Bonni Network

Kurds hold anti-Turkey march through Brussels 13:15 Nov 03, 1996 EST

About 2,000 chanting demonstrators walked through the city centre, holding banners reading ``Against Fascists,'' ``Stop mass-murder in Kurdistan,'' and calling for a political solution to the Kurdish problem.

Over 20,000 people have been killed in a 12-year conflict in southeast Turkey where government forces are battling Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas fighting for autonomy or independence for the mainly Kurdish region.

One small group of marchers set fire to a Turkish flag, and police in riot gear were on hand. No major disturbances were reported.

``We protest against the violation of human rights in Kurdistan which has reached a critical point,'' Kemal Kara, an organiser of the demonstration, told Reuters.

Some PKK supporters were among the marchers.

Kara said the crowd was also showing support for the Kurdish-language satellite television station Med-TV, which Belgian authorities suspect of laundering money for the PKK. Med-TV, which has offices in Belgium, denies the allegations.

According to Amnesty International more than 1,000 civilians suspected of pro-PKK activities have been killed by security forces or death squads in the last five years.

Turkey faces 112 cases before the European human rights commission, including 61 applications from southeastern Turkey.

Last month the European Parliament voted to block $470 million in aid which had been earmarked to help Turkey set up a customs union with the EU, saying it was angered by Ankara's failure to keep promises to improve its rights performance.

But Amnesty International has also said the PKK killed at least 400 prisoners and civilians between 1993 and 1995. In recent weeks the separatists have launched a wave of suicide bomb attacks against police.

Turkey's Kurd rebels hit back in suicide bombings 09:55 Nov 03, 1996 EST

Analysts say a recent wave of suicide bombings show the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) believe they need more than just hit-and-run attacks to wear down NATO-member Turkey's influential military supported by a fervently nationalist public.

``They see they cannot advance in fighting on the battlefield,'' said Dogu Ergil, the author of an academic report on the Kurdish problem.

Rebel forces effectively controlled much of southeast Turkey in the early 1990s and PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan talked of declaring ``liberated zones.'' Pro-rebel protests were common.

But the military cracked down hard, hitting the rebels' logistical support in a campaign to evacuate Kurdish villages that has earned Turkey criticism abroad for human rights violations.

The guerrillas are now most effective in the remote province of Tunceli and in the sparsely populated mountains on the Iraqi border where rugged terrain gives them cover against troops backed by fighter-bombers and U.S.-made Cobra helicopters.

The Kurdish new year in March, a traditional time of nationalist protest, has been dampened since security forces killed dozens of demonstrators in the town of Cizre in 1992.

Young female rebels with explosives strapped to their bodies have killed themselves and eight others, mostly policemen, in suicide attacks outside Kurdish areas in the last 10 days. The first human bomb killed 10 soldiers in eastern Turkey in July.

``It's not just a new tactic, it's a new phase,'' said liberal columnist Mehmet Ali Birand. ``They are saying, 'We're still here. We've not gone away and we can hurt you','' he said.

The Turkish media rarely gives prominence to the fighting and relies mostly on dry military statements of rebel losses for its coverage.

Parliament, which threw out nearly 17 Kurdish nationalist MPs in 1994, has long left the Kurdish problem to the military to solve.

Civilian officials say the suicide bombings are a sign of PKK desperation but military officers on the ground warn against complacency. ``If you underestimate terrorism you will get burned by it,'' a general told Reuters in the southeast last week.

The guerrilla campaign has hit hard so far. More than 21,000 people have died in the conflict which costs Turkey a much-needed $8 billion a year.

Reports are growing of young conscripts returning from duty in the southeast with the ``Vietnam Syndrome'' of mental disorders caused by combat.

A 22-year-old former commando committed suicide last week in distress at the deaths of eight comrades from his unit killed by the rebels. Another member of the squad killed himself in Ankara two weeks ago.

But peace seems far off. A tentative mediation bid backed by Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan has melted away under pressure from the military and hardliners in parliament who oppose any negotiations with the rebels.

The PKK has toned down its aims since it took up arms in 1984 vowing to carve a Marxist-Leninist Kurdish state out of southeastern Turkey.

Analysts say rebels would now settle for autonomy or even just Kurdish cultural rights and Kurdish-language education.

Such aspirations are effectively barred by a political system which fears nothing more than the break-up of post-Ottoman Turkey.

The suicide bombings will cause security headaches in western Turkey and extend the military's lines but are likely to harden attitudes against the rebels, the analysts said.

``They will only open the way for the war mentality to dominate even more,'' said Islamist writer Ismail Nacar, who spearheaded a short-lived peace bid this summer