Mehmed Uzun Kurdish writer who campaigned for Turkey to lift its ban on his language and culture

From The Times
October 25, 2007
Mehmed Uzun
Kurdish writer who campaigned for Turkey to lift its ban on his language and culture
The writer and novelist Mehmed Uzun was one of the most influential figures in the struggle by the Kurds to maintain their culture and identity. One of the leading pioneers of modern Kurdish literature, he wrote a dozen novels in Kurdish and Turkish, the best known of which is In the Shadow of a Lost Love.
Uzun was born in Siverek, southeastern Turkey in 1953. During his childhood the use of Kurdish was forbidden, and last year he told an interviewer from the Milliyet newspaper how he was punished for speaking Kurdish in school: “I was slapped because I spoke Kurdish — I couldn't even speak Turkish.”
It was incidents such as this that helped to mould his opinions and eventually galvanised him to protest at the discrimination against the Kurdish population and to contribute, as a novelist and writer, towards the preservation of Kurdish culture.
In 1976, while he was the managing editor of a Turkish-Kurdish magazine, he was accused by the Government of “separatism”, arrested and jailed in Ankara for eight months. Even after his release, he was still threatened with indictment for his activities as a magazine editor, so in 1977 he fled Turkey and arrived in Sweden as a refugee.
In exile Uzun continued to write and publish Kurdish literature. He often travelled to the areas of northern Iraq held by Kurdish rebels to record poetry and stories. He learnt Arabic script so that he could read classical Kurdish poems from the 16th and 17th century. He also collected rare magazines published by Kurdish exiles in the 1920s and used this material in two books detailing the struggle of Kurds throughout the ages.
In To Create a Language Uzun dealt with the frustration of Kurds in Turkey at their inability to express their culture in their own language because of the ban imposed by the Turkish authorities. He also wrote about the trials of collecting oral literary traditions that were being systematically destroyed by the language restrictions.
In such works as Pomegranate Flowers and Introduction to Kurdish Literature Uzun described the history of novels written in Kurdish, the attempts to revive Kurdish and problems facing Kurdish literature. He further explored the tragedy of a people within a republic that was bent on erasing their identity in In the Shadow of a Lost Love, where he emphasises the sadness felt by intellectuals who have spent their lives pursuing freedom.
In 2000 Uzun was allowed to make a brief visit to Turkey. While there he gave a speech in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir in which he criticised the ban on Kurdish and called for Kurds to be educated in their own language. He was able to return to Sweden before charges were laid against him for instigating separatism. He was tried in absentia and eventually acquitted.
The campaign by Uzun and others for Kurdish rights in Turkey came to prominence in Europe when Turkey was applying for full membership of the European Union. Among the preconditions for any approval of Turkey's membership, the EU insisted that it must do more to improve the cultural rights of its Kurdish minority. In November 2002 the state broadcasting authority allowed state radio and television to air a limited number of programmes in Kurdish. This breakthrough owed much to Uzun's tireless campaigning efforts.
In 2005 Uzun returned to Turkey to live and in May 2006 he was found to have stomach cancer. He is survived by his wife, Zozan, and two children.
Mehmed Uzun, Kurdish writer and activist, was born in 1953. He died on October 10, 2007, aged 54

Energy - Analysis

Energy - Analysis

Analysis: Turkey-Iraq spat may hit energy
Published: 26, 2007 at 9:00 AM

By JOHN C.K. DALYUPI International CorrespondentWASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (UPI)

