It has been argued that the marginality of violent Islamist groups in Turkey in contrast to the vigorous armed opposition in Egypt or Algeria is due to the Turkish political system’s pluralism and the RP’s full integration into this system.[1] But the leaders and sponsors of these extremist organizations think that by violence against the secular symbols of the Turkish state, leading secular intellectuals and journalists, and representatives of “Imperialism and Zionism,” they will indeed help install an Islamic state. The limited reaction by the authorities up to 1996 and the RP’s electoral victories seemed to provide reasons for this hope.

Political and Strategic Background
The military coup of 1980 was intended to end a long period of widespread terrorism and violence throughout the country perpetrated by extremist left-wing and right-wing organizations, and also to hold back the threat of radical Islam embodied in the National Salvation Party led by Necmettin Erbakan.[2] But while military rule between 1980-1983 did break up the extreme left and right, the Islamic movement survived and even grew in importance during the 1980s.[3] In a marked contrast to the first two military coups, in 1980 military authorities proclaimed the importance of religion in the political life of the nation.[4]

A new ideological concept was developed by a group of right-wing intellectuals (Intellectuals’ Hearth - Aidinlar Ocagi) and adopted by the military, “The Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” which, on its pragmatic side, represented an attempt to integrate Islamists and the nationalists.[5] The main idea was that the Islamist influence in the system would contribute to the territorial integrity of the Turkish nation-state and counter revolutionary sentiments, especially among Kurdish youth. The Islamists offered an attractive alternative even for ex-communists after the collapse of communism in the Soviet bloc.[6]

On the foreign front, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis was supposed to help contain Soviet expansion southward and to combat the radical Iranian brand of Islam by constructing a coalition of U.S.-backed moderate Islamic states. This policy favored closer relations with Saudi Arabia to gain big loans for the needy Turkish economy.[7] The Cold War’s end, USSR’s disintegration, the birth of new republics mostly inhabited by peoples of Turk origin, the Gulf war’s result and the Bosnian crisis created at the beginning of the 1990s a new international environment which put Turkey in a key position, sometimes in direct competition with Iran for regional strategic influence and economic assets.[8] Nevertheless, that strategy let the Islamic genie out of Ataturk’s bottle, as one researcher put it.[9]

The History of the “Islamic Movement” in Turkey.[10]
Islamic subversive and terrorist activity in Turkey began in the 1960s. As early as 1967 and 1973 the leaders of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Liberation Party) were imprisoned for attempting “to bring the Islamic State Constitution to Turkey”.[11] Islamic Jihad appeared as a real terrorist threat in the 1980s, after a series of assassinations of Jordanian, Saudi and Iraqi diplomats. In October 1991 Islamic Jihad took responsibility for killing an American sergeant and wounding an Egyptian diplomat to protest the Middle East peace conference in Madrid.[12] For many years it was assumed that this group was a Lebanese Shiite terrorist organization, until it was discovered that a Turkish branch existed, engaging in assassinations of secular intellectuals.

As Anat Lapidot correctly notes, defining the Islamic movement is a complex task, since the term is applied to different organizations, with their own ideas and strategies, seeking to establish an Islamic state and society. Citing Sabri Sayari, she distinguishes between traditionalists and radicals, the latter being a minority inspired by the Iranian revolution.[13]

Ismet Imset points to the confusion about these different groups among the general public, researchers, and government circles in Turkey. A report by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and the Security General Directorate of the Police in October 1991 mentioned no less than ten Islamic organizations active in Turkey: Turkish Islamic Liberation Army (IKO), Turkish Islamic Liberation Front (TIK-C), Fighters of the Islamic Revolution (IDAM), Turkish Islamic Liberation Union (TIKB), World Sharia Liberation Army (DSKO), Universal Brotherhood Front-Sharia Revenge Squad (EKC-SIM), Islamic Liberation party Front (IKP-C), Turkish Fighters of the Universal Islamic War of Liberation (EIK-TM), Turkish Islamic Fighters Army (IMO) and Turkish Sharia Revenge Commandos (TSIK).[14]

In this article, Islamic movement is the term used to describe all the currents in Turkish Islam while Islamic Movement refers to one of the main radical groups.

Imset makes a distinction between western and southeast Turkey. In the West the Islamic Movement (Islami Hareket), called also Islamic Resistance (Islami Direnis), is considered to represent the ideological influence of the original (Iranian) Hezbollah.[15] Both Movement and Resistance were only temporary code names, at least until 1990. In southeast Turkey the movement spread first under the name of Hezbollah, then was referred as the Hezbol-contra, to address its anti-PKK activity. According to Imset, Hezbollah and Islamic Movement are in fact one, representing an umbrella organization of groups acting on behalf of what he calls “The International Islamic Movement.”[16]

At the end of the 1970s, under the influence of the coalition between left-wing organizations and Khomeini`s followers in Iran, an alliance of the left, especially Maoists, with radical Islamic elements was established in Turkey and together they attacked the nationalist right. The conflict peaked in February 1979 when a young Muslim leader was killed by nationalists (known as “Idealists”) in the yard of the Fatih mosque in Istanbul.

The Turkish Islamic Movement, like all other radical organizations, received a serious blow during the September 1980 military coup. But, as the regime encouraged the general Islamic trend as a solution to political polarization, and as both Marxists and nationalists lost their influence, Islamic activists were afforded ample space to strengthen their position. The “Hezbollah Muslims” appeared for the first time publicly in 1984 and, as the original Hezbollah, proclaimed support for the Iranian revolution and the defense not of nations or sects, but of “Allah’s way.”

According to Imset, Kalim Siddiqui, a Pakistani active at the Muslim Institute in London, had a key role in unifying Turkey`s radical Islamic Movemen. Thus, the first Hezbollahi appeared in Turkey as the “followers of Siddiki” (sic).[17] A pro-Hezbollah magazine published in November 1987 “The guidelines of the Islamic Movement,” which included the acceptance of the Islamic State as the center of religious belief, the leadership of Muslim scholars, the spread of the mentality of martyrdom and the leadership of the Islamic revolution [in Iran].[18]

A significant development occurred in the middle of the 1980s, with the conversion of some members of the right-wing Nationalist Movement (MHP) to Islam. The death of one of their leaders in prison in 1984 and the tortures suffered by many others convinced a group of extreme nationalist activists “to turn to Allah” and condemn the “darkness of nationalism.”[19] They were heavily influenced by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, but later concluded that Sayyd Kutub’s death forced the Egyptian Islamists into a nationalist position and that true Islam could not tolerate nationalism. These militants were already professionals in the field of terrorism and street fighting and represented a significant operational support for the Islamic Movement.

In southeast Turkey, Islamic radicalism emerged in poor towns and villages with a large Kurdish population (Dyarbakir, Silvan, Cizre, Kiziltepe and others), especially among the young and unemployed. They followed the teachings of local Muslim scholars or sheiks and often organized themselves around extremist Islamic publications such as Tevhid, Yeryuzu and Objektif. Their activity became more visible at the beginning of the 1990s, influenced more and more by Khomeini`s teachings, and they were identified by the local public as Hezbollah, although they considered themselves as belonging to the Islamic Movement.

