Page 266 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

abductions and roadblocks.

During this time, the PKK, under the supervision of the KCK, has
set ablaze hundreds of schools, private teaching institutions and dor-
mitories. Hundreds of village guards were martyred or made veter-
ans; district officers, soldiers, doctors and teachers were abducted and
the construction of dams and fortified outposts was prevented. It is a
known fact through intelligence that the PKK has distributed
weapons to almost every home in Hakkari, Beytüşşebap,

Cizre, Siirt, İdil, Bingöl, and Bitlis. Instead of the Turkish
flag, rags of the PKK can be seen now everywhere in the
region. The group gave 20,000 Kalashnikovs to its mili-
tia (YDG-H) and gave Glock pistols to YDG-H team
commanders. According to the reports of security units
on the group's acts perpetrated in the period between
late 2014 and early 2015 – in other words in the five-
month-period when the so-called Solution Process was
continuing – the PKK carried out 1,190 social events in

these five months. As is well known, the PKK, which is
expected by certain circles to lay down arms, resumed its
malicious acts immediately after the general elections, ambush-
ing both Turkish police and soldiers.

After the fighting has started, a confession came from the YDG-
H: "We knew that the state would drop the peace talks, so we grew and orga-
nized ourselves meanwhile." Members of the YDG-H who interviewed
the Wall Street Journal made this grave statement: "There are many of us,
and we are in every city in Turkey now". 102

Hüseyin Çelik, the Chief Advisor to the AK Party Chairman,
made the following explanation on December 13, 2013, revealing the
gravity of the situation: "It wasn't the BDP who won the elections in 2009,
it was the PKK and the KCK. But they didn't win it through democratic
means. They did it by threats. The [terrorist] organization has worked on

264 America's Failure to Perceive the PKK