-- As Washington, Baghdad and Ankara intensively seek a last-minute diplomatic solution to Turkey's intention to invade Iraqi Kurdistan to deal a decisive blow to Kurdistan Workers Party guerrillas, the ominous consequences of an invasion are becoming clearer.While a Turkish military operation carries the possibility of inflaming the one remaining area of Iraq relatively free of insurgent operations against coalition forces, the destabilization produced by an attack could quickly spread far beyond northern Iraq to engulf eastern Turkey's regions, which have a significant Kurdish population, and threaten not only Iraqi oil exports but a significant portion of Caspian production as well -- both the Kirkuk-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipelines terminate at the same Turkish Mediterranean port.There are already clear indications that PKK militants are considering attacking energy assets if a Turkish military offensive is directed against them. In seeking to avert a Turkish military assault, the PKK's Abd-al-Rahman Chadarchi told Al-Sharq al-Awsat in a telephone interview that in such an instance his group would assault oil targets "since they bring huge amounts of money to Turkey.""The military regime in the country will use this (energy revenues) to develop its war machine to utilize it against the Kurdish people in Turkish Kurdistan," he told the paper.On Oct. 20, Kurdish Roj TV carried an interview with PKK Executive Council Chairman Murat Karayilan in which he said: "If you want to prevent an attack by an opposing force, the first thing to do is weaken that force's resources. It is highly likely that the guerrillas will attack the oil pipelines transiting Kurdistan because they provide the economic funding for the Turkish army's aggression."With oil prices hovering around $90 a barrel, the consequences of such a clash on the global economy are ominous and nowhere is this better understood than in Ankara -- Turkey imports around 90 percent of its energy needs. Furthermore, Turkey in the past has taken massive financial losses from a cessation in the flow of Iraqi oil to Botas' Ceyhan terminal. During eight years of U.N.-imposed sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Turkey estimated that it lost $80 billion in transit revenues from Iraqi oil exports to Ceyhan and other trade with Iraq.Since the U.S. military operation in 2004 that toppled Saddam, Iraqi oil exports have resumed to Ceyhan, but the port's importance increased dramatically when in May 2005 the $3.6 billion, 1,092-mile-long Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline began operations, carrying Azeri crude from the Caspian. Security was a key consideration in the BTC's design and the pipeline was buried to help thwart possible attacks. While the pipeline is secured from immediate attack, its eight pumping stations (two in Azerbaijan, two in Georgia and four in Turkey) are above ground, as are their electrical power grids, presenting "softer" targets. More than half the pipeline's length traverses 669 miles of Turkish territory, nearly all of which contains significant Kurdish populations, as does the route of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.Turkey expects to earn about $300 million annually in transit fees from BTC. Ceyhan is one of the largest oil facilities in the Mediterranean, containing seven storage tanks, a jetty capable of loading two Very Large Crude Carrier tankers of up to 300,000 DWT tonnage and metering facilities. Ceyhan figures prominently in Turkey's ambitions to turn the country into a major energy transit hub, as the projected Trans-Anatolian Pipeline running from Samsun, which would carry Russian and Caspian oil while relieving tanker pressure on the Turkish Straits, is also planned to terminate there.According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Iraq produces about between 1.6 million and 2.1 million barrels per day of crude oil, of which roughly 100,000 bpd are exported via the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline. But growing insurgent attacks against the pipeline render consistent exports problematic at best. In a worst-case scenario, if Kurdish militants expanded their attacks beyond the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline and raided the BTC in Kurdish regions inside Turkey, the economic losses could quickly spike oil to well over $100 a barrel as the world struggled to cope with the loss of up to 1 million bpd production.Besides Baghdad, Washington and Ankara, NATO is also paying close attention to the PKK issue. On Wednesday in Noordwijk, Turkish National Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul, during an informal meeting of NATO defense ministers, briefed his colleagues about the latest PKK attacks in Turkey as well as the motion adopted by Turkish Parliament authorizing military action.The Azeri, Georgian and Turkish governments may not have to go it alone in providing BTC protection, as NATO is already considering the issue of BTC pipeline security. Speaking after a recent NATO summit in Riga, Robert Simmons, the NATO secretary general's special representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, said the issue of protecting energy infrastructure belonging both to NATO members and their partners was on the agenda. Given the rising level of tension over PKK activities, the global energy community can only hope that it is not a case of too little, too late.

