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| Turkey: Retired general investigated for ordering attacks |
| 2006-07-30 |
| The General Staff announced yesterday that an investigation has been launched into a retired general who said he had ordered bomb attacks in southeastern Anatolia during his assignment to the region to 'train' civil servants working there. Retired Gen. Altay Tokat told the news weekly Aktüel that he ordered bombs to be thrown near the homes of two civil servants in the region in what he described as a move to intimidate them and make them understand the gravity of the situation. "The civil servants, the judges who come from western Turkey, do not realize how serious the situation is [in the Southeast]. ... They walk around without a care, do what they want," the magazine quoted him as saying. Tokat, now a member of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), served in southeastern Anatolia between 1995 and 1998 at the height of a separatist campaign at the hands of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the region. The remarks were not the first time that soldiers were under suspicion of carrying out attacks in southeastern Anatolia. In November, two gendarmerie officers tossed a grenade into a bookstore owned by former PKK member Seferi Yýlmaz in the town of Þemdinli near the Iraqi border. Yýlmaz survived and chased down his attackers, who turned out to be noncommissioned officers with suspected ties to top generals. A court last month sentenced the two noncommissioned officers to nearly 40 years in prison for trying to kill Yýlmaz, who had been jailed on charges of membership in the PKK. But Prosecutor Ferhat Sarýkaya, who implicated Land Forces Commander Gen. Yaþar Büyükanýt in the indictment, has been sacked. Sarýkaya appealed the decision for a second time after his initial request was turned down. |
| Posted by:Pappy |