AGREEMENT WITH TURKEY ON CO-OPERATION AGAINST TERRORISM AND ORGANISED CRIME
The Austrian Interior Minister, Franz Löschnak, and his Turkish counterpart, Ismet Sezgin have signed a bi-lateral agreement on co-operation in the combat against drug trafficking, smuggling of persons, terrorism and organised crime. Turkey's main goal with seeking such co-operation appears to consist in gaining Western European condonement of its warfare against Kurdish resistance. Turkey has already signed similar agreements with Denmark, Italy and Spain.
Mr. Szegin suggested in Vienna that the Kurdish resistance movement PKK was largely accountable for the smuggling of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers and announced that he would spare no effort to stop such "human trafficking". In return, the Turkish Interior Minister, stressing that alone in the first weeks of this year more than hundred policemen and soldiers were among the victims of PKK attacks, expects Austria to help him to "put out the fire inside Turkey".
Mr. Szegin's demand appears to have been met with some understanding by the Austrian Interior Minister, who stated with regard to the PKK, that "whenever penal law is violated, this is terrorism, according to Austrian law, and this must be stopped." Mr. Löschnak however made no secret about the fact that, as late as 1991 more than hundred Turkish refugees were granted asylum in Austria and that this figure had not significantly changed in 1992 although the number of applications from Turkish nationals had decreased from 2,300 to 1'200.
The agreement provides for the exchange of information and personal data and the mutual delegation of police liaison officers.
Information exchange will include drugtrafficking (new methods and psychotropic substances); terrorism (information on terrorist groups and attacks, a regular evaluation of terrorist threats and know-how exchange on preventive action); organised crime (information on its various forms, arms trafficking, car and culture theft, money laundering and forgery, human trafficking and smuggling).
Minister Löschnak stressed the importance of police co-operation in the domain of drug traffficking: "Turkey is a central emporium for Central and Western Europe...and Austria is concerned both as a transit country and a consumer."
The Balkan routes is now as before the smuggling route number one for the whole of Europe. According to Interpol, more than 80 percent of the heroin intercepted in Europe reach the continent by this way and Istanbul is considered as the "gateway to Europe".
In 1992 the Austrian police confiscated a total of 78 kilos of heroin, 17 kilos of which were found on Turkish nationals.
Source: Der Kriminalbeamte (Vienna), May 93.Comment:
Recent reports from the Council of Europe, and regular up-dates from Human Rights NGOs leave no doubt about the conduct of police and security forces in Turkey: torture is common, leading oppositionals and journalists are killed by "death squads", Kurdish civilians are permanently harassed and terrorised, entire villages burned to the ground and their inhabitants forced to leave in the regime's attempt to deprive the fish ot its water, i.e. the Kurdish guerilla of its popular growing ground. The Turkish regime's warfare against its Kurdish population has since long ago reached an extent that can only be qualified as "ethnic cleansing".
But what is considered a crime against humanity, when occuring in other parts of the world, is silenced by Western media, when it happens in the NATO-country and Gulf war ally Turkey. Even worse, European democracies co-operate with the Turkish security forces with the pretext of combatting "terrorism" and "organised crime".
In order to brush aside eventual scruples in Western Europe about supporting rather political oppression than criminal repression, Turkey has always tried to blur the lines: The extradition of political opponents was sought by presenting forged criminal accusations, Kurdish asylum seekers are labled either as "terrorists" or as "false refugees" exploited by ruthless smuggling rings.
Now, the Turkish Interior Minister, in line with the latest European "fashion" of justifying ever more policing with the need to combat "organised crime", is depicting the Kurdish problem as an issue of "organised crime" by pointing at the Kurdish role in drug trafficking and the PKK's alledged involvment in the smuggling of migrants.
Kurds will now be persecuted as "organised criminals" - with the support of liaison officers from Vienna, Copenhague and other capitals of European democracies. This is likely to continue as long as there is no common and formal European committment to prohibit any form of police co-operation with states that systematically violate human rights.
N.B.