The ideology of the Turkish Islamic Movement
There are few sources for research on the Turkish Islamic organizations, although they have their own publications and manifestoes distributed quite freely even when they threaten future victims of terrorist attacks. All the material is in Turkish and has neither been collected nor translated. The only other source consists of interviews given by anonymous leaders and activists to Turkish journalists.

In one such interviews, published in February 1993, a militant declared: “We are fighters of the Islamic Liberation Movement, the sword against Satan, blasphemy, Zionism and Imperialism. We have begun taking action only recently in Turkey and our move is based on pain, suffering and patience. We do not pursue a tribal case; our objective is to establish a state for the Muslims.” Asked whether he belonged to Hezbollah, the militant replied that the press gave that name to the organization and that they will adopt it only when the movement will be worthy of it. Meanwhile it has not reached “that level of perfection”[20]

In speaking about the special relationship of the Movement with Iran, the same militant seemed careful not to confirm “the lies of the Turkish state” about such links. Iran is seen as an example and a guide but the instructions are “from the Koran” and not from Iran, “the land of Dar-ul Islam where blasphemy has been crushed.” The Movement needs no instructions from any country because the Koran is the program and shows the strategies and the tactics to be adopted.[21]

It seems that the Sunni origin of the radical Turkish Islamic groups did not prevent their close cooperation with the Iranian Shi’a regime. The material published so far in the Turkish sources does not permit to evaluate the exact nature of these groups’ ideology: declarations as those cited above are general and not binding. Yet, it is known that various Sunni extremist organizations have viewed the Iranian revolution and its leader Khomeini as a catalyst and a model for their own revolutionary endeavor. This is the case of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and its leader Fathi al-Shqaqi[22] or the Algerian Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA),[23] who too received direct Iranian logistic and financial support. The Algerian government even broke diplomatic relations with Iran on this ground.

For its part, the Iranian regime, in spite of its increasing nationalism since the war with Irak, has been keen to convince the Sunni movements that it continued to stick to Khomeini’s Islamic universalistic ideology. Khameneh’i, Iran’s spiritual leader, declared that his country wanted the unity of all Muslim brothers [Sunni and Shi’i], unity focusing on what all Muslims have in common - the Prophet, the Qur’an and the struggle against common enemies.[24]

A report prepared by the Turkish security authorities for the National Security Council at the beginning of 1997 outlined the objectives of the radical religious movements and stressed that their strategy consists of three stages.[25]

The first stage is the message (teblig), and calls for an effort by the radicals to persuade the people to adopt the Islamic religion, establish an Islamic state and administration, live in accordance with Islamic rules and struggle to safeguard the Islamic way of life.

The second stage is the community (cemaat) and calls for the restructuring of communities in accordance with the requirements of the first stage.

The third stage is the struggle (jihad) and calls for the armed struggle to safeguard the Islamic way of life.

Special mention should be made of a strange organization called The Great Eastern Islamic Fighters Front (IBDA-C), active since the middle of the 1970s but more extremist and aggressive since the beginning of the 1990s. Although an Islamic movement struggling for the constitution of an Islamic state, it uses leftist slogans in its publications and accepts ex-Marxists in its ranks. It is also extremely antisemitic and anti-Christian in its propaganda and terrorist activity as well. It is interesting to note that IBDA-C’s publications do not show any particular pro-Iranian tendency.

Enemies and Strategic Objectives
A chronological analysis of terrorist activity of Islamic groups shows that 1990 was probably the starting point for their offensive against the Turkish secular establishment: a professor, journalist, political scientist and writer were assassinated by Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Operation (or Action), the first time this name was used. Muammar Aksoy, a liberal political scientist, was also killed in 1990 and then for the first time the name Islamic Movement appeared.[27]

During 1991, the year of the Gulf War, Islamic radicals seemed to enter a period of reassessment, which ended after the opening of the Madrid peace talks between Arab countries and Israel. In October an American soldier was killed and an Egyptian diplomat wounded by Islamic Jihad.[28] The year 1992 represented the turning point in radical Islamic terrorist activity, as the objectives attacked during this year being from exiled Iranian opposition as well as Jews and Israelis.[29]

But the government, security authorities, public and even the press became really aware of and shocked by the Islamic terrorist threat when Ugur Mumcu, one of Turkey’s top investigative reporters-who had covered the PKK, the rise of Islamic radicalism, and drug smuggling networks-was killed on 24 January 1993 by a car-bomb similar to that used in the assassination of an American computer specialist in October 1991 and an Israeli diplomat in March 1992. Both the Islamic Liberation Organization and IBDA-C took responsibility for the murder.[30]

Several days later an attempt was made on the life of a well-known Turkish businessman and community leader of Jewish origin, Jak Kamhi, by a group of four terrorists who used automatic weapons and even a rocket-launcher. He escaped uninjured. The same month the tortured body of an exiled Iranian dissident-Abbas Gholizadeh, a former officer and the Shah’s bodyguard - kidnapped several weeks before, was discovered by the police.

This series of terrorist events provoked a sharp reaction from Turkish public opinion: huge street demonstrations in favor of the secular regime, a strong press campaign, and swift action by security authorities against the perpetrators and their sponsors. the first time the Islamic Action or Movement and Iran were directly accused of and implicated in acts of terror against the state. The arrests and interrogations of many Turkish members of these organizations unveiled the story behind the killings of Turkish secular intellectuals and anti-Khomeini Iranian exiles in the years 1990 - 1992.[31]

But the arrest and trial of dozens of Islamic terrorists did not dissuade more extremists from continuing to attack Turkish intellectuals fighting for the secular state and values. In July 1993 they set on fire a hotel where a cultural festival was taking place and 37 intellectuals were burned to death.[32] Aziz Nesin, one of Turkey’s leading literary figures, was the main individual target of the fundamentalists. He was accused of intending to publish Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses.” The trial against the suspects of the massacre involved only 20 participants of a much bigger group of those responsible.[33]

The fight of the security authorities against the radicals continued during 1994, when 659 members of Hizbullah were caught, some of them responsible for murders of activists in exiled Iranian opposition groups. In January, four members of the Islamic Movement in Istanbul were arrested for their part in the killing of a Mojahedin-e Khalq activist, the Shah’s ex-bodyguard and a member of the Kurdish opposition, KDPI. In October, a six-man Hezbollah team was arrested while preparing to assassinate, on orders from Iranian intelligence, a woman of Armenian descent guilty of employing “only” Muslim women in her brothel! They were also involved in the assassination of Iranian dissidents.[34]

This same year IBDA-C was responsible for 90 terrorist incidents, including five bombings in various cities.[35] A prominent cinema critic and writer, Onat Kutlar, was killed in December by a bomb attack carried by IBDA-C aimed “at spoiling the colonialist Noel [Christmas] celebrations.”[36]

