The PKK - Alternate Battleground

By Frank Hyland

While scattered clashes persist, the snows have come to the passes in the Qandil Mountains, effectively putting a stop to most, if not all activity by guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) attacking Turkey from Northern Iraq. This year, however, Turkish citizens should not feel as secure that the overall conflict has ebbed as usual simply because SE Turkey has “cooled off” militarily along with the air temperatures. It is in and around Turkey’s larger cities, including those to the west, that it is demonstrably easy for the PKK to continue to carry out attacks. Kurds now populate slum areas near virtually all of Turkey’s large cities in the west. My Jamestown Foundation colleague, Gareth Jenkins, pointed out in an October 10th article (www.jamestown.org) that bombings in Izmir and Istanbul on October 2nd and 7th appear to have been the work of the PKK. Placed in the context of approximately a dozen other such attacks since February 2006 known or suspected to have been conducted by the PKK, it is clear that two campaigns have been underway.
The weather-imposed restrictions on guerrilla operations in the Turkish-Iraqi border area, of course, do not hold in the case of the concurrent urban attacks. From an attack-management standpoint, the PKK leadership (as is the case with numerous other terrorist groups) has a number of options, both doctrinal and technological. Whether pinpointing specific targets or broader categories of targets, PKK cells can be given the autonomy to choose the timing, depending on local conditions. The presence of a Turkish regional or national leader at a pre-chosen target location, for example, would argue for conducting the attack on the same date. The wide availability of television and Internet access provides the PKK leadership with the means to choose both a target and a specific date and even time for an attack.
Alternatively, a “Go” order can be issued via cell phone. Readers will recall that just three months ago on the anniversary of 9/11, Turkish police authorities thwarted an attack in Ankara in which cell phones would have played a part. A van discovered in an Ankara parking lot and containing hundreds of pounds of explosives had cell phones wired to the device as remote-detonation “triggers.” One of the phones had been used previously to call the Southeastern Turkish city of Sirnak. The Sirnak phone, in turn, was known to have been in contact with one of the top leaders of the PKK, demonstrating that the “path” of the phone calls, reversed, could just as easily deliver the “Go” order.
As if another “spur” were needed for the PKK to carry out additional attacks, Andrew Cochran told you on this site on December 1st that Turkey and Germany had announced the extradition to Turkey of two PKK members wanted for attacks inside Turkey in the 1990s. The two, Mehmet Iltas and Mehmet Kizilay, are among approximately 175 PKK members being sought by Turkey. It is no stretch of the imagination to expect that a Turkish trial and its associated publicity, accessed via the Internet in Iraq’s Qandil Mountains, will be followed by at least one cell phone call to a major metropolitan area in Turkey.

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