History, Security

Kurdish group reverts name to PKK

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I missed this story in 2005, but thought it was still worth mentioning as I just read some counter-terrorism information from the Turkish police accusing the PKK of changing their name in 2002 to avoid being listed as a terrorist group:

Turkey’s armed rebel Kurdish movement has decided to revert back to its original name of PKK after two name changes in three years, a pro-Kurdish news agency reported on Monday.

Note that the story does not mention “terrorism”, just rebellion, separatism, etc.

The PKK, founded by Ocalan in 1978, waged an armed campaign against the Ankara government from 1984 to 1999, which claimed some 37,000 lives in souutheastern Turkey.

The group, which describes itself as marxist-leninist, proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire in September 1999 after Ocalan was captured in Nairobi, tried and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life in jail.

It seems unusual to me that the Turkish special forces apparently “captured” Ocalan in the Greek embassy in Kenya. Probably some complex political science to that security affair.

Anyway, the US State Department seems to have felt that the name changes were enough of a threat to the “terrorist list” criteria that they had to issue a statement:

“A recent clash between PKK/KADEK forces and the Iraqi Border Police and U.S. forces, as well as the group’s recent attacks in Turkey, demonstrate its terrorist nature,” said State Department Deputy Spokesman J. Adam Ereli. “The PKK/KADEK, under any alias, is a terrorist organization, and no name change or press release can alter that fact.”

I am not so sure about that definition. A clash with US and Turkish forces may be a symptom of terrorism, but surely it is not sufficient on its own to demonstrate the “terrorist nature” of a group. In fact, if you consider Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d), as cited by the US Navy, you might find that the State Department could have brought forward a much more meaningful definition:

The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant (1) targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

[…]

(1) For purposes of this definition, the term “noncombatant” is interpreted to include, in addition to civilians, military personnel who at the time of the incident are unarmed and/or not on duty. For example, in past reports we have listed as terrorist incidents the murders of the following U.S. military personnel: Col. James Rowe, killed in Manila in April 1989; Capt. William Nordeen, U.S. defense attache killed in Athens in June 1988; the two servicemen killed in the La Belle disco bombing in West Berlin in April 1986; and the four off-duty U.S. Embassy Marine guards killed in a cafe in El Salvador in June 1985. We also consider as acts of terrorism attacks on military installations or on armed military personnel when a state of military hostilities does not exist at the site, such as bombings against U.S. bases in Europe, the Philippines, or elsewhere.

Maybe it is just me, but I do not think using a definition like this one hinders the State Department from trying to show solidarity with the Turkish government — using the US military to prevent the PKK from running into/through northern Iraq.

I have not yet found a good reason why people accuse the PKK of trying to evade the terrorist list by changing its name. In other words, if it were not possible, then why announce it is not possible? And what could be their reason for changing it back again?

Security

Sports official injured by coin toss

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There is another pun in this story somewhere about sports money going to people’s head, but it really is no laughing matter when you see footage of the Football referee suddenly fall to the ground, almost lifeless:

Fourth official Alan Sheffield needed medical treatment for a head wound when he was struck by a coin in County’s all-Welsh tie with Swansea and the FA of Wales are set to investigate.

At first I could not believe a small coin could have been expected to knock someone to the ground so violently, but some friends who live in Britain assure me that this is a known fact. It makes sense when you think about it, I guess, as the thrower was probably quite strong and so the weight of English money, not to mention the shape, makes it a very potent weapon. Sadly, this is not an isolated case:

Meanwhile, it emerged today that Bristol Rovers goalkeeper Steve Phillips was also targeted by a supporter during the match at Barrow.

The coin missed on that occasion but Cumbria Police have launched an appeal for witnesses in a bid to catch the fan.

There have been similar incidents at Premiership matches, with Fulham’s Claus Jensen hit by a coin against Everton and Arsenal’s Robin van Persie struck during the game at West Ham.

The story talks about the potential for a ban, if investigations fail to find the culprits and incidents continue. Imagine not being able to bring coins into a stadium…maybe they could just put a collection bin at the gates? What would the money be used for? Or maybe it is not coins that will be banned but the fans themselves? After all, some might say coins do not injure people, English football hooligans do.