In 1995, attacks continued. IBDA-C may have been responsible for a bomb attack in January on the building of the Ataturk Association and the attempted assassination in June of a prominent Jewish community leader in Ankara.[37]

One of the most controversial terrorist activities of Hezbollah in southeast Turkey has been the liquidation of dozens of pro-PKK activists, journalists, intellectuals and politicians beginning in the fall of 1991 and throughout 1992 and 1993. It has been widely assumed that this was the work of some splinter group. The amount of immunity it enjoyed from the security authorities due to its anti-PKK nature, earned it the name “Hezbol-contra.”[38]

It must be stressed that its members were mostly of Kurdish origin. The Hizbullah regarded the PKK as Islam’s enemy and has accused it of “trying to create an atheist community, supporting the communist system, trying to divide the people through chauvinist activities and directing pressure on the Muslim people.”[39] An interviewed Hizbullah militant in the southeast described the goal of his organization as the establishment of an “ Islamic Kurdish state in Turkey.”[40]

In March 1993 the PKK signed a “cooperation protocol” with the “Hezbollah Kurdish Revolutionary Party” aimed at ending the conflict and finding “methods for a joint struggle against the Turkish state.” The agreement was achieved after Hezbollah has recognized that “the colonialists” have exploited it and that the clashes in no way benefited the cause of Islam.[41]

A turning point in the Turkish authorities’ attitude toward the Islamic terrorist threat occurred in March 1996, with the arrest of one of the leaders of Islamic Action, Irfan Cagarici, and his confessions about the role his organization has played since the early 1990s in the assassination of secular politicians and intellectuals, with direct support and supervision of Iranian intelligence.[42]

The relations between Turkey and Iran reached a new low as a result. But then, in June 1996, the RP achieved power in an alliance with the center-right True Path Party (DYP) in the first Islamic government in 73 years of secular Kemalist regimes, with Erbakan as prime minister.[43]

Islam’s Growing Political Power and the Problem of Terrorism
The “Turkish-Islamist Synthesis” was a strategy adopted by the political and military establishment at the beginning of the 1980s to counter revolutionary sentiments - especially among Kurdish youth - with the traditional conservatism of tribal leaders and Islamic scholars. The increase in the influence of Islam seemed a modest price to pay for the territorial integrity of the Turkish state.[44]

Turgut Ozal, the first Prime Minister of a civilian government after 1983, himself had strong connections to the Nakshibandi religious order. He pushed for a relaxation of Kemalist and secularist policies and a public admission of Islam as an essential component of Turkish identity. During the long period of his rule as Prime Minister and then president of Turkey, Muslim associations, foundations, publications, television and radio stations, flourished and spread the message of Islam. Islamists built strongholds in the Ministry of Education.[45]

The important role played by Islamic radical publications in the recruitment and indoctrination of militants and the designation of objectives to be attacked, cannot be underestimated: Two printing houses, the Istanbul-based Akademi and Objektif, and the monthlies Yeryuzu and Tehvid have been accused of being behind Hezbollah.[46]

IBDA-C sent death threats to the head of the Jewish community in Ankara before a bomb was placed in his car, and published a list of Jewish targets in the extreme religious periodical Akinci Yolu.[47] IBDA-C’s weekly, Taraf, took responsibility for the bomb attack on the film critic Onat Kutlar in December 1994 and sent “a warning not to play with fire” to TV journalist Ali Kirca, whom it accused of being “anti-Islam.”[48]

In this atmosphere, pro-Islamic politicians received important appointments in the sensitive field of security, such as the Ministry of Interior. This happened even before the 1980 coup, while it was under the control of Erbakan’s National Salvation party. Under the interior minister at the end of the 1980s, Abdulkadir Aksu, the security apparatus - especially the intelligence and personnel departments - was penetrated by pro-Islamic elements and the slightest resistance to fundamentalism was broken. According to Ismet Imset, during this period there was a general inclination in the Ministry towards the “Saudi and even Iranian Islamism.” At the end of 1991, Aksu was replaced as minister and an extensive purge was launched in the ranks of the Police to rid it of fundamentalist officers.[49] According to Zubaida, 700 of the 1,600 key ministry executives, provincial governors and other functionaries were believed to be RP supporters. Even in April 1994 they permitted the waging of unauthorized mass Islamist demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul.[50] Ironically, they were reassigned to posts in the southeast where they supported or ignored the attacks of Hezbollah against the PKK.

The attitude of the Refah party’s leadership regarding the violence and terror on the radical fringes of the Islamic movement is at least ambiguous, if not clearly supportive. Erbakan condemned the violence used in the assassination of journalist Mumcu in March 1993 and declared that it is incompatible with the values of true Islam. But at the same time important members of his party accused Israel for killing him.[51] In November 1993, Erbakan said at his party’s parliamentary meeting that only “Islamic fraternity” could combat the PKK, but he did not mention the terrorism of the Islamic groups at all.[52] Some researchers have even considered Hizbullah as the RP’s armed protector.[53]

Despite all the evidence, as late as the end of 1995 the leading Islamic circles denied even the existence of fundamentalist terrorist organizations. The deputy RP leader, Abdullah Gul, declared that no terror movement is compatible with Islam and that the accusation is “being circulated intentionally before the elections” in order to ithem. According to another leader, most of the crimes in Turkey blamed on the Islamic movement are in fact “international operations” and “plots of the West” against Turkey.[54]

Erbakan’s real policy toward the Islamic terrorist groups can be judged by the hosting of representatives of Palestinian Hamas, Egypt’s Muslim Brothers and Algeria’s FIS at RP’s political convention after his ascent to the premiership. Erbakan was not even impressed by President Mubarak’s protest against the invitation of Egyptian Muslim Brothers to the party congress, which sparked a diplomatic incident with Egypt. Over the years, Erbakan maintained a strange silence about the complicity of neighboring Muslim countries in anti-Turkish terrorism.[55]

“The Iranian Connection” and Turkey’s Reaction
Iran’s policy of supporting and inciting Islamic terrorist activity in Turkey in the early 1990s can be understood as its drive to export the Islamic revolution to a key Muslim country, symbol of secularism and a strategic adversary. Its evaluation of the complex Turkish internal situation and the Islamic trend’s growing influence probably played an important role in the decision to pursue such an aggressive policy. According to this evaluation, the emergence of Turgut Ozal as leader of Turkey in the 1980s caused a gradual change in the relations between the two countries because he succeeded in reducing the sense of opposition to Islam among the political elite in Turkey, pursued a policy which included attention to Islam and expansion of good relations with its Muslim neighbors. Islamic Iran looked at Ozal’s policy on the whole positively and encouraged its continuation.[56]

The Gulf War, the defeat of Ozal’s Motherland Party in the elections of early 1990s, stronger critical views of Islamic Iran among the Turkish authorities, and the increasing press attacks against Iran, weakened Ozal’s “legacy” after his death. Hostility toward Iran reached its peak when a Turkish minister openly accused Iran of “creating insecurity” inside Turkey. Some border violations occurred and the Ankara authorities were reluctant to curtail the activities of Iranian “counterrevolutionary groups” on its territory. Ironically, Iran considered that its “excessively moderate and reactive behavior” produced the escalation of Ankara’s “unfriendly approaches”.

