November 25, 2003	Tuesday	Ramazan 29, 1424

DIYARBAKIR (Turkey): Turkey’s Kurds are fearful that security clampdowns after the Istanbul bombings could lead to intensified operations against Kurdish rebels and deal a blow to their recently-won freedoms.

“Is it our fate to be associated with terrorism? Are we going back to the old days of conflict?” an anxious Kurdish vendor asked as he stood at his vegetable stall outside an ancient castle in this impoverished Kurdish city.

Although no one has blamed Kurds for last week’s truck bombings, reports that the bombers were extremists from the Kurdish town of Bingol has unnerved the community just as it was starting to enjoy relative peace and greater cultural freedom after years of bloody fighting.

The Turkish authorities have associated “terrorism” with Kurdish violence — and even with peaceful advocacy of Kurdish rights — ever since the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) took up arms for self-rule in 1984, with the conflict claiming some 36,500 lives.

But eager to boost its chances of joining the European Union, Turkey has in recent months granted its sizeable Kurdish minority a measure of cultural freedom and once daily clashes between the army and the rebels are now rare.

“We were happy that the atmosphere was improving, but now we are worried again,” said the Diyarbakir vendor Kenan Yilmaz.

Kurdish politicians expressed concern that an all-out government onslaught on underground groups and heavy-handed security policies following the carnage in Istanbul, which claimed at least 53 lives, could deal a blow to the fragile climate of normalization in Kurdish regions.

“There is a danger that this could be used as a pretext for anti-democratic practices. But we hope this will not happen because it will damage Turkey’s own EU bid,” said Osman Ozcelik, deputy head of the main pro-Kurdish movement, the People’s Democracy Party (DEHAP).

“The government is already dragging its feet in implementing reforms (on Kurdish freedoms)... If those reforms are further impeded, this could create serious problems,” he said.

Another leading Kurdish politician, Ahmet Turan Demir, said: “The Istanbul attacks will have important effects on the domestic political scene. It is possible to see a further restriction of already limited rights and liberties.”

At least 12 million Kurds live mainly in the southeast of Turkey, a sizeable minority in this country of 70 million.

“We are worried that we may get to a stage where our basic rights and liberties will be restricted because of security measures but in the long run we expect the government to continue its democracy drive to join the European Union,” said Husnu Ondul, chairman of the Human Rights Association.

Respected Kurdish writer Seyhmus Diken also said that Ankara could not easily forefeit the progress it has achieved in improving its much-criticized democracy, often at the expense of political tensions and rows.

Ankara has rejected repeated peace overtures by the PKK, and is now pressing Washington to clamp down on an estimated 5,000 rebels who are in hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq near the Turkish frontier.—AFP