History, Poetry, Security

You are My Drunkenness

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by Nazim Hikmet (1901 – 1963)

Translated by Süleyman Fatih Akgül

Sen benim sarhoÅŸluÄŸumsun…
Ne ayıldım, ne ayılabilirim,
Ne ayılmak isterim.
Başım ağır, dizlerim parçalanmış
Üstüm başım çamur içinde
Yanıp-sönen ışığına düşe kalka giderim. 		You are my drunkenness…
I did not sober up, as if I can do that;
I don’t want to anyway.
I have a headache, my knees are full of scars
I am in mud all around
I struggle to walk towards your hesitant light.

The Ataman Hotel site provides some context for Hikmet’s arrest and imprisonment by the military:

…in January 1938 he was arrested for inciting the Turkish armed forces to revolt and sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison on the grounds that military cadets were reading his poems, particularly The Epic of Sheik Bedrettin. Published in 1936, this long poem based on a fifteenth-century peasant rebellion against Ottoman rule was his last book to appear in Turkey during his lifetime. His friend Pablo Neruda relates Hikmet’s account of how he was treated after his arrest: “Accused of attempting to incite the Turkish navy into rebellion, Nazım was condemned to the punishments of hell. The trial was held on a warship. He told me he was forced to walk on the ship’s bridge until he was too weak to stay on his feet, then they stuck him into a section of the latrines where the excrement rose half a meter above the floor.”

And The Times explains the significance of his work and the effort to free him:

His release came at the hands of Turkey’s first democratically elected government, after a campaign by an international committee of writers and artists which included Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The remarkable poem that led to Hikmet’s arrest, The Epic of Sheik Bedrettin, is based on a fifteenth-century peasant rebellion against Ottoman rule and remains a major contribution to Turkish poetry in its linguistic experimentation and mixture of narrative voices, Ottoman scholarship and unconcealed political message. Hikmet offered a challenge to Auden’s oft-quoted line, in his elegy of Yeats, that “poetry makes nothing happen”; his work pointed to the possibilities – in literature and in politics – open to those trying to have it otherwise.

Interesting to compare Hikmet with Auden, particularly since they were writing during the same period. Perhaps Auden was just lamenting that in spite of all his own distaste for himself, no one else seemed to find his work inspiring enough to lock him up in the deep end of the latrine? Wonder what Hikmet’s perspective would have been on Auden’s idealist September 1, 1939 poem?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Great, so during a time that Britain and France turned a blind eye to Hitler’s rearmament and breaches of the Treaty of Versailles, and after Kristallnacht, Auden’s poem told people to ignore the authority and love one another. Perhaps that is the drunkenness that Hikmet understood and that made his writing so relevant — able to make things happen. Chamberlain probably hated reading Hikmet.

Security

Dead man driving

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News from the AP on fraud in Australia:

Under New South Wales state law, if a car owner signs a sworn statement that they were not driving the vehicle when an offense was committed, they can avoid paying speed camera fines, which arrive by mail, and parking tickets left under windshield wipers.

A recent government audit of the excuses given in those sworn statements revealed that 238 motorists had blamed one of two people “a dead man who had, when alive, lived in Sydney and a person living in neighboring South Australia state” Police Superintendent Daryl Donnolly said in a statement.

The curious part of this audit to me is that these sworn statements blamed only two people. How many false statements will go undetected because they only blame a dead person once?

Did the audit search for people deceased at the time of the incident, or just unusually high numbers of incidents per individual? Apparently the police did not try to reach the deceased, or they might have uncovered the scam earlier:

Some 80,000 Australian dollars ($61,000) of fines have been avoided this way in the past three years, Donnolly said.

He did not identify the scapegoats or explain why police had not uncovered the scam by pursuing the pair for the money owed.

The article does not say whether police will now follow-through in a more timely fashion to verify and process a sworn statement, at least to review the validity of the information, or whether the sworn statements policy will be phased out altogether.