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Extremists asked foreign tourists not to vacation in Turkey

The end of the tourist season in Turkey has been considerably spoiled. The extremist group Tayirbazen Azadiya Kurdistan (TAK, translated from Kurdish as “Freedom Falcons of Kurdistan”) yesterday claimed responsibility for a deadly terrorist attack in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya and promised more. Although several news agencies reported that the statement appeared on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) website, the radicals used their own Internet website to post it.

The statement said that TAK has already “warned the people of Turkey and the international community that Turkey is no longer a safe country and tourists should not come here, otherwise the organization will not be responsible for the consequences of its actions.” “Falcons” threatened “new actions, more powerful explosions.” They promised to “turn Turkey into such a hell that the horror of death will reign throughout this country.” Earlier, extremists had already claimed responsibility for a series of explosions in the Mediterranean resort of Marmaris on Monday night and Sunday in Istanbul, as a result of which 27 people were injured, including 11 British holidaymakers in Marmaris.

Yesterday, the leadership of the PKK, banned in Turkey and considered a terrorist organization in the EU and the USA, announced that it has nothing in common with TAK. The PKK statement, distributed by the Turkish Firat news agency, emphasizes that the party, in solving the problem of the Turkish Kurds, is pursuing a policy that rejects violence against civilians. “Some fringe groups are organizing bombings in tourist areas in Turkey. We condemn the action, which resulted in the death of three people and dozens of injuries in Antalya. We are not responsible for what happened and wish the victims a speedy recovery,” the RCP statement said.

The press service of the Antalya Security Department reported yesterday that the terrorist attack killed three people, all of them Turkish citizens, and injured 21 others. At the same time, according to the Russian consulate in Antalya and the Turkish private news agency Dogan, the explosion killed four people and injured about 70 people. Among the wounded are two Russians, four Israelis, three Germans and a Jordanian.

The head of the Russian consulate in Antalya, Sergei Alifanov, said yesterday that 26-year-old Olga Perevezentseva from Balashikha and 30-year-old Dmitry Maksimov from Khimki, who were wounded the day before, are feeling fine. They left the private clinic, where Russian diplomats visited them, and continued their vacation. According to the consul, Turkish authorities have strengthened security measures near diplomatic missions in Antalya and around sites most visited by foreign tourists. Therefore, Mr. Alifanov emphasized, “there is no panic among local residents and tourists,” just as “there is no threat to the lives of our tourists here in Antalya.”

Sergei Alifanov added that the consular department of the Russian Foreign Ministry has prepared a leaflet for Russians traveling to Turkey, which will be distributed by tour operators. The Vremya Novostei newspaper studied the “Reference Certificate for Traveling to Turkey” posted on the Foreign Ministry website and did not find any mention of a possible terrorist threat (but the British Foreign Ministry yesterday again warned its compatriots heading to Turkish resorts about such a threat).

In the “Reference-Recommendation” of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, there are telephone numbers for essential services - police, gendarmerie, ambulance and fire service. In a dozen leaflets from Russian tour operators found on the Internet, our tourists are urged to be wary only of Turkish scammers and pickpockets.

Following the terrorist attacks and TAK's threat, travel bookings to Turkey have dropped by at least half. Press secretary of the Russian Union of Tourism Industry (RST) Irina Tyurina told Vremya Novostei yesterday, citing estimates of the largest Moscow tourism operators working in the Turkish direction. At the same time, the number of refusals from already purchased vouchers is insignificant.

Ms. Tyurina expressed the opinion that the tourist flow to Turkey will soon be restored to its previous volumes. She noted that Turkish hotel owners obviously also do not expect a long-term decline in tourist flow. Otherwise, they would probably resort to cutting prices. However, no reduction in the cost of living on the Turkish coast was noted after the terrorist attacks.

