by Avi Yellin
Turkey’s Today’s Zaman reported on Tuesday that Ankara’s intelligence agencies have accused Israel of using unmanned aerial vehicles to gather information for the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
The report claimed that Israeli Heron drones helped the PKK gather information on the Hatay and Adana provinces in November to determine the locations for establishing rebel training bases.
According to the report, the Herons also collected intelligence on Turkish military positions in those regions in order to aid PKK operations.
Today’s Zaman neglected to disclose whether the Turkish report implicated Jerusalem in directly aiding PKK guerrillas in any specific attack on Turkish occupation forces.
The daily claimed, however, that Kenan Yıldızbakan, a PKK fighter that organized an assault on a Turkish naval base in 2010, had visited Israel a number of times, leading Ankara to suspect Israeli collusion in the attack.
Israeli activist Yehuda HaKohen expressed his hopes to Indy News Israel on Tuesday that the Turkish accusations are true.
“As Zionists, we should fight for the rights of all peoples to live freely in their homelands unmolested by imperialism or foreign aggression,” he said.
“As a people that has struggled and continues to struggle for our right to self-determination in our historic homeland, Jews share a special obligation to work towards the freedom of other indigenous peoples fighting against oppression.”
HaKohen’s sentiment was echoed by a Jerusalem-based group calling itself the “Israeli Committee for a Free Kurdistan,” which lobbies for Israel to actively participate in the fight for a free Kurdistan.
In a statement issued exclusively to Indy News Israel, the committee welcomed the Turkish report, saying that “as Zionists who believe in Jewish liberation and oppose attempts by larger countries to steal our land, we have an obligation to fight for the liberation of all indigenous peoples suffering at the hands of larger powers.”
“The Kurds are our natural allies in the region,” the statement continued. “And right now they are engaged in a real struggle for national liberation. Its too often that our government measures petty interests against moral imperatives. The Israeli Committee for a Free Kurdistan is working to educate the public and encourage our government to do the right thing so that our people will be recorded in the history books as active participants in the fight for a free Kurdistan.”
Because the PKK is officially labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, some Israeli officials fear that participating in the struggle to liberate northern Kurdistan could potentially put Jerusalem on a collision course with Washington.
The US has in recent months been playing an increasingly active role in suppressing Kurdish resistance activity, providing Turkey with Super-Cobra helicopters and Predator drones.
An American drone was recently found to be responsible for the murder of 35 ethnic Kurds mistaken for PKK fighters in December.
The PKK first picked up arms in 1984 to liberate northern Kurdistan from Turkish occupation. The war for Kurdish independence has since claimed roughly 45,000 lives, with ethnic Kurds making up the vast majority of casualties.
The PKK has demanded an end to all discrimination in Turkish laws against ethnic Kurds, hoping instead to be granted full political freedoms. The movement has also demanded Turkey’s recognition of the Kurds’ identity in its constitution and of their language as a native language along with Turkish in Kurdish populated areas.
