THE most powerful Kurdish militant group has threatened to resume its war with Turkey, should Ankara’s Armed Forces enter northern Iraq.
“We will undertake military actions throughout Turkey, in the countryside and cities, on military, economic and bureaucratic targets,” said Othman Ocalan, 47, a commander of Kadek, the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress, formerly known as the PKK. A bear-like figure who said that he possessed nothing but the uniform in which he stood and a .38 Smith & Wesson seized from a dead Turkish commando officer, Mr Ocalan was speaking in his Qandil Mountain stronghold in Iraq. The younger brother of the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and a leading member of its Central Committee, Othman Ocalan withheld support of a US invasion of Iraq and rejected the proposed postwar disarmament of Kadek while the Kurdish issue remained unsolved. “Until the British and American policy on Kurdistan clears we won’t back them,” he said. “There will be no Kadek disarmament if the US demands it. In this instance we will resist them very strongly.” With some 10,000 fighters deployed inside Turkey, Iran and northern Iraq, Kadek also wields great power among the Kurdish diaspora in Europe, where it can put thousands of Kurdish activists and demonstrators on the streets. Full Story