“This year has been generally unsuccessful for Turkish companies working with Russia, but terrorist attacks played a very minimal role in this. In winter and spring, the flow of tourists was limited due to the bird flu epidemic in eastern Turkey, and at the beginning of summer, bankruptcies and financial scandals occurred in several Russian and Turkish companies serving our tourists. This scared away many potential vacationers,” believes Irina Tyurina. According to the newspaper’s interlocutor, “terrorist attacks are unlikely to become truly widespread, and besides, a large number of hotels in the coastal areas of Turkey belong to businessmen of Kurdish origin.”

However, the explosions have already occurred, and now the Turkish special services have sent their forces to search for two suspects in organizing the explosion in Antalya. According to the Dogan agency, these people left a motorcycle used for delivering fast food to restaurants in the most tourist-visited center of the city. In his trunk there were two kilograms of plastic explosives with metal “shrapnel” and a remote-controlled fuse; the criminals detonated the explosive device using a cell phone. The powerful explosion not only killed and injured people. The terrorist attack turned cars parked next to the motorcycle into scrap metal, mutilated the facade of a nearby business center, and caused fires in shops, bars, cafes and restaurants located tens of meters away.

The Turkish Anatolian News Agency reported on Monday evening the arrest of a Kurdish man in the port city of Izmir on the Aegean coast. He is suspected of planting another bomb there, the explosion of which was to be the sixth in a series of terrorist attacks that rocked Turkey on Monday. Fortunately, the terrorist attack did not occur “for purely technical reasons.” Along with the Kurd, “several more people” were arrested. They “helped him prepare a terrorist attack,” and 2.5 kg of A-4 plastic explosives, similar to those used in Antalya, were found in their homes. According to the police, the main suspect “entered Turkey from the neighboring north of Iraq,” in other words, from Iraqi Kurdistan.

By coincidence, the US State Department recently created the post of special envoy, which was Joseph Ralston, commander-in-chief of NATO forces in Europe in 2000-2003. He, according to a State Department spokesman, will be responsible for coordinating joint measures by the United States, Turkey and Iraq “to eliminate the terrorist threat posed by the PKK and other groups operating in northern Iraq and crossing the border with Turkey.”

Two weeks ago, the United States called on the PKK to stop terrorist attacks in Turkey and lay down its arms. Then the State Department noted that since 1984, as a result of violence unleashed by the PKK, “30 thousand members of the security forces and civilians of Turkey have died.” After a lull caused by the arrest of PKK leader "terrorist Ocalan" in 1999, the PKK resumed terrorist activities in 2004, and more than 500 people were killed this year alone.

“We know that the United States invited the PKK to a dialogue, the purpose of which is to include the PKK in the political system of Turkey,” an informed source in the Federation of Kurdish Organizations of Russia told Vremya Novostey yesterday. According to him, Abdullah Ocalan created the PKK back in 1978, and then its military wing, the Kurdistan People's Liberation Army. “But if it is fighting against the genocide of the Kurds with the Turkish army, then the “Falcons”, which really emerged only in 2004, do not stand on ceremony when choosing targets. For them, resorts are only a source of multi-billion dollar revenues for the budget of the Turkish authorities,” noted the interlocutor of our newspaper.

Deputy Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Isaev, in an interview with Vremya Novostei, suggested that the Turkish explosions were “paid for through network schemes similar to the channels for financing al-Qaeda terrorist attacks.” About 10 million Kurds live in Turkey, and, according to the expert, the goal of terrorist attacks in Turkey is “to provoke its authorities, who are terribly afraid of the emergence of an independent Kurdistan, to invade the de facto independent Iraqi Kurdistan.”

Currently, the situation in Kurdistan in northern Iraq is stable, but this could come to an end if the Turks begin to pursue Kurdish militants there or carry out cleansing operations. And this, our interlocutor believes, “is fraught with serious consequences for the whole of Iraq.” “Taking into account the fact that the President of Iraq is the Kurdish Jalal Talabani, brought to power by the United States, the entire fragile structure that the Americans have created with difficulty in Iraq could collapse overnight due to the entry of Turkish troops into Iraqi Kurdistan,” concluded Mr. n Isaev.

Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN, Mikhail KUKUSHKIN