Independent on Turkey's Crisis

Kurdish fighters defy the world from mountain fortress as bombing begins
By Patrick Cockburn in the Qandil mountains, Iraq
Published: 25 October 2007
Turkey used its helicopters and artillery to attack Kurdish guerrillas inside northern Iraq yesterday as the Turkish army massed just north of the border. The helicopter gunships penetrated three miles into Iraqi territory and warplanes targeted mountain paths used by rebels entering Turkey.
Guerrilla commanders of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were defiant in the face of an impending invasion. In an interview high in the Qandil mountains, Bozan Tekin, a PKK leader, said: "Even Alexander the Great couldn't bring this region under his rule." The PKK has its headquarters in the Qandil mountains, one of the world's great natural fortresses in the east of Iraqi Kurdistan, stretching south from the south-east tip of Turkey along the Iranian border. If Turkey, or anybody else, is to try to drive the PKK out of northern Iraq they would have to capture this bastion and it is unlikely they will succeed.
Despite threats of action by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, the PKK leaders give no sense of feeling that their enemies were closing in.
For a guerrilla movement awaiting assault, the PKK's leaders are surprisingly easy to find. We drove east from Arbil for two-and-a-half hours and hired a four-wheel drive car in the village of Sangassar. Iraqi police wearing camouflage uniform were at work building a new outpost out of cement blocks beside the road leading into the mountains but only took our names.
In fact the four-wheel drive was hardly necessary because there is a military road constructed by Saddam Hussein's army in the 1980s which zig-zags along the side of a steep valley until it reaches the first PKK checkpoint. The PKK soldiers with Kalashnikovs and two grenades pinned to the front of their uniform were relaxed and efficient. In case anybody should have any doubt about who was in control there was an enormous picture of the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan picked out in yellow, black, white and red painted stones on a hill half a mile away and visible over a wide area.
There were no sign that threats from Mr Maliki in Baghdad or from the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, were having an effect. The PKK soldiers at a small guest house had not been expecting us but promptly got in touch with their local headquarters.
For all its nonchalance the PKK is facing a formidable array of enemies. The Iraqi government in Baghdad has no direct influence over the Kurdistan Regional Government, led by President Massoud Barzani whose administration is made up of his own Kurdistan Democratic Party and President Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. This is the only force capable of trying to eject the 3,000 PKK fighters.
So far the KRG shows no sign of doing so. One reason is that, paradoxically, the Turkish government will not talk to the KRG although it is the only Iraqi institution that might help it – Ankara is fearful of the growing strength of the KRG as a quasi-independent state on its borders.
So far the PKK is benefiting substantially from the crisis which started this summer when it began to make more attacks within Turkey. Instead of being politically marginalised in its hidden valleys, it is suddenly at the centre of international attention. This will help it try to rebuild its battered political base within Turkey where it suffered defeat in the 1990s and where its leader Abdullah Ocalan has been imprisoned since 1999.
Asked if the Turkish forces could inflict damage on the PKK, one of its fighters, called Intikam, said: "Three out of five of our fighters are hiding in the mountains in Turkey and, if the Turkish army cannot find them there, it will hardly find them in Iraq."
Bozan Tekin and Mizgin Amed, a woman who is also a member of the leadership, hotly deny they are "terrorists" and ask plaintively why there is not more attention given to Kurds who have been killed by the Turkish army. They add that they have been observing a ceasefire since since 1 October 2006 and fight in retaliation for Turkish attacks.
"Since then the Turks have launched 485 attacks on us," says Bozan Tekin. "Even an animal – any living thing – will fight when it feels it is in a dangerous situation," said Mizgin Amed. Both the PKK leaders were chary of giving details of last Sunday's ambush in which at least 16 Turkish soldiers were killed and eight captured. This is because the ambush is a little difficult to square with their defensive posture. But Bozan Tekin said that in reality "35 Turkish soldiers were killed and only three PKK fighters were lightly wounded. We did not lose anyone dead." He claimed that an attack on a minibus, which Turkey blamed on the PKK, was in fact carried out by Turkish soldiers on a Kurdish wedding party.
Overall, although it does not say so openly, the PKK would welcome a Turkish military invasion of northern Iraq because it would embroil Turkey with the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi army. It would also pose almost no threat to the PKK.

Turkey's Identity Crisis

Turkey's identity crisis
Domestic conflicts are steering the country toward a battle with Iraq’s Kurds. The fallout could hurt not only Ankara and the United States, but the entire region.

