DATE=1/24/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=TURKEY / HIZBULLAH (L ONLY)
NUMBER=2-258379
BYLINE=AMBERIN ZAMAN
DATELINE=ANKARA
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Turkey's influential military is denying
allegations that it had links with an armed pro-
Islamic militant group. As Amberin Zaman reports from
Ankara, the group is said to have carried out the
murders of at least 33 people whose bodies were found
during the past week.
TEXT: Turkish police on Monday unearthed two more
bodies of people who were believed to have been
abducted, tortured, and slain by members of a shadowy
armed Islamic group known as Hizbullah. The bodies
were discovered in the southern cities of Adana and
Tarsus.
During the past week, Turkish police recovered the
rotting corpses of victims of the group in houses in
Istanbul, Ankara, and the central Anatolian city of
Konya.
Authorities say many of the bodies bore marks of
torture. Some had obviously been buried alive, their
hands and feet tied behind their back, their bodies
naked.
The victims included an Islamist feminist writer with
liberal views, Konca Kuris, who was reported missing
two years ago.
Hizbullah is believed to have been created in the mid
1980's at the height of an armed separatist Kurdish
rebellion waged by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers
Party known as the P-K-K.
Hizbullah declared war on the P-K-K because of its
(the P-K-K's) Marxist ideology, saying it wanted an
independent Kurdish state based on Islamic principle
for the country's estimated 12-million Kurds.
There have been widespread allegations in the
mainstream Turkish press that Hizbullah was encouraged
by, if not actually linked to, rogue elements within
the Turkish security apparatus who supported the
group's attacks against Kurdish nationalists. Those
allegations were forcefully rejected by the Turkish
military which called the charges "slander devoid of
sense or logic."
Turkish officials say Hizbullah is receiving arms and
training from neighboring Iran and could be
responsible for the murders of several leading Turkish
pro-secular academics and journalists in recent years.
The bodies uncovered over the past week, however, are
thought to belong mostly to Kurdish businessmen with
pro-Islamic leanings, who refused to pay protection
money to Hizbullah. (Signed)
NEB/AZ/JWH/KL
24-Jan-2000 14:03 PM EDT (24-Jan-2000 1903 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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