Turkish Hezbollah

Infobox militant organization
name=Turkish Hezbollah Hizbullahî Kurdî
logo=
caption=
dates=1980-present
leader=The current official leader is unknown. Hüseyin Velioğlu was one of the founders.
motives =
area = Cross section of (southeastern Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria)
ideology = Based on Political Islam of ethnic Kurds, which mainly opposed to revolutionary Marxism-Leninism ideology represented by PKK.
crimes =
attacks =
status = Designated as Terrorist Organization by the Republic of Turkey [ [http://www.egm.gov.tr/temuh/terorgrup1.html TÜRKİYE'DE HALEN FAALİYETLERİNE DEVAM EDEN BAŞLICA TERÖR ÖRGÜTLERİ] ]

Turkish Hezbollah (also Kurdish Hezbollah [ [http://www.economist.com/research/backgrounders/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7855127 The real challenge to secular Turkey] ] [ [http://www.meforum.org/article/57 Middle East Quarterly (Murder on the Bosporus)] ] from Kurdish: "Hizbullahî Kurdî", [ [http://www.turkishweekly.net/articles.php?id=180 Turkish Hizbullah or Kurdish Hizbullah] , "Turkish Weekly"] meaning "the faction of Allah") is a Kurdish [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/hizbullah-t.htm Turkish-Hizballah] ] [ [http://www.thenewanatolian.com/opinion-18265.html The revival of Kurdish Islamism] ] [ [http://web.archive.org/web/20060223172055/www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2002/html/19992.htm Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002 Report] ] Sunni Islamist militant organization, unrelated to the Shia Islamic Lebanese Hezbollah. [ [http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/467/re2.htm Tales from the crypt] ]

Turkish Hezbollah arose in the late 1980s and believed to be in response to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)'s activities against non-separatist Kurds in southeastern Turkey, where many have proposed that the group seeks to establish an independent state. [ [http://www.aksiyon.com.tr/detay.php?id=19475 Maskeli Hizbullah’ın hedefi cemaatler] ] [ [http://www.hagalil.com/antisemitismus/europa/istanbul.htm hagalil.com antisemitismus] ] The group has often targeted Kurdish civilians and it is believed and documented by several human rights activists that the group was actually founded by the Turkish Government to target the PKK and its sympathizers. [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hizbullah-t.htm]

History

Turkish/Kurdish Hezbollah first appeared in northeastern Turkey in the early 1990s and became a direct threat to the already rising Kurdish separatist movement. The Kurdish Islamist group (of Sunni thought) began as an oppositional force against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), though recently they have targeted both the PKK and the Turkish government. [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1226-03.htm Turkish sympathy for militants grows] , Common Dreams News Center]

Activities

Some of Hezbollah's major attacks allegedly include bombings of two synagogues in Istanbul on November 17, 2003, killing 23 and wounding over 300. [http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/kohlmann200311250844.asp Terrorized Turkey] by Evan Kohlmann] Earlier in the decade the group was involved in numerous small-scale shootings and suicide bombings in Turkey. In 2000 Turkish police "recovered nearly 70 bodies of Kurdish businessmen and journalists that (Kurdish) Hizballah had tortured and brutally murdered during the mid-to-late 1990s." The group expanded its target base beginning in the mid-1990s and modus operandi from killing PKK militants to conducting low-level bombings against liquor stores, bordellos, and other establishments that the organization considered "anti-Islamic." On January 17, 2000 Turkish security forces killed Hüseyin Velioğlu, the organization's leader, in a shootout at a safe house in Istanbul. The incident sparked a year-long series of counter-terrorist operations and the detention of 2,000 individuals, arresting several hundred on criminal charges Fact|date=August 2008. At the same time, police recovered nearly 70 bodies of Turkish and Kurdish businessmen and journalists that the group had tortured and brutally murdered during the mid-to-late 1990s Fact|date=August 2008.