By Ralph Peters

The eastern quarter of Turkey isn't Turkish. It's inhabited by Kurds, the descendents of tribesmen whom the Greek soldier and author Xenophon encountered in those mountains 2,500 years ago — more than a thousand years before the first Turk arrived.
If a referendum on independence were held today, Turkey's Kurds, who make up about 20% of its 73 million people, would vote overwhelmingly to secede from the shrunken empire Ankara inherited from the Ottomans. That's part of what Turkish saber-rattling on the border with northern Iraq is about — the fear that even an autonomous Kurdistan-in-Iraq threatens Turkey's territorial integrity because the region's Kurds might view it as the core of a Kurdish state.

For its part, Washington fears a Turkish-Kurdish conflict that would further destabilize the entire region — just when Iraq shows glimmers of hope.
No regional government ruling over a Kurdish minority has ever allowed an honest head count, but estimates give the Kurds a population of 27 million to 36 million, spread across portions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus. Up to 14 million of these people without a state reside in Turkey.
In addition to its determination to preserve its eastern frontier, Turkey faces internal political challenges that propel the huge Turkish military — with more than 500,000 active-duty troops — toward an intervention in northern Iraq.
The immediate justification for a parliament-authorized move across the border is Turkey's allegation that the PKK (The Kurdistan Workers' Party), a Marxist organization that has employed terror, continues to attack soldiers and civilians inside Turkey. The remnants of the defeated PKK, a few thousand men and their families, have taken refuge in Iraq. Turkey claims it wants them handed over — knowing such a course is politically impossible for any Kurdish leader.
PKK a weak threat
Ankara's allegations suffer under scrutiny. One need have no sympathy for the PKK to recognize that the organization has been shattered by Turkey's anti-terror campaign. Its aging members encamped in Iraq have begged asylum from their fellow Kurds (who find them an embarrassment). With pressure from all sides for Iraq's Kurdish officials to "do something" about the rump PKK, the last thing most of its members intend is to give the Turks an excuse to cross the border.
Why attack now?
Because Turkey's generals are desperate to revitalize their image at home. Humiliated by the repeated electoral successes of Turkey's Islamist party the AKP, the army, which views itself as the defender of the secular state, has seen its stock decline in the political marketplace.
In the past, the Turkish military would have staged a coup. That remains a longer-term possibility, but there's now a sense that popular support for military rule would not be as strong as in the past, when Turkey's economy was moribund and terrorism haunted the streets of Istanbul. The military has been a victim of Turkey's success.
The generals view a foray into Iraq as a double win — a body blow to Kurdish aspirations and a chance to rally Turks around the flag. Though an invasion would anger the United States, Ankara feels it has Washington over a barrel, given the United States' need for access to Incirlik Air Base and the criticality of Turkish supply routes and airspace to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
As for Europe's reaction, the Turks believe it would amount to no more than a few white papers filed away in Brussels.
Over the years, I've personally found Turkish generals and diplomats irrational on two subjects: The Armenian genocide (as we saw again in the recent fuss about the House resolution) and the rights of Kurds anywhere to enjoy independence. These topics invariably ignite fiery lectures from Turkish officialdom: The mouths are open, but the ears are shut.
Turks face embarrassment
Yet, a potential problem that the Turkish military does not appear to have grasped is that a move into northern Iraq might not go as smoothly as the generals intend. Well-armed and determined, Iraq's Kurds would resist any major invasion, and the mountainous region is ideal for defensive fighting. For all the on-paper strength of the Turkish military, it could suffer a significant embarrassment in Iraq.
A military disappointment — it needn't be a debacle — in Iraqi Kurdistan would profoundly alter Turkey's internal balance of power. The army has thrived on the perception of its invincibility. A botched cross-border move would damage its all important image, further empowering the political Islamists, who've already subverted many of the laws and values the military inherited from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the father of modern Turkey).
Success would fail
On the other hand, should a Turkish military operation succeed, it could excite a land-grab mentality that could draw in Iran, further destabilizing the region. And a Turkish attack on Iraqi Kurdistan — a remarkably successful experiment in self-government — would incite waves of anti-Turkish terrorism, rather than reduce the terrorist threat.
For their parts, Iraq's Kurdish leaders seek to build good relations with Ankara, by policing the PKK and granting concessionary terms to Turkish businessmen in the hope that shared profits will reveal shared interests. Nobody — not the PKK, other Kurds, the Iraqi government or the United States — wants to see a Turkish military adventure.
In the end, such an invasion wouldn't really be about the future of the PKK — which has none — but the future of Turkey. Ankara's military, pledged to defend the state that Ataturk built from the Ottoman ruins, could thoughtlessly hasten its deterioration and decline.
Ralph Peters is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors and the author of the recent book Wars of Blood and Faith