But the failure of secular power circles to get closer to Europe and the United States as a solution for Turkey’s economic problems, the growth of Islamism resulting in the RP’s victory and Erbakan’s premiership, and Turkey’s need for Iran’s support to solve some regional problems, caused a decline in tension between the two countries. According to the Iranian evaluation, President Suleyman Demirel’s inclination to “combine Islam with the particular conditions of Turkey and the more Islamic viewpoints of Premier Erbakan” made possible the improvement of the relations.[57]

It is quite obvious that there was deep Iranian involvement in the terrorist activities waged by Islamic groups and organizations in Turkey. In several of the most important and sensitive cases of terrorism, this interference in Turkish internal political life was proved in court. In other cases there was ample intelligence information transmitted or leaked to the press by the security authorities. The Turkish Islamic militants indicted for the murder of Mumcu and an Iranian dissident in 1993, and two of those accused of murdering three intellectuals in 1990 and a Jewish businessman in 1993, were connected with Iranian agents, among them diplomats stationed in Turkey. They received military training in Iran, on “pursuit, counter-pursuit, weapons and bombs.”[58] The Iranians began their propaganda and indoctrination work through the numerous Cultural Centers they opened in Turkey. There they recruited sympathizers of Khomeini’s doctrine ready to work for their interests and sent them to Iran for training.[59]

As noted previously, an abrupt change occurred in the Turkish authorities’ attitude after Mumcu’s killing. It was only when the murders got out of hand and under growing international criticism that Ankara acknowledged that the Turkish Hizbullah truly existed.[60]

For the first time, a Turkish minister of interior declared at a press conference that members of radical Islamic organizations underwent months of military and theoretical training in Iranian security installations, traveled with Iranian real and forged documents, had weapons and explosives of Iranian origin and participated in attacks on Turkish citizens and also Iranian opposition militants.[61] In spite of these grave revelations, the overall political approach towards Iran was very cautious. The minister of interior concluded that Iran as a state was not behind these actions, that it had no interest in such murders in Turkey, but, however, “the perpetrators had connections in Iran.”

A detailed account of the “Iranian Connection” in these cases and the official Turkish ambiguous position was given by Imset.[63] President Ozal remarked that “foreign forces” may be behind provocative incidents and may have supporters in Turkey, without naming them.[64] Prime Minister [at that time] Demirel called for a “coolheaded” approach to the Iranian link in order not to disrupt bilateral relations unnecessarily. He expressed the belief that the Iranian state was not involved in the murders and that it would cooperate on the issue with the Turkish authorities.[65]

Although Iranian officials denied any involvement in aiding or training Turkish terrorist organizations, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Velayati, had a more subtle reaction. In an interview to Turkish television he excluded even the possibility that any anti-Turkish activity can be conducted on Iran’s territory and escape the Iranian state’s control. He denied that Iran geared activities or movements against Turkey but at the same time he accused the Turkish government of supporting, directly or indirectly, terrorist groups opposed to the regime in Iran. He proposed to discuss these “mutual allegations” in the framework of the common security committee. He vaguely denied any ties with anti-secular circles in Turkey but added that if there were groups in Turkey that liked the Iranian model and were inspired by its values, it could not be argued that Iran has created them. A Turkish political commentator noted that Velayati’s general behavior during the interview strengthened the conviction that Tehran supports acts of terrorism by radical Turkish supporters and wanted to use Mumcu’s murder to bargain with Turkey.[66]

Turkey has indeed given humanitarian shelter to more than a million Iranians, many of them political refugees from Khomeini’s regime. In fact, Iran has never presented any evidence of Turkey’s alleged involvement in terrorist activities on its territory. It is known that since the end of the Gulf War, the main opposition violent organization, Mujahedin-e Khalq, has not mounted terrorist operations in Iran, apart from occasional cross-border operations by its “National Liberation Army” from Iraqi soil and with Iraqi assistance.[67]

Relations between Turkey and Iran in the following years continued to be strained, with persistent ups and downs. But the main matter of conflict was now the issue of Iran’s support to the PKK. The PKK intensified its terrorist activity in 1994 and began a campaign of international terrorism inside and outside Turkey, while Iran offered a safe-haven to the PKK fighters.[68]

The Iranian relative inactivity on the radical Islamic front was probably also due to the successful operations waged by the Turkish security forces against the Islamic groups and the consequent decline in their terrorist activities in 1994 and 1995, compared with 1993. Radical Islamist organizations staged 86 acts of violence in 1995, compared with 464 attacks in 1994. A total of 25 persons died and 21 were wounded in these attacks, staged mainly by Hizbullah and IBDA-C. “Ilim,” one of Hizbullah’s two splinter groups (Ilim and Menzil) stopped most of its armed activity, many cadre of the Islamic Movement were arrested and IC retained its level of activity mostly by acts of bombing and arson.[69]

The assassination in February 1996 in Istanbul of two leading Iranian opposition activists and the arrest in March 1996 of the Islamic Action leader, Irfan Cagarici, and his revelations about the “Iranian Connection” again sparked the political and diplomatic dispute between the two governments. But the accusations were related mainly to the old known terrorist attacks of 1990-1993 and did not seriously affect bilateral relations.

But then in June 1996 the Islamic-lead coalition came to power in Turkey and Erbakan embarked upon an enthusiastic effort to improve relations with Iran.[70] He visited Libya and Iran immediately after his nomination and signed an agreement with Iran for the supply of natural gas for the amount of 23 billion dollars. On the internal arena Erbakan tried to advance, very cautiously, some fundamentalist reforms, lifting the ban on headscarves for women in government offices and encouraging the attendance of religious schools.

An Islamic Scheme?
Most scholars agree that although Turkish Islam shares many common features with other Middle East Islamic fundamentalist movements, it has grown and developed in a very different political and social environment shaping its unique nature. As Sami Zubaida points out, Turkey’s Islamist ideology is tied up with Turkish nationalism in an unique fashion and challenges the secularist components and European identification of Kemalism, the dominant and official form of Turkish nationalism. At the same time the RP, the Islamic movement’s leading political force, has integrated fully in the Turkish pluralist system. This may account, according to Zubaida, for the marginality of the violent Islamic groups.[71]

Was the RP a legitimate democratic party that unconditionally supported the existing secular order, or did it use the pluralist system and democratic methods only as a means toward its ultimate goal of installing an Islamic sharia’-based state in Turkey. RP’s ambiguous and tortuous policy over the issue of Islamic terrorism in Turkey and Iranian involvement in it during the years 1990-1996 casts some doubts about its genuine acceptance of the democratic values and the secular regime. What probably most influenced the RP’s moderate and cautious policies over the years has been the need to take in account the Turkish army’s firmness in defending the Kemalist secular regime and to avoid a direct clash with its secular nationalist core.