It has been claimed, for instance by US analyst Evan Kohlmann, that the group began targeting official Turkish interests in January 2001 when its operatives allegedly assassinated the Diyarbakır police chief, Gaffar Okan, in the group’s would-be most sophisticated operation to date, killing him and five Turkish policemen. One Hizbullah member was given a life sentence, but no other suspects could be found, and the group itself did not claim the attack. However, years later, in the midst of the 2008 investigations concerning the nationalist Ergenekon network, a JITEM operative, Abdülkadir Aygan (member of an illegal intelligence gendarmerie unit) claimed that JITEM, not Hizbullah, had killed Okan. [http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=151356&bolum=100 Okkan assassination linked to JİTEM] , "Today's Zaman", 27 August 2008]

The group did not conduct a major operation in 2002.

Official support

Turkish politicians such as former President Süleyman Demirel, have sympathized with the Hezbollah's early aims, in what he and others claimed was to protect the people from the Marxist ideologies of the PKK. The 1993 report of Turkey's Parliamentary Investigation Commission referred to information that Hizbullah had a camp in the Batman region where they received political and military training and assistance from the security forces. [ [http://www.humanrights.is/the-human-rights-rpoject/humanrightscasesandmaterials/cases/regionalcases/europeancourtofhumanrights/nr/432 Akkoç v. Turkey, Application Nos. 22947/93, 22948/93, Judgement of 10 October 2000] , European Court of Human Rights judgment concerning Akkoç v. Turkey case, section II, C en icon]

Tansu Çiller, the former Prime Minister of Turkey and the leader of the True Path Party, admitted to supporting the Turkish Hezbollah by helping provide them with weapons through the Turkish state in 1994. [ [http://www.hri.org/news/turkey/anadolu/2000/00-02-11.anadolu.html Anadolu Agency: News in English] ] [ [http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav112003.shtml Car bombs Leave Dozens Dead and Hundreds Wounded in Istanbul] ] Çiller and the Turkish State's direct involvement in the Turkish Hezbollah is primary reason for many public allegations that the group was created and strengthened by the Turkish military in order to fight against the PKK. [ [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/pkk.htm Federation of American Scientists] ] However, once Hezbollah objectives conflicted with the Turkish state, the group was declared terrorist. [ [http://www.turkishweekly.net/articles.php?id=28 Turkish-Hizballah a Case Study of Radical Terrorism] ]

According to Evan Kohlmann writing for the US "National Review", in 1998 "Turkish authorities initiated a severe crackdown on Hezbollah's domestic activities, detaining 79 alleged members from both the "armed" and the "scientific" wings of the group. Guns seized during the raids were later matched with four unsolved murders that had occurred between 1993 and 1996 across the southeastern province of Diyarbakir. Other papers and documentation discovered by Turkish security officials enabled them to identify approximately 1,000 additional party supporters and activists." But this does not seem to have diminished the groups activities.

Human Resources

Information provided by the Intelligence Resource Program of the Federation of American Scientists based on the 2002 Patterns of Global Terrorism report suggests that the organisation possibly has a few hundred members and several thousand supporters.

According to a study carried out by the Counter-Terrorism and Operations Department of Directorate General for Security over a sample of files about people convicted of being a terrorist under Turkish laws including 200 militants from Hezbollah and the four other currently active Islamic organisations (see footnote 11) 2,5 & of the member are aged 10 to 14, 72,5 % 15 to 24, 17 % 25 to 29, 6 % 30 to 34 and 2 % 35 to 64. University graduates make up 22,5 % of the members, high school graduates 40 %, secondary school graduates 14 %, primary school graduates 19 %, literate non-graduates % 2,5 and illiterates 1,5 %. [cite news|url=http://zaman.com.tr/haber.do?haberno=628867
accessdate=2008-09-13
title=Polisten terörist profili: Yaşları ve eğitim ortalamaları düşük
work=Zaman
date=2007-12-25
language=Turkish]

ee also

*Islamic terrorism
*Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front
*List of designated terrorist organizations
*List of illegal political parties in Turkey

References

External links

*Levitsky, Olga, " [http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1928 In the Spotlight: Turkish Hezbollah] ". Terrorism. Center for Defense Information. December 10 2003.