In memory of the Kurdish writer Mehmed Uzun

EUTCC
11 October 2007
Press Release: For immediate release
In memory of the Kurdish writer Mehmed Uzun
1953-2007
EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) has received the sad message that the dear, prominent and internationally recognised Kurdish writer has died today in Diyarbakir.
Mehmet Uzun was born in 1953 in Siverek in North Kurdistan (Turkey). In 1972, at the age of 17, Uzun was arrested and taken to the military prison in Diyarbakir, Released pending trail; he fled to Syria. He stayed in Damascus for a year, before travelling on to Sweden where he acquired refugee status in 1977. Mehmet Uzun worked to create a modern literary structure for Kurdish.
Mehmet Uzun has been a long-time member of the Swedish Writers Union’s executive board. He participated actively in the Swedish Pen Club and the International Pen Club. He was a member of the advisory council of the International Writers’ Parliament. Mehmet Uzun has written seven novels in Kurdish which have been translated into many languages.
In January 2000, Uzun was allowed to visit Turkey after 23 year of exile. More than six thousand people greeted him in Diyarbakir. Over the years his work has faced censorship and restrictions in Turkey, but has been internationally recognised and translated into more than 20 languages.
In 2001, he received the Thought and Expression Freedom Award from the Turkish Publishers’ Union, the Literature Prize from the Berlin Kurdish Institute because of his contributions to the art of the novel and the Torgny Segerstedt Freedom of the Pen Award which is one of the most important Scandinavian awards. In 2002 he received the Stina-Erik Lundberg prize from the Swedish Academy because of his valuable contributions to Swedish cultural life.
In 2005 Mehmet received the message that he suffered from cancer. Not long after he took the existential decision to return to his homeland.
Receiving the sad message about his death the chair of the EUTCC Kariane Westrheim stated:
“Mehmet Uzun was a good friend and supporter of the EUTCC. He was one of the key speakers at the Second International Conference in 2005, just before he became ill. He was patron to the conference in 2006 along with Archbishop Desmund Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador Bianca Jagger, Nobel Literature Prize Laureate Harold Pinter and writer Noam Chomsky. Mehmet Uzun was a wonderful person and a good dialogue partner. His tireless work for the Kurds will live forever and stand as a monument of his memory.”
Until his very last moments he worked on an important text on the German Jew Erich Auerbach, who was exiled in Turkey. Mehmet Uzuns fragmented scripts on Auerbach's book "Mimesis" present to the world an most important reflection on modern literature theory. Kariane Westrheim
EU Turkey Civic Commission
EU Turkey Civic Commission (www.eutcc.org)
Tel: +45 97642088 Kariane.westrheim@gmail.com
Hege Ekeland

40 years after Che's death,his image is a battleground

Iternational Herald Tribune
40 years after Che's death, his image is a battleground
By Marc Lacey
Monday, October 8, 2007

