Europe clamps down on PKK guerrillas

trafficking in support of its war against Turkey spreads through the

Continent

POLICE forces throughout the Continent are clamping down on the PKK

Kurdish guerrilla group who are trying to take their war against Turkey

on to the streets of Europe. Bonn last month banned the PKK and 35

affiliated organisations after growing evidence of their involvement in

armed attacks on Turkish targets in Germany, extortion and drug

smuggling. French police recently detained 110 Kurdish immigrants and

charged 24 of them with terrorist-related offences. Several of the

suspects in France have been accused of setting up bogus companies to

channel government loans to the PKK abroad.

There are signs that Britain is to follow Germany's lead. Prime

Minister John Major reportedly sent a message to his Turkish

counterpart, Tansu Ciller, on November 30 saying Britain would soon

declare the PKK an outlawed organisation. There are believed to be about

200 PKK members in the UK. A special Metropolitan police unit was set up

two months ago in Stoke Newington, the hub of the Turkish community in

Britain, to monitor an alleged PKK extortion racket. More than 30

Turkish businessmen and restaurant owners have complained of being

threatened with violence if they don't pay a Kurdish ''revolutionary

tax''. Seven arrests have been made so far.

A meeting of EU Justice and Interior Ministers in Brussels last week

was on the verge of imposing a Community-wide ban on the PKK but a

last-minute objection by Turkey's traditional antagonist, Greece, halted

the decision.

The last straw for Germany came in November with the arrest of a

suspected PKK member for the fire-bombing of a Turkish restaurant in

Wiesbaden in which one Turk died. The attack was originally thought to

be neo-Nazi inspired. Twice this year Kurdish militants have launched

simultaneous attacks on Turkish consulates, banks and airline offices in

more than a dozen German cities.

In June, protesters took Turkish consular staff in Munich hostage for

15 hours. The siege ended only through the intervention of a close aide

of Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Turkish banks in London and Copenhagen were

damaged by Kurdish demonstrators on the same day.

The PKK's role in smuggling heroin into Europe is coming to light

following a series of arrests in Germany and Turkey, where police claim

the PKK are responsible for producing and distributing 40% of Europe's

heroin. Turkish police sources say the PKK have recently moved further

into the British heroin market with the help of the large Turkish

Cypriot community in London. The guerrillas process raw opium in

Lebanon's lawless Bekaa Valley where they have their main training camp.

The refined heroin is shipped to Cyprus or Istanbul and then on to

Europe.

PKK bases on Turkey's border with Iran are an important stopover point

for Afghan and Pakistani heroin on its journey westwards. Corrupt local

Revolutionary Guards operating outwith the control of faraway Tehran

turn a blind eye to the guerrilla's cross-border raids in return for a

cut of the heroin dealings. The Iranian connection is believed to be

controlled by PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan's brother Osman.

PKK attacks on Western tourists in Turkey over the summer enlightened

European authorities to the fact that the group are not the romantic

khaki-clad freedom fighters they make themselves out to be. They

kidnapped 27 tourists, including four Britons, in Eastern Turkey and

wounded 13 foreigners in bombing attacks in the Mediterranean resort of

Antalya.

The PKK and its front organisations have been tolerated in Europe for

so long thanks to a well-meaning but often misguided sympathy towards

the Kurdish cause. Smoothly-run public relations and lobbying outfits

like the Kurd-Ha news agency in Dusseldorf and the Kurdistan Information

Centre in London do an excellent job of publicising Turkish human rights

abuses and army repression of the Kurds. But they are conspicuously

silent when the PKK murders Kurdish women and children, as is frequently

the case.

The PKK -- a Kurdish language acronym for the Kurdistan Workers' Party

-- should not be confused with the long-suffering Iraqi Kurds with whom

they are often on bad terms. The PKK's ideology is an incoherent mixture

of Maoism and nationalism topped off with a strong tinge of the

personality cult that has developed around leader Abdullah Ocalan. Apo,

as he is known to his followers, is famed for his fiery temper and

unwillingness to accept even minor criticism from within the Kurdish

movement. He is alleged to spend much of his time in the company of

adoring female teenage guerrillas and once compared himself favourable

to Christ in a magazine interview.

While the Iraqi Kurds are staunchly pro-Western, the PKK received

logistical and financial support from Syria, Iran and Iraq, who use the

guerrillas to de-stabilise democratic secular Turkey.

In sharp contrast to the European crackdown on the PKK, Syria last

month rejected the latest of many Turkish pleas to extradite Apo. The

Baath Party leadership denied ever harbouring the PKK leader despite

being presented with detailed evidence by the Turkish side, including

Apo's phone number and address in a Damascus suburb.