This also seems to have been the strategy of the more violent, terrorist groups of the Islamic movement. The Islamic terrorist groups never attacked military or security personnel, although many of their members were killed during the security forces’ anti-terrorist campaigns. Only low-level local, mostly Kurdish, politicians have been killed by these organizations but no top secular politicians. This contrast with Egypt or Algeria, where high-ranking military and police personnel or politicians involved in the fight against the Islamic organizations have been one of their preferred targets.[72] Moreover, Turkish Islamic groups have not attacked Western targets or acted abroad, like other Islamic groups or the PKK, though they have some infrastructure in Europe.[73]

The main targets attacked have been secular intellectuals and media professionals, so important in defending secular values and shaping public opinion’s views against the Islamic movement. The elimination of these personalities profited all streams in the Islamic movement and did not seem to provoke a strong reaction against terrorist groups and their political mentors, at least until the assassination of Mumcu. Islamic groups attacked and threatened Jewish personalities, the Jewish community and probably also Israeli diplomats. By these actions they implemented the anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist aspect of the extremist Islamic ideology. In this they were not different from RP, which expressed antisemitic and anti-Israeli views in its propaganda, its official economic platform, and accused Israel for murderous attacks against secular personalities perpetrated by the Islamists themselves.[74]

It can thus be hypothesized that even if there was no structural or formal connection between the Islamic movement’s political and violent streams, there was an objective ideological alliance and a de facto cooperation between them toward achieving the goal of establishing a Turkish Islamic state. It is quite clear that the RP leaders tried to cover up the radicals’ violent practices but there is no published evidence about the Islamic terrorist organizations’ attitude toward the RP’s role in advancing and deepening Islam’s influence in Turkey and the relations with the main Islamic party.

The tolerance shown by part of the security establishment - especially those in the ministry of interior and the police who came to senior positions due to their Islamic views or connections - helped terrorist groups in their formative period. It was another sign of the penetration of Islamic influence in the secular security establishment. The top military echelons were clearly worried by this trend and the threat of “reactionism” to the military discipline and it seems that the uncovered attempt of one of the police agencies to spy on the National Security Council fostered its decision to confront the Erbakan government and force it to resign.[75]

Iran’s radical anti-secular, anti-Zionist ideology explains the close cooperation with the terrorist Islamic groups in Turkey. Commenting on an anti-Turkish demonstration of Turkish Islamists in Tehran, an Iranian daily claimed that the domination of secularism and Zionism are “the two anti-Islamic platforms linked together in the artificial and short history of Turkey” and that the Muslim people of Turkey has the right to protest those who have imposed “these two flimsy and foreign ideas on their fates.” According to the commentator, “Zionism’s increasing mischief, the inefficiency of the broken arrow of secularism, the growing religious awareness of Muslims and of political Islam in Turkey” permitted RP’s anti-alien, anti-Zionist, anti-secularist policies to emerge, for the first time in 73 years, as the main political party.[76]

Riding on the Islamic anti-secular, anti-Zionist wave, the Iranian government also achieved a more immediate tactical bonus by liquidating dozens of Iranian opposition activists. The fact that part of the “dirty work” was done by radical Turkish groups made the attacks more effective and made it easier for the Iranian government to deny involvement in the killings. At the same time, the Turkish terrorist organizations profited materially from Iranian backing in training, logistical support, weapons and explosives and a much needed safe-haven.

Although Iran claimed Iranian-Turkish relations were optimal during Ozal’s government, Iranian support to Turkish terrorist groups began as early as 1987 and peaked in the early 1990s when he served as Turkey’s President. It is more realistic to assume that Iran tried to take advantage of the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” policy and Ozal’s government pro-Islamic tendencies in order to accelerate the radicalization of the Islamic movement.

The pressure on Turkey grew after the Gulf War, when Iran felt stronger regionally, eager to counter-balance Turkey’s influence in Central Asia and encouraged by the lack of reaction from the Turkish authorities, at least until 1993. The weakening of the Islamic radicals and the RP’s strengthening in the Turkish political arena, reduced Iran’s role, though it substantially increased its support to the PKK guerrilla and terrorist activity.

There is no doubt that the dramatic decrease in the terrorist activity of radical Islamic groups is mainly a consequence of the determined counter-action taken by the Turkish security forces beginning 1993 and the following years. Yet, the lack of any major act of Islamic terrorism during Erbakan’s premiership and until the decision of the Constitutional Court to outlaw his party leaves us with some question marks about the strategy of thesegroups and the real goals of their leaders and sponsors.

The Turkish Military Lead an All-out Fight to Eradicate the Islamist Forces
Even the growing military and strategic cooperation between Turkey and Israel during 1996 and 1997 did not generate any particular violent activity against the Turkish defense establishment or Israeli targets, in spite of the clear opposition of the Refah Party and the uneasiness and anxiety it provoked in Iran.

However, the Turkish military gave no respite to the new Islamic prime minister. On August 3, 1996, the Supreme Military Council (SMC) convened under Erbakan and all the commanders declared that “reactionism”, i.e. Islamic fundamentalism, is becoming an important threat to Turkey and that the problem of attire, the way people dress, is in fact a question of “intention and ideology”. The military observed that although the extreme religious trends have intensified their activities, the matter was not discussed in the SMC during the past year.[77] This meeting could be seen as the watershed in the Turkish Army’s decision to unequivocally end the era of the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis strategy and embark upon an all-out fight against the Islamist forces, the political and the violent one.

Following this first direct warning, President Demirel sent several warning letters to the government, without result. On 27 January 1997 the National Security Council (NSC) met and asked the prime minister to take action, and not only make statements, in order to stop the “illegal activities” and defend the secular regime. Finally, the NSC met again on 28 February 1997 and the military commanders attacked the government’s conduct and asked for urgent action unless “undesirable” developments may take place.

The twenty urgent demands of the Army included “enforcement of neglected constitutional requirements on dress codes and on banning of sufi brotherhoods; reversal of worrisome social and political trends, such as the growth of religious schools and infiltration of Islamists into the bureaucracy; special restrictions implicitly aimed at Refah, such as limits on cash transactions by Islamist groups and acceptance of party responsibility for the ‘unconstitutional,’ i.e., anti-secular, behavior of its members; and careful monitoring of Iranian efforts to ‘destabilize’ Turkey.”[78]

Erbakan avoided the implementation of NSC’s decisions and persisted even in anticipating the possibility of “defense industrial cooperation” with Iran. But the breaking point was the “Jerusalem Day” incident in January 1997: The mayor of Sincan, a suburb near Ankara, organized a “Jerusalem Night” with the support of Iranian diplomats. During that night he hanged large posters of the leaders of foreign Islamist terrorist organizations, like Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hizballah, and said that he “will infuse the shari’a into the intellectual sector.” Following the mayor’s arrest by the Ankara State Security Court a minister visited him in prison in an attempt to create the image that he was protesting the court’s verdict. Erbakan neither condemned the remarks nor dissociated himself from them.[79]

The events succeeded abruptly: on June 18, 1997, under Army’s pressure, Erbakan was forced to resign; on 16 January 1998 the Constitutional Court outlawed the Refah Party and barred Erbakan from political life for five years; in February 1998 a new party, the Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi - FP), replaced the RP, gathering in its ranks some 130 parliamentarians from the old movement.