SANTA CLARA, Cuba: Aledia Guevara March, the 46-year-old daughter of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, says she can bear the Che T-shirts, the Che key chains, the Che postcards and Che paintings sold all over Cuba, not to mention the world.
At least some of the purchasers truly cherish Che, she says. On Monday she was surrounded by thousands of Che fans wearing his image here in Santa Clara, where her father's remains are kept, and where she sat in the front row of a ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of his death.
Acting President Raúl Castro attended. A message was read from his older brother Fidel, who ceded power in August 2006 after emergency surgery, likening his former comrade in arms to "a flower that was plucked from his stem prematurely." But amid all the ceremony, what really gets to Guevara is the use of the man she calls "Poppy" in ways that she says are completely removed from his revolutionary ideals, like when a designer recently put Che on a bikini.
In fact, 40 years after his death Che is as much a marketing tool as an international revolutionary icon. Which raises the question of what exactly does the sheer proliferation of his image - the distant gaze, the scraggly beard and the beret adorned with a star - mean in a decidedly capitalist world? Even in Cuba, one of the world's last communist bastions, Che is used to make both a buck and a point. "He sells," said a Cuban shop clerk, who had Che after Che starring down from a wall full of T-shirts.
But at least here he is also used to inspire the next generation of Cubans, brought up in classes dealing with everything from medicine to economics to political science. Schoolchildren invoke his name every morning, declaring with a salute, "We want to be like Che." His quotations are recited almost as often as those of his revolutionary comrade in arms, Fidel Castro.
"Che is part of all our thinking," said Juan Vela Valdés, the Cuban minister of higher education, who introduced a concentration in Che while he was rector at the University of Havana.
A movie showed at Santa Clara University on the eve of Monday's ceremony went so far as to compare Che to Jesus, both in appearance and in ideals.
But Che's mythic status as a homegrown revolutionary does not extend everywhere, even if his image does. When Target stores in the United States put his image on a CD carrying case last year, critics who consider him a murderer and symbol of totalitarianism pressured the retailer to pull the item.
"What next? Hitler backpacks? Pol Pot cookware? Pinochet pantyhose?" Investor's Business Daily said in an editorial, calling the use of the image an example of "tyrant-chic." The famous image, by a Cuban photographer Alberto Korda Díaz, was taken at a March 5, 1960, funeral rally in which dozens of Cubans were killed in a boat explosion that Cuban blamed on the United States. The picture became famous after appearing in Paris Match magazine in 1967, just weeks before Che was killed by soldiers in Bolivia, apparently aided by the CIA.
Korda, who died in 2001 at age 72, never received royalties, but he did sue a British advertising agency over the use of the photo in a campaign for vodka. He won $50,000, which he donated for medicine for children.
Aledia Guevara March and her family, too, have attempted to stop the marketing of Che's image in ways that they find abhorrent. She says they have reached out to lawyers in New York, whom she would not name, to pursue companies the family thinks is misusing the image, not to sue them for damages, but to ask them to stop.
"We're not after money," she said of the family's ongoing fight. "We just don't want him misused. He can be a universal person, but respect the image."
Some of Che's star power has rubbed off on his four surviving children, one of whom is named Ernesto Guevara and drove to Monday's memorial on a motorcycle, just like Dad. Cubans hug the Guevaras in the street, and tourists get giddy when they learn who they are.
"I have goose bumps," said Alfredo Moreno, 32, a Mexican who posed for a picture with Aledia Guevara March, clearly overcome with emotion. "I can't describe to you what this moment means to me."
As Moreno went on and on, Guevara told him to stop his fawning words.
"I'm a child of Che," she explained, "but I'm not Che." It can be hard to see her father's face in hers, mostly because Che's most recognizable feature was his scraggly beard. But she, although resembling more a Cuban soccer mom than a revolutionary, says her eyes and his are shaped the same and that her nose and mouth are similar as well.
Guevara, who was 6 when her father died, says she is used to the attention she gets. "I feel richer than the queen of England," she said of all the love.
It can be a weighty responsibility to carry Che's genetic material in one's blood. Guevara is a pediatrician. Her sister is a veterinarian who specializes in marine mammals. One brother manages a center devoted to Che in Havana. Then there is Ernesto, a Harley Davidson aficionado. All of them are called on by the Cuban government from time to time to help continue the legacy of Che.
One detects a bit of exhaustion in all this, particularly now, when Cuba and much of Latin America are holding events to honor his death and, next June, what would have been his 80th birthday.
"I can't be everywhere," Guevara said. "I can't multiply myself." Guevara travels the world speaking at conferences dealing with Che. At one in Italy, she learned after signing T-shirts for some young people that they were Fascists. "They knew nothing about him," she said with a sigh.
It was another meeting, though, that she found the most fascinating of all. She said she once bumped into John F. Kennedy Jr. in Europe and discussed with him the challenges of being the offspring of a famous man. She said he told her that having the same name as his father only increased the weight.
She called John Kennedy Jr. "a beautiful person" and said she was able to separate him from his father, who ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion to topple the government that Che had helped put in place in Cuba.
But bring up United States foreign policy and then the resemblance to her father really emerges. The fiery rhetoric flows when she discusses the war in Iraq. She calls the economic embargo of Cuba that has stretched on for 50 years "so brutal, so stupid, so irrational."
And don't even get her started about the Bush administration

