By Ilnur Cevik
TDN- How is it that hundreds of PKK terrorists have been allowed to slip into Turkey from the mountains of northern Iraq despite all the tight border security?
Recently the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan, serving a life sentence for treason at the Imrali Military Prison, sent a message to his comrades in the mountains of northern Iraq ordering them to resume their terrorist campaign in Turkey that has already cost 35,000 lives, and tens of billions of dollars.
Soon afterwards we saw a marked rise in terrorist activities in eastern and southeastern Turkey. Once again soldiers and other security personnel were attacked and there were casualties. Some people may think it normal that due to the arrival of warm weather the PKK has started its summer campaign of terrorism, but this is not so.
It is because some PKK members have agreed to heed Ocalan's call to resume terrorist activities in Turkey. Some are militants who were already hiding in Turkey, but quite a few are those who have managed to slip into our country from northern Iraq. They apparently use mountain passes and slip into Iran from northern Iraq and then infiltrate Turkey.
The order by Ocalan to resume terrorist activities has split the PKK into three groups. One group are those of Syrian origin, who either want to go back to Syria or melt into Iraqi Kurdish groups. Another is that led by Osman Ocalan who do not want to resume fighting, but who do not want to go to Turkey either. These two groups pose a serious dilemma for the Kurdistan Democracy Party (KDP) of Masoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani. If they allow these people to stay in northern Iraq in some form or another, it will antagonize Turkey and Syria. They cannot get rid of them and they cannot live with them. This is a problem that should be solved jointly by Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership.
But the real problem is again around 1,500 PKK militants who are prepared to join in the terrorist campaign against Turkey. We are told 500 of these are die-hard Ocalan supporters who will fight to the bitter end. The others will reportedly go along with them with some reservations.
These are the 1,500 militants that Turkey should concentrate on as a priority. Yet, we see these groups have already moved out of the northern Iraqi mountains and have found their way into Turkey. THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
Some foreign diplomats have told the Turkish Daily News that their intelligence has detected, by various means, the arrival of large groups of PKK militants into Turkey through the borders. So why haven't Turkish authorities detected this and prevented their entry?
How could hundreds of PKK militants move into Turkey through those borders that were sealed off for several years by our security forces with high-tech equipment? There are all kinds of censors along these sensitive borders and yet the PKK militants managed to slip into our country in large numbers. Who left the doors open and why?
Now that these people are in, we feel it is up to our crack forces to finish off the PKK militants. They could not go to the mountains of northern Iraq to hunt down these terrorists, but now they have a golden opportunity because those from the mountains have come down to them.