Country of origin information report Turkey March 2007

ERNK. See PKK
ESP (Socialist Platform of the Oppressed) (Ezilenlerin Solyalist Platformu). Founded in 2002. [52a] In December 2004, the group’s publication Atilim reported that 46 of its members were arrested as members of the illegal MLKP and that a court claimed that ESP which is a legitimate organisation was in fact the legal branch of the MLKP.
Gerçek (Truth)

Publication – Gerçek. [52b] [52a]

Hareket (Movement) [52b]
HDÖ (People’s Revolutionary Leaders) (Halkin Devrimci Öncüleri)

Illegal. [48] [18c]

Hevgirtin Welatparez (Patriotic Union) [52a]
Hizb-I Kuran. See Med-Zehra
Hizbullah/Ilim Gruhu and Hizbullah/Menzil Grubu.

Both are illegal. Hizbullah/Hezbollah is a very shadowy Islamist group which originated in the 1980s in southeast Turkey. It advocates the establishment of an Islamic state by violent means. When a major Hizbullah leader was killed by PKK fighters in 1991, a difference of opinion emerged within the organisation as to whether the time was yet right to wreak revenge on the PKK, and also to take up arms in pursuit of its own objective. One faction, centring on the Menzil publishing house (and known as the Menzil group), took the view that the organisation was not yet sufficiently well-developed to pitch into armed struggle. The other, centred on the Ilim publishing house and known as the Ilim group, thought the time was ripe for armed revenge on the PKK. Its idea was as far as possible to let the Turkish State do the dirty work for it in combating the PKK. The Ilim group bore particular responsibility for the atrocities committed by Hizbullah. The group had an ideological aversion to Iran, which adhered to Shia Islam; the Ilim group was striving for a Sunni Islam state. When the Ilim group managed to kill some of the Menzil group’s main leaders in 1996, the Menzil group disintegrated and faded away. Some former Menzil members then joined the Ilim group, and, from 1996, Hizbullah become synonymous with the violent Ilim faction. Rumours were rife that Hizbullah was at least tolerated by the security forces because it was fighting against a common enemy, and it has been held responsible for a large number of disappearances and killings. Its victims included a former DEP member of parliament, Mehmet Sincar, and an Islamic feminist writer, Konca Kuris. President Demirel denied allegations that there were links between Hizbullah and Turkish officialdom, while the general staff of the armed forces issued an angry statement condemning such allegations as slander.

From 1997 onwards the Turkish authorities began to take tougher action against Hizbullah, with a reported 130 supporters arrested in 1998, 250 in 1999 and 3300 in 2000. In a raid on a home in the Üsküdar area of Istanbul on 17 January 2000 Hüseyin Velioğlu, Hizbullah’s founder and leader, was killed, and two other people arrested. On the basis of evidence found in the home, many other premises were searched, revealing the bodies of thirteen missing businessmen. With many more corpses being uncovered in the following months, the public prosecutor was able to press charges against 21 people on 156 counts of murder in the major Hizbullah trial which opened on 10 July 2000. During an interrogation, a Hizbullah suspect reportedly confessed to killing moderate Islamic scholar Konca Kuris in the early 1990s. In November 2002 an appeals court acquitted five defendants and sentenced the others to prison terms ranging from life to 45 months. The security forces’ many operations against Hizbullah have inflicted heavy setbacks on it, and the number of bombings carried out by the group has fallen from 302 in the first eight months of 1999 to 94 in the corresponding period of 2000. However, the provincial governor of Diyarbakır stated in October 2000 that, in spite of those serious setbacks, Hizbullah could certainly not yet be considered to have been eliminated. There are said to be many teachers and religious officials involved in the organisation. As of February 2000, Hizbullah was said to have had in Turkey some 20,000 members, who were organised in tight cells and knew a few of their fellow members because they were sworn to strict secrecy. They were said to operate in teams of two or three people, who “would stalk their victim before one member of the group carried out the execution by shooting the target in the neck with a single bullet, while the other kept a watch. A third militant may have assumed the duty of protecting the executioner.” Up to the time of the security forces’ major action in January 2000, there were no known instances of Hizbullah’s having targeted the authorities in its operations. Since then, however, armed incidents have taken place. On 11 October 2000 in Diyarbakır a policeman was killed in a gunfight with Hizbullah, which has also been linked with the shooting dead of the province’s chief of police, Gaffar Okkan, and five of his officers in January 2001. In April 2001 a Hizbullah member was arrested on suspicion of involvement in that attack. The USSD 2004 reported that the Government continued to detain persons, particularly in the southeastern province of Batman, on suspicion of links to Hizballahan that 1,500 political prisoners were alleged members of Hizballah or other radical Islamist political organizations. On 5 February 2005 Turkish Daily News reported that, acting upon intelligence that the group was trying to regroup the security forces had arrested 22 suspected Hizbullah militants in 18 provinces.