Ocalan confesses, lists collaborators 

• Collaborators: Syria, Greece, Greek Cyprus, Iran, Iraq Yugoslavia, Armenia, Britain, Greek Orthodox Church, clandestine extreme-left Turkish groups, ASALA gang 

GOKHAN KAZBEK 

Begging for clemency, Turkey's number-one public enemy, Abdullah Ocalan, the chieftain of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) separatist gang, confessed Tuesday at his trial on this high-security prison island that many Middle Eastern and European countries and clandestine groups collaborated with the PKK. 

Answering questions of the presiding judge of the trial, Ocalan listed Syria, Greece, Greek Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Armenia, Britain, Greek Orthodox Church, clandestine extreme-left Turkish groups and the ASALA gang as some of the collaborators of the PKK. 

He said Yugoslavia has provided camps for training of his gang members, and the PKK had commercial relations with Greece. He said particularly after 1990, Greece started providing all kinds of support for the PKK including an array of "guerilla training" in Greece. 

He said PKK members who received training in Greece were often airlifted to southeastern Turkey or northern Iraq through Syria, Lebanon or Iran. Ocalan said until he left Syria, he had never gone to Greece. 

In Iran, he said, the gang did not have any training camp, but had a hospital. He said Iranian officials were informed of the hospital's operations. He said in addition to medical treatment, gang members were also provided with theoretical training at the hospital in Iran. He also complained that Iran was not always cooperative with the gang, and many of the weapons sent to the PKK through Iran were confiscated by that country. 

The PKK chieftain said that Iraq in particular had provided intelligence to the gang about Turkish military operations in northern Iraq. Additionally, he claimed that northern Iraq had become a free-arms "bazaar" after the Gulf War, and the PKK had bought some its weapons from there. 

Ocalan said contrary to claims by Turkish officials, the United Nations Atrush refugee camp in northern Iraq was not a base of the PKK but most of the residents of the camp supported the PKK.

Refuting charges that the PKK had training camps in Greek Cypriot-held southern Cyprus, the separatist chieftain said the Greek Orthodox Church was providing financial assistance to the gang, but at the official level contacts with the Greek Cypriot administration were "very weak." He said the Greek Cypriot passport he was carrying when he was captured by Turkish intelligence units and security teams was obtained by the gang's Athens representative, Fethi Demir, from Greek Cyprus. 

Confessing that Syria had provided shelter for him for many years, Ocalan refuted the claims that the PKK and Rifat Assad, the brother of Syrian President Hafez Assad, were collaborating in drug trafficking. Ocalan said he never met with Rifat Assad. He also told the court that he was against drugs and even prohibited cigarette smoking by PKK members. He did say, however, that he was aware of the existence of some drug rings trying to pass themselves off as PKK members. 

The PKK chieftain also confessed that his gang began collaborating with the deadly ASALA terrorist gang in 1980, but cooperation ended because of internal strife within ASALA and differences of "activity" understanding between himself and the leadership of the Armenian terrorist gang. 

Ocalan claimed that Armenia never had official contact with the PKK but allowed the gang to collect money from Armenians. He said that there were many countries maintaining the same attitude. 

He said he was never officially contacted by the German government, but in 1996 he met with a German parliamentary delegation and the head of the German Protection of the Constitution Agency. He said the Germans asked him to order an end to PKK bombings in Germany; he agreed to that in return for a pledge that Germany would stop arresting and exiling PKK members. 

Regarding the alleged British support for his gang, Ocalan claimed that Britain has had a Kurdish policy for the past 150 years. He said that Britain used all of the Kurdish groups assuming they served British interests, turning its back on them when it had achieved its aims. 

Ocalan said the PKK gang cooperates with almost all clandestine extreme-leftist Turkish groups. 

Ocalan refused responsibility, meanwhile, for one of the deadliest PKK attacks: the 1993 killing of dozens of unarmed soldiers. 

The PKK chieftain told the court that he had not given the order for the attack, in which 33 soldiers were killed in the southeastern province of Bingol. 

Ocalan said the assault was carried out by renegade PKK members acting independently. 

In the 139-page indictment against Ocalan, he is accused of ordering the killing. 

Ocalan also denied accusations that he had given orders for bomb attacks on Turkey's tourist sites in the early 1990s. The attacks killed and injured several foreigners. Ocalan said he did not personally order the attacks but admitted that such places were on the target list of the gang. 

Ocalan said his group had not killed Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, but that headed by his wife Kesire, some separatists who had broken away from his group may have had a hand in the 1986 slaying. 

Palme was shot to death on a Stockholm street as he and his wife walked home from a movie theater. There has been speculation that the PKK carried out the assassination after Sweden declared the group a terrorist organization. 

Ocalan surprised a Turkish court at the opening of his trial Monday by ordering his fighters to end their struggle and threatening massive bloodshed if he is hanged.

"The armed clashes should immediately cease and arms should be immediately laid down," Ocalan said Monday through a microphone in a bulletproof, bombproof cage on the island of Imrali, where he is the only prisoner. 

It was Ocalan's first direct call for an end to the separatist insurgency. 

Ocalan said he wanted the separatist group to "give up its stance against the state and prepare for the legalization process." 

He said that if he were allowed to contact his fighters, he could talk them into laying down their weapons within three months and end the separatist insurgency that has killed 37,000 people, the majority of them Kurds. 

"Those who know the history, political and economic situation of the two peoples will know that breaking up cannot happen," Ocalan said. 

Ocalan bargaining for his life, calls for cease-fire 

Ankara - Turkish Daily News 

"The armed clashes should cease immediately and arms should be laid down," Abdullah Ocalan, the captured leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), stated on Monday in the first session of his long-awaited trial on the prison island of Imrali. 

The terrorist leader was speaking through a microphone in a bulletproof and bombproof glass cage in a converted theater. 

It was his first direct call for an end to the attacks carried out by his organization, the PKK. 

"What will happen if I die?" Ocalan asked the court. "The organization will send out thousands of fighters, and hundreds of thousands of people will die." 

The following are excerpts from his defense: 

"Give me and give the PKK a chance, I can get them down from the mountains within three months." 

"The Kurds can find shelter in a democratic republic, they have no other place. Here, there is freedom of thought. There is also political freedom. Why should I ask for something that already exists? The only problem is language and cultural identity." 

"I have no intention of simply trying to save myself." 

"If I had had this awareness in 1973, the method I followed would have been different." 

"I didn't create the Kurdish question. I found it in Ankara. The problem has existed for 200 years. This is a painful period. People have suffered much. But war no has no reason and no logic. No matter what the result is, no matter how much we suffer, we must not relive what we have been through." 

"When I say 'Kurdistan' I don't mean something political, I mean a geographic region." 

"I am responsible for what have I done. I can give my life up if it is going to benefit for Turkey. The Turkish public wants to destroy me. I have only one life to give. I don't want anymore clashes." 

"The PKK is an illegal organization, and it has relations with Med TV." 

"The structure of the State Security Courts [DGMs] and Europe's requests are not important." 

"Separatism, pressure and rebellious feelings cannot solve the problems; we should live together in peace. And a democratic republic is an opportunity for living together in the same land." 

"The People's Democracy Party [HADEP] cannot be called an official organization of the PKK, but it is making policies on a similar basis as the PKK." 

"Syria never accepted the PKK. It deemed the PKK an illegal organization on both domestic and foreign terms. While there are PKK members in Syrian prisons, they [the Syrians] didn't prevent its [the PKK's] activities; however, they didn't provide any special political aid to them, either."