The Turkish Army’s thinking concerning the threat of Islamic extremism to the secular regime was clearly and systematically presented in the speech delivered by Lt. Gen. Cetin Saner, chief of intelligence of the General Staff, in the briefing organized in June 1997 by the Office of the Chief of the General Staff [OCGS] entitled “Reactionary Activities.”[80] There is no place here for more than several passages from this remarkable document, therefore the citations will relate only to the specific themes interesting this article.

At the opening there is an implicit recognition of the failure of the Turkish-Islamist Synthesis strategy: “Following the transition to a multiparty system and as a result of concessions made to the detriment of Ataturkist principles and reforms, the reactionary sector stepped up its work to organize nationally under the umbrella of democracy.” Then comes the admission that “this situation has turned individual fundamentalist activities into a mass movement [and] has created a climate that encourages and rewards those who raise a green banner instead of the sacred flag of the Turkish Republic.” Even the appearance of separatist movements [the Kurdish problem] is attributed to “the authority vacuum,” to “[t]hose who do not wish to recognize the Turkish national identity and…have undertaken activities behind the guise of the more international religious identity…as a first step toward their ultimate goal of destroying the unity and harmony of the Turkish Republic.”

The speech contains a lengthy description of the activities and incidents which have led, particularly since the advent of the Erbakan government, to the actual dangerous situation, and the huge political,[81] social,[82] economical[83] and propaganda[84] infrastructure built by the Islamist movements and organizations during the last years. Then the Chief of Intelligence enumerates the facts relating to the Islamic terrorist activity, its cooperation with the PKK, its connections with the political sector and the support it has received from Iran.

- A “proreactionary” parliamentary [is accused of declaring] that the Army cannot ignore millions of supporters of political Islam who voted for a certain political party [Refah] [and] asking his constituency to prepare for a jihad against the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF). He [affirmed] that those who cannot contend with 3,500 PKK militants would be unable to cope with 6 million supporters of political Islam.

- The “reactionary sector” has approached the terrorist problems in the east and the southeast [of Turkey] that have threatened the integrity of the country for many years with an “ummetist” ideology [a unifying Islamic view] as part of its efforts to expand its constituency in that region.

- It has been determined that the separatist terror organization [PKK] sees radical Islamist groups as its closest allies in its drive to realize its objectives against Turkey and that it promotes the training given in its camps in northern Iraq as preparation for jihad. Commenting on the rise of the reactionary sector, the head of the separatist terror organization [Abdullah Ocalan] appraised the growth of reactionary activities as a suitable opportunity for the realization of their goals and openly declared that ties with this sector must be further developed.

- An “Association of Imams” was formed in accordance with the decisions of the second conference of the [PKK] in Lebanon; it was decided to turn every mosque “into a center of propaganda and rebellion.” Certain separatist and proreactionary imams in some mosques implemented these decisions.

- The terrorist organization [PKK] brought into being an organization named “Kurdistan Islamic Movement” with the purpose of reaching larger masses. At the congress of the Kurdistan Islamic Movement in July 1993 a series of decisions were made to expand ties with other religious groups, to induct women into the war, to unite so-called Kurdistan and to revive the old Kurdish madrassas [religious schools] and religious complexes.

- It is becoming increasingly evident that the separatist terror organization [PKK], whose influence in Turkey has been declining steadily, is now working behind and with the support of reactionary elements at home and abroad and that it is trying to generate new options by forming an alliance with them.

- When the ties of the reactionary sector with Islamist terrorist organizations and countries that support international terrorism, chiefly Iran, to achieve its aims are examined, the following situation is seen:

Iran has systematically provided every type ofmaterial and moral support to have a shari’a-based regime established in Turkey.

There are findings that Iran controls Hezbollah, Selam, and the Islamic Movement, which are radical Islamist organizations that engage in terrorist activities, and that the senior administrators of these organizations are being trained in Iran.

Iran provides financial support, passports, and shelter in Iran for militants of Islamic terrorist organizations who are involved in terrorist acts in Turkey.

Iran supports the reactionary sector with propaganda, especially through the press, and thus flagrantly interferes in Turkey’s internal affairs.

- It is known that Sudan also has close ties with the reactionary sector in Turkey and that it provides support to Islamic terror organizations.

The Chief of Intelligence remarked that the “National Security Policy Document, approved by Decree No. 92/3514 of the Council of Ministers on 17 September 1992, saw “the Kurdish separatist terrorist as the most urgent threat Turkey faced at that period and the shari’a-based Islamist threat, which has been supported and developed by certain Islamic nations, only as a serious peril against the secular state order.” It is only after the 28 February 1997 NSC meeting and as a result of the situation described above that the OCGS classified the threat posed by Islamist activities in Turkey at the same level as the PKK terrorist threat.

TAF’s conclusion is that “ the triangle of commerce, politics, and tarikats is operating actively” in Turkey and that some 30 radical organizations active “in the reactionary sector” are not satisfied with the public protests staged by them against NSC’s decisions. They have argued that it is necessary to undertake violent action and therefore it is “highly probable that these radical organizations may organize themselves over a broader base and resort to terrorist actions as developments unfold.”

Based on Article 35 of Law No. 211 on Domestic Service of the Turkish Armed Forces and restated in Article 85/1 of the TAF’s Domestic Service Governing Statute the OCGS reiterates its responsibility “[t]o defend, if necessary by arms, the Turkish homeland and republic against domestic and external threats.” In order to cope with this threat, a new unit, the Western Working Group, was formed and put into operation. Through this organization, “the TAF is developing a snapshot of political Islam across the country and monitoring closely and methodically the general scene related to reactionary activities across the country and in all its dimensions.”

In late July 1997, clashes erupted into violence in the first major Islamic demonstration since the forced resignation in June of Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. At least 13 people were wounded and scores arrested in clashes in Ankara, between police and thousands of Islamists protesting a government plan to curtail religious education severely in secondary schools.[85] But calm situation on the radical Islamic front continued after Erbakan’s resignation and the decision of Turkey’s Constitutional Court to outlaw the RP on December 16, 1997.