HPG Statement

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

HPG STATEMENT ON BEYTÜŞŞEBAP MASSACRE
"There is no connection between the recent incident [in Beytüşşebap] and the guerrillas."~ HPG Headquarters Command.The Turkish Army Is Responsible for the Beytüşşebap MassacreTo the Press and Public:On the day before yesterday, in the district of Beytüşşebap, province of Şırnak, twelve persons, including seven Village Guards, died by the strafing of a minibus. For notice, those responsible are the Turkish army and the illegal military organization, JİTEM.Our freedom movement proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire one year ago on 1 October 2006. The Turkish military increased the intensity of its attacks for this proclamation and used all conceivable dirty methods of warfare.Within this year, the Turkish army carried out 483 military operations. Chemical weapons and cluster bombs were used, as well as the systematic burning of forests. It came to war crimes before the eyes of the world public.This war concept, which was intensified after the elections of 22 July, is a result of an agreement between the government party AKP and the military. Previously, it was already announced by military circles that the "extermination of terror" is attainable at the earliest by aiming at the "collaborators". Thus almost the entire society was set as the target. For this reason, after that, the course of action which followed showed that this method was implemented.The dirty relations between institutions of the state, the army, and the government were uncovered by the the bomb attack on a bookshop in Şemdinli by the resident population. Those caught red-handed again implemented the network of gangs, JİTEM, informers, and the use of terror in Kurdistan, in order to intimidate the population. As strengthened Kontras were used in the form of Hizbullah in the mid-1990s, so today there are more organizations such as JİTEM and TİT.The purposes of this approach are to isolate the guerrillas and to damage the prestige of the PKK. In Beytüşşebap, Village Guards were deliberately selected as the target of attack in order to break the passivity of these circles and turn them against the Kurdish movement.In the consciousness of this reality, our HPG guerrillas put an emphasis on attacks against JİTEM in their latest actions. There is no connection between the recent incident [in Beytüşşebap] and the guerrillas. We call upon the public of Turkey to place no faith in this war propaganda which twists the facts. In addition, we continue to request the political parties, human rights associations, and democratic-civil-social organizations to examine the incident, and to find and to call to account its true authors.HPG Headquarters Command

PKK BLAMES RECENT MASSACRE ON THE TURKISH MILITARY

October 2, 2007
PKK blames recent massacre on the Turkish Military

Kurdishaspect.com - By Karwan Simek

This week, 12 people were confirmed dead in an attack on a mini-bus in Besagac village in the Sirnex (Sirnak) province in Kurdistan of Turkey. Turkish officials immediately blamed the massacre on Kurdish rebels. This week, the People's Armed Forces (HPG - armed wing of the PKK), issued a statement denying the allegations against them and said that the Turkish Gendarmeries Intelligence Service (JITEM) organized the massacre.

Those dead in the attack on Saturday included workers and village guards employed by the Turkish government to counter the PKK. PKK leaders
blamed the attacks on Turkish Intelligence claiming that such attacks are
made in an attempt to further try to de-legitimize the Kurdish struggle in the view of the International Community.

The PKK also touched on the fact that while they are trying to maintain a ceasefire, which went into effect in October of 2006, the Turkish military has launched 483 operations against them. The PKK claims these operations consist of the illegal use of chemical weapons and cluster bombs by the Turkish military.

Kurdish groups have blamed the Turkish military for black operations in the past where civilians were targeted and the blame was placed on Kurdish rebels. Some allegations against the Turkish military have been proven, including the Şemdinli bombing, where a attack on a bookstore left 2 dead and 15 wounded. Human Rights organizations have expressed concern over the lack of investigation in Turkey in such cases.

In 2006, Amnesty International issued a statement expressing concern over Turkey's lack of action against members of the security forces accused of human rights violations.