Page 284 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

killed by a car bomb that two PKK terrorists planted on February 10,
2006. Yıldırım Merkit, another founding figure who was responsible
for the Erzincan-Tunceli region, was declared a spy and co-conspira-
tor and assassinated in Romania. Öcalan grew uneasy of the rising
profile of Haki Karer, another PKK founding member, and Karer was
killed in a coffee house in Gaziantep on May 18, 1977 in a suspicious

attack. Çetin Güngör, who was responsible for the European region,
criticized the activities of the administrators during a congress and
was declared a spy and subsequently killed in Stockholm in 1984.
Mehmet Çimen, known by the code name of Ali Rıza, served 11 years
in Diyarbakır prison and later fell out with senior PKK official in Ger-
many and was called to Syria. Upon the decision of the organization,
he was killed by being drowned in a bathtub filled with acid.

The PKK killed the militants of differing socialist Kurdish orga-
nizations prior to September 12 Coup in Turkey, and destroyed all
other organized Kurdish networks like Özgürlük Yolu (Freedom
Way), Tekoşin, TKP, Beş Parçacı Grubu (Five-Parts Group), KUK,

Halkın Kurtuluşu (People's Salvation), Halkın Birliği (People's Unity),
Halkın Yolu (People's Way), TİKP-Aydınlık (Enlightment), TİKKO,
Dev-Yol, Kurtuluş Hareketi (Salvation Way) through massacres.

Aytekin Yılmaz, who served 10 years for being a PKK member,
wrote a book entitled Yoldaşını Öldürmek (Killing Your Comrade), in
which he detailed the PKK's internal executions. In this book, he said
that the murders were later celebrated by PKK members by dancing.
He reveals how brutal the PKK is when he says: "I saw that they were
doing halay [a regional dance] in two instances. One was in 1990s, when the
guerillas [PKK members] raided a precinct and killed 20 to 30 soldiers. It
always seemed horrible to me. And the second time was when they did it after
killing fellow comrades. And then they would distribute desserts to the ones
in the wards. They did this when the person they killed was their friend just

the day before! Can you believe these?" 111

İsmail Beşikçi also gives details about the people killed as a part

282 America's Failure to Perceive the PKK