by Mahmoud Abu Ghosh
According to an intelligence report released Friday, Turkey’s military fears Kurdish resistance will increase in 2012, following months of the Turkish Arned Forces (TSK) brutally suppressing Kurdish rebels and their supporters.
According to the report, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced it will start conducting raids from the area comprising the Şemdinli, Çukurca and Yüksekova districts of Hakkari province, in Turkish-occupied norther Kurdistan.
The report added that PKK guerrillas will conduct heavy attacks by large numbers of fighters and that the urban branch of the rebel group will plan resistance activities in Kurdish cities under Turkish control.
The second stage in what Ankara expects from the PKK will simultaneously take place in the Eruh district of Siirt, Sırnak’s Cizre and Beytüşşebab districts and in the Hani, Dicle, Lice and Kulp districts of Diyarbakır province.
Attacks in these regions are thought to be less risky for resistance activity.
The report, based on intelligence gathered by wiretapping PKK leaders’ radiophone talks, added that heightened efforts by Turkish occupation forces will force the rebels to lay down their arms or be destroyed.
Turkey has meanwhile continued conducting lethal airstrikes on PKK camps in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq since August of last year following the breakdown of a cease-fire and an increase in resistance activity against Turkish rule by the PKK, which has been fighting for independence since 1984.
The PKK is labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, which currently supplies Ankara with high-level weaponry, including Predator drones and Super-Cobra helicopters, for use in its fight to suppress the Kurds.
In December, a Predator drone controlled by US personell in Nevada was responsible for killing 35 Kurdish civilians.
