The German
bases also play a central role for the funding of the "people’s
liberation fighters." Activists closely tied to the PKK still
regularly and sometimes quite roughly collect their so-called tax from
Kurdish-speaking people as a contribution to the armed "liberation
struggle." German security authorities estimate that year after year
about 10 million euros flow from Germany to the Kurdish guerrillas.
The Turks have long been upset about this. When Erdogan, together with
the chancellor, opened the Hanover Fair in April 2007, the PKK was
also mentioned, just as during the Federal Interior Minister’s trip
to Turkey this February. At that time Schaeuble assured his Interior
Ministry colleagues that increased action would be taken against the
conspiratorial PKK structures.
The announcements were not the end of it. On 7 May at 0600 hours,
on the orders of the Federal Interior Ministry, officials from the
National Security Division of the Wuppertal Police took up positions
in front of a house with pale yellow brick in Uellendahl Street
in Wuppertal. A large contingent of as many as 10 investigators,
emergency policemen and various technicians were primarily interested
in the ground floor, storage spaces and an apartment in the house at
the back of the courtyard. The name on the brass-coloured nameplate
by the bell: Viko Fernsehproduktions GmbH.
The unprepossessing rooms housed backdrops, spotlights, makeup
booths and cameras. This is where the German branch of the Kurdish
satellite channel Roj TV was located. Since 2004 the station has been
broadcasting programmes in Kurdish as well as the Arabic and Turkish
languages. In addition to music and entertainment, clips from the
guerrilla war in the mountains are shown.
The importance of the channel to the Kurdish television community
scattered all over the world can hardly be overestimated. To it it
is something like a central organ. By now some consider the channel,
which operates with a Danish licence from Copenhagen and according to
its own information reaches about 18 million viewers internationally,
to be at least as identity-creating as the armed struggle of the PKK
guerrilla. The Erdogan government has long been urging the Danes to
withdraw the licence from Roj TV. So far without success.
In Germany, however, only six weeks after the house search in
Wuppertal, the Federal Interior Ministry issued a ban against Viko,
which supplied the channel with programmes such as the "Good Morning
Kurdistan" programme, and a broadcast ban on Roj TV. At the same time
the companies’ assets were confiscated.
The channel is aimed against "the idea of understanding between the
peoples," it says in the ruling; it glorifies the armed struggle
against Turkey, stirs up the personality cult around Abdullah Ocalan,
and indoctrinates its viewers in the spirit of the PKK ideology.
In Wuppertal there has been radio silence since the ban, the Office
for the Protection of the Constitution has sealed the doors. Roj TV
continues to broadcast from its studio in Brussels. Editor in chief
Sores Toprak denies the Interior Ministry’s accusations. "Of course
we don’t glorify armed operation, even if that is assumed about us,"
he says, "but there is war in Turkey, and we are conveying these
pictures."
For Monika Morres, manager of the Azadi Legal Aid Fund for Kurds in
Duesseldorf, who is close to the movement, the closing of Viko and
the German broadcast ban is a "temporary high point in the repression
against Kurds and Kurdish establishments" in Germany. In the past
months a number of raids have taken place against Kurdish organizations
in Bremen, Cologne, Koblenz, and Hanover. Also, suspected PKK cadres
have been arrested and charged. Her organization currently advises
nine imprisoned Kurds in Germany.
The pressure from the Americans, the Turkish bombings in the north
of Iraq, as well as the actions of the German security authorities
have brought the mood among German PKK supporters to the boiling
point. For months agents of the Office for the Protection of the
Constitution have registered a seething, a swelling of the "Edi
bese!" mood. Only a week before the Bavarian Ararat travel group
boarded the plane to Istanbul in Munich, the leading Kurdish cadre
from the United Communities of Kurdistan had openly threatened Germany.
The "executive council," in Ocalan’s absence something like the
second highest level in the Kurdish struggle, had largely unnoticed
at the end of June given the "Merkel government" an ultimatum to
dispense with its "hostile policy against the Kurdish people and its
liberation movement."
The German Government has "completely identified with the Turkish
Government’s policy of annihilation and denial." It is the Western
forces, "primarily Germany," which are seriously blocking a "peaceful,
democratic solution" of the Kurdish question. "We would already like
to establish that it is the German Government which is responsible
for all the resulting negative consequences of this policy."
The message to the chancellor probably came from the Kandil mountains
in northern Iraq, where Murat Karayilan, the head of the executive
council, in camouflage suit and over sweet tea once in a while
receives journalists for interviews. Today [the message] seems like
an announcement of the Kurdish commando raid on Ararat. As recently
as the turn of the year Karayilan proclaimed 2008 to be the "year of
resistance and rebellion."
In early July the Turkish police reported to the Federal Office of
Criminal Investigation [BKA] that there was more unrest in Kurdish
circles in Turkey. There might possibly be attacks and kidnappings. On
2 July the BKA thereupon sent telexes to the interior ministries of
the laender.
Information had been received, it said there, that in the future
attacks and kidnappings could not be ruled out in Turkey. The
foundation for these still vague warnings was the reports from
Turkey. Interior Undersecretary of State August Hanning also confirms
that there were indications from Turkey before the kidnapping: "We
may possibly also have to be prepared for a dangerous new situation
in the interior of the country."
In this heated atmosphere the Bavarian alpinists started out 10 days
ago to climb the holy mountain of the Armenians. The trip with the
Munich tour organizer seb-tours cost about 1,700 euros and was to
last 11 days.
German authorities found out directly from the place of the incident
that something had gone seriously wrong on the tour. One of the
mountain climbers is a detective, who raised the alarm with her
Bavarian colleagues by cell phone.
As late as late Friday evening the Federal Government’s crisis staff
had been unable to make direct contact with the hostage-takers. The
Office of the Federal Prosecutor opened investigations of
hostage-taking and attempted coercion, the Federal Office of Criminal
Investigation sent a half-dozen specialists from the newly established
Berg Special Operations Organization to eastern Turkey. German security
experts continue to speculate about the hostage-takers’ motive. It is
perhaps a matter of a "desperate act." The PKK has been hard pressed
by the Turkish attacks and now wants to demonstrate its ability to
act and its threat potential, says one BfV official.
The Germans are hoping that the Turks will stay patient. In a crisis
telephone call the Turkish interior minister assured his German
colleague Schaeuble that one will be cooperative in this delicate
situation.
Meanwhile, right after the kidnapping Ankara sent helicopter units
and paramilitary gendarmes to the region and closed off large portions
of the area. On Friday there was fighting in the Sirnak province, in
which at least seven PKK fighters died. The kidnappers were promptly
heard from: such military actions endanger the lives of the hostages.