Recent PKK-Led Istanbul Riots Recall 2005 & 1995 Paris Riots

By Andrew Cochran

As Frank Hyland posted here yesterday, "Kurds now populate slum areas near virtually all of Turkey’s large cities in the west" and (quoting a Jamestown Foundation article) "bombings in Izmir and Istanbul on October 2nd and 7th appear to have been the work of the PKK." (UPDATE: A leading paper in Turkey also quoted Frank's post.) Frank reminded me today of the similarities between these riots in sections of Istanbul and the riots in the suburbs of Paris in 2005. At that time, Olivier Guitta wrote here and here and here on the Muslim composition of those suburbs and how French Islamists stood to gain from them. And I posted an excerpt from Lorenzo Vidino's book, "Al-Qaeda in Europe: The New Battleground of International Jihad," on the story of the 1995 race riots that plagued the French suburbs after the death of an Algerian-born terrorist.

Counterterrorism researcher Tim Thompson supplied two photos below of the riots by PKK supporters in Okmeydani, a working-class section of Istanbul. He told me of the atmosphere in another Istanbul suburb:

Bağcilar (Turkish for "orchard") is another Kurdish slum on the European side of Istanbul. It is located between the two ring roads that circle Istanbul... Bağcilar had the reputation as the center of black market activity in Istanbul, the "go to" spot for everything illegal. Need a PPK with a suppressor? Contact the PKK in Bağcilar. Same story with explosives. If it's in Turkey and it can go boom, it's for sale in Bağcilar.

A troubling set of similarities...

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