The impact of the secular military and civil establishment’s firm policy could be felt after the elections to the Turkish parliament in April 1999. The Islamist Virtue Party, the biggest grouping in the previous parliament and successor of the banned RP took only 15 percent of the vote, suffering a bitter defeat, although it succeeded to re-elect its mayors in the country’s two largest cities, Istanbul and Ankara. The real winners of these elections were the prime minister Bulent Ecevit and his Democratic Left Party (DLP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which took about 18 percent of the vote, astonishing even its own leaders.[86] Many votes for Nationalist Action came at Virtue Party’s expense, apparently cast by voters trying to show their dissatisfaction with the political establishment.[87] Both Ecevit and the MHP appeared to have gained from fears of Kurdish activism and what analysts called the “Ocalan Factor.” Ecevit saw his popularity rise enormously with the capture of PKK’s leader Abdullah Ocalan shortly after he took office in January 1999.[88]

“Virtue’s decline will pull Turkey away from the appearance of a country where radical Islam is on the rise,” commented Ertugrul Ozkok, editor of the Hurriyet newspaper.[89] The Constitutional Court opened a closure case against the Virtue Party after the April 18, 1999 elections on the charges that the party was carrying out anti-secular activities and was the successor of the RP.[90]

Terrorist and Counter-terrorist Activities in the Wake of RP’s Downfall
It is difficult to have an accurate picture of the terrorist activity of Islamist groups in Turkey since 1997. Lists of the most active radical groups were publicized in various official reports. Most of the data published by the Turkish press relates to the terrorist activities of IBDA-C in the big cities, Istanbul and Ankara. Hizbullah is active mainly in eastern and southeastern Anatolia and the national press rarely reports its attacks.[91] These actions surface when members of Hizbullah are detained in police operations, and generally are not detailed. There is also a difference between the targets attacked by the two main organizations: while IBDA-C targeted secular journalists and intellectuals, symbolic sites of the secular regime, Christian (Greek) shrines, and even brothels (!), Hizbullah focused in killing and wounding people in the southeastern provinces (including militants suspected to be informers of the police), extorting money and engaging in organizational activities in primary and high schools, universities, mosques, and shrines.[92]

After a lull in IBDA-C’s activity in 1997 and 1998 the organization staged a series of attacks beginning October 1999, which could be regarded as a campaign to emphasize its renewed strength.[93] The most important and striking attack has been the assassination the 21st October 1999 of Ahmet Taner Kislali, a former minister, academic and respected newspaper columnist, killed outside his home in Ankara by a homemade pipe bomb placed on top of his car. Although several conspiratorial theories have been proposed regarding this event, taking in consideration the intensive terrorist activity developed by IBDA-C during these weeks, it is quite probable that it stood behind the killing of a staunch defender of the secular regime and values. In June 1999 the General Directorate of Security affirmed that it has received a tip-off saying that IBDA-C was preparing to assassinate Premier Bulent Ecevit.[94]

One of the reasons for the assassination and the terrorist autumn campaign could be the trial of Salih Izzet Erdis, (alias Salih Mirzabeyoglu), considered to be the leader of IBDA-C, and three of his deputies. These militants were caught as a result of operations conducted on 29 December 1998 against the organization. According to security officials the arrests thwarted planned bloody attacks. The organization planned these operations because in 1998 the holy month of Ramadan and New Year’s Eve were celebrated at the same time.[95] Their trial began in April 1999 and the Istanbul State Security Court accused Erdis of “attempting to topple the existing constitutional order through the use of force” and asked the death sentence for him.[96] During the trial, dozens of sympathizers of IBDA-C manifested violently in front of the court and more than thirty were arrested.

As a result, the Turkish security authorities intensified the counter-terrorist measures and arrested many active members of the organization, although they did not found the connection with Kislali’s assassination. On 15 November twenty members of IBDA-C have been caught getting ready to carry out sensational acts of terrorism in Istanbul. In searches conducted on the suspects and in places they indicated, numerous weapons, bombs, material used for making bombs, and organizational documents were found. The police has claimed that the suspects were getting ready to assassinate several well-known personalities, including Professor YaNuri Ozturk, dean of the Theology School at Istanbul University, and writer and columnist Fatih Altayli.[97] They were also preparing to stage bomb attacks on November 6, to protest the foundation anniversary of the Institution of Higher Education (YOK). Hasan Ozdemir, the Director General of Istanbul Police stressed that Erdis, IBDA-C’s imprisoned leader, declared 1999 as “The Year of Conquest.”[98]

According to Turkish officials, 20 separate operations were staged against IBDA-C in 1998 and 1999. 166 suspects were captured and 35 acts of terror were clarified by their capture.

As stated above, the terrorist activity of Hizbullah is not detailed in the open sources available to the researcher. Therefore the number of attacks, of the victims and the damage involved, is not known. But what is clear from the published data is that the security authorities have waged a relentless campaign against the military and civil infrastructure of all Hizbullah’s branches, considered to be the most powerful and dangerous of all the Islamist violent organizations. These extensive counter-terrorist operations were carried on parallel to the well-publicized war against the PKK guerrilla forces in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, but received no attention from the foreign media.

The first wave of arrests began in spring 1998. On 22 April 1998 the Interior Minister Murat Basesgioglu stated that the operations that have been launched against Hizbullah, in the eastern and southeastern Anatolian provinces in particular, are continuing in an intensive manner. By the end of the month, 130 of the 1,000 wanted militants were captured in Diyarbakir alone. Some of the weapons seized were used in the murder of four people and the wounding of two others between 1993 and 1996. Dozens of other militants have been arrested in May in Batman, Mersin and the Mus province. It was reported that as a result of the heavy blows suffered by the organization it even prepared for suicide attacks, in order to boost the morale of its militants.

Operations and arrests continued sporadically at the end of 1998,[99] but more serious counter-terrorist campaigns followed in March 1999, when a total of 400 members of Hizbullah were captured during operations launched in southeastern Diyarbakir, Mardin and Batman provinces, and again in June.[100] Parallel to the tracking of IBDA-C terrorists in October and November 1999, the operations against Hizbullah continued with the arrest in a major round up of nearly 100 militants in Diyarbakir, including a number of senior figures. A large number of weapons and documents belonging to the organization were also seized. In November it was announced that Hizbullah’s organization in eastern Turkey has been completely cracked as a result of an operation in which large quantities of weapons were also seized.[101] According to police, seven of those arrested have asked for amnesty under the terms of a “Repentance Law” recently adopted by the Turkish parliament.

In January 1999, Kemal Donmez, the Chairman of Struggle Against Terrorism Department, summing up the counter-terrorist activity of his organization declared that a total of 3,793 people were captured within 10 years in operations launched against illegal fundamentalist organizations like Hizbullah, IBDA-C, Islamist Movement and Islamic Communities Union.[102] The arrest of many Hizbullah militants brought to light 800 crimes, 400 of which were unsolved murders.

In spite of the successes of the Turkish security forces, the struggle to eradicate these violent Islamic groups is far from over. It was revealed that the organization is composed of at least 20,000 people and strives to establish a “Kurdish-Islam”` state in Southeastern Anatolian Region. The latest operations have shown that the organizational skills and overall strength of Hizbullah were much greater than previously assumed. In the floppy disks seized during the arrests, the names of thousands of members of the organization were recorded but not all of these people could possibly be militants and most of them are probably sympathizers or people who provided outside support to the terrorist organization.[103]

The Terrorist-Political Connection
The fight against the Islamist forces has been not less intense on the political ground. In 1999, for the first time the former Islamist prime minister was accused of being directly involved in connections with terrorist organizations. In March, the State Prosecutor Nuh Mete Yuksel accused Necmettin Erbakan of participating on 25 December 1993, in Tehran, in meetings with the [Greek] 17 November organization, Fatah (sic), the Lebanese Hizballah, the Japanese Red Army, Abu-Nidal Group, Turkish Hizbullah, and the RP members under the chairmanship of [Iran’s president] Khamene’i. The accusation was based on the testimony of Altan Karamanoglu, the [former Turkish] Ambassador in Baku. In that meeting it was decided to establish a joint command which would provisionally be headquartered in Iran but moved to Turkey when a theocratic regime would be set up there.[104]

According to an indictment prepared by Prosecutor Nuh Mete Yuksel, the RP’s former Deputy Chairman Ahmet Tekdal and former Deputies Sevki Yilmaz, Hasan Huseyin Ceylan and Ibrahim Halil Celik are facing death sentences in accordance with Article 146 of the Turkish Penal Code on charges that they tried to undermine the current constitutional state system and replace it with a state based on religious principles. The 75-page indictment states that the National View, the main ideological body of the Islamists, aimed to replace the current democratic system with another one with an Islamic basis.[105]

The Virtue Party (FP) and RP were also accused of links with radical Islamic organizations abroad, such as the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) of Algeria and the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria. Past speeches by the accused were given as evidence against them. Calls for Jihad, have been made several times by leaders of the National View, but they have always stressed that Jihad would not mean an armed struggle. The indictment charges the National View of contacts with IBDA-C.

Most importantly, representatives of the National View reportedly had contacts with the PKK. Attributing recent revelations to the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, the indictment accuses Erbakan that during his tenure as prime minister he has promised to legitimize the “status of bandits.”

According to the prosecutor, based on legal interpretation of the Turkish law, there is no need to necessarily resort to armed action to face criminal charges under TPC Article 146 for “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order [because] those who already control the power and population of the state do not have to necessarily resort to force to be charged with the crime of violating the constitution.”[106]

Finally, in July 1999, Uzbek dissidents convicted of having a role in a February 1999 assassination attempt against President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov have claimed that former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan had helped them financially. The testimonies were broadcast on Uzbekistan television.[108]

Hizbullah Plans To Take Over PKK Cadres
One of the possible consequencesof PKK’s decline as a fighting organization against the Turkish state, after the demise of its guerrilla strategy and the new peace process strategy devised by its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan, could be a strengthening of the radical Islamist groups, and mainly Hizbullah.

As remarked at the beginning of this article, the relations between the PKK and some of the Islamic radical groups at the beginning of the 1990s were marked by ideological conflict and rivalry over the same Kurdish constituency in southeastern Turkey. At times this conflict permitted the Turkish authorities to use the more extremist elements of Islamic Kurdish Hizbullah in their fight against the nationalist Kurdish PKK. This situation changed in 1993, when the two conflicting sides understood the danger of the internecine strife and arrived to an agreement of modus-vivendi and common struggle against the Kemalist regime. It seems that since then the PKK and most of the Islamist radicals cooperated on the local operational arena.[109]

Hasan Yalcin, acting leader of the Labor Party, has claimed that a cooperation agreement, which includes the perpetrating of some attacks, was signed between the ARGK [People’s Liberation Army of Kurdistan], the military wing of the PKK, and the fundamentalist Rahmet Group. He affirmed that there exists a protocol between the PKK and IBDA-C about common terrorist training. Within this framework, the PKK took some IBDA-C militants to Greece where they underwent training in acts of sabotage. According to Yalcin, the agreement between the PKK and the Hizbullah is also still in force. Kemal Donmez, the Chairman of Struggle Against Terrorism Department, also declared that IBDA-C from time to time cooperated with PKK.

According to the Istanbul Hurriyet, Hizbullah avoided an armed clash with the PKK since 1995 and has taken punitive measures against it only on rare occasions, because it views the PKK militants as a “ready military force.” The Hizbullah views whatever belongs to the PKK as property that can be taken “free of charge” and could be inherited in case Ocalan is executed and his organization dismembered.[110]

Dr. Emin Gurses, from the Department of International Relations at Sakarya University, thinks that the PKK is in a process of disintegration and that the void will be filled by an organization built on “religious discrimination.” He defined the new threat as Hizbul-PKK. Associate Professor Umit Ozdag, from the School of Political Sciences at Gazi University, stated that it would be very difficult for the PKK to continue without the leadership of Ocalan, which was behind the raising of money in Europe. Without financial backing, the organization cannot survive with leaders like Cemil Bayik or Osman Ocalan. In his opinion Hizbullah is building up seriously, although it does not have yet the practical experience of the PKK. He also speaks about the threat of a Hizbul-PKK.[111]

“The Iranian Connection” Revisited
The Iranian regime welcomed the new pro-Islamic policy of Erbakan and tried to make the best of it, on the economic as well as on the political level. But the warming in relations did not interfere with the overall strategy of furthering the Islamization of Turkey. In February 1997, Mohammad Reza Baqeri, the Iranian ambassador to Turkey participated in an Islamic meeting for the al-Quds Day in Ankara’s Sincan district together with the RP mayor, from where he called for the liberation of Jerusalem. This incident gave the Turkish army the occasion for a symbolic manifestation of the strength of its armored forces in the streets of Sincan and caused the expulsion of the un-diplomatic ambassador.

In an interview to the Istanbul Turkiye, the Iranian ambassador said that at Sincan he only spoke about facts concerning Israel and that beyond that he did not even make any slight hint about Turkey, “I did not mention Hizbullah or anything like that. I simply produced historic examples to show that Israel is a fundamentalist state. I did not even mention Yasir ‘Arafat.” He added, candidly, that the year before he had presented a far tougher speech at Jerusalem Day, but then the press did not even devote a line to it. “Had the RP not been in government this year the press would again not have mentioned it. It is inconceivable to use a neighboring country to get rid of the RP, and that without justification,” complained the ambassador.[112]

The expanding military cooperation and the common maneuvers of the Turkish and Israeli naval forces, which Erbakan was not able to cancel, caused great concern in the Iranian governmental circles and were considered a new American-Zionist plot to isolate and encircle Iran.[113] The Iranian regime considers the conflict with Turkey not merely as a strategic and political competition between two rival regional powers, but mostly as an ideological battle between its radical Islamic worldview and Turkey’s “adamant [will] to translate into practice the western concept of secularism”.[114]

After PKK’s expulsion from Syria, in October 1998 and the capture of its leader Abdullah Ocalan in February 1999 in Kenya, Iran was accused of actively supporting the Kurdish organization and trying to use it against Turkey. Turkish intelligence established that Osman Ocalan, Abdullah’s brother, who aspires to be the new leader of the PKK, is under the protection of government officials in Iran and that he meets them occasionally for talks. It was reported that Iran is preparing Osman Ocalan and his men for bloody terrorist attacks against Turkey and providing them with logistic and technical aid. According to information provided to Turkey by reliable sources, Iran is seeking to pursue the same policy of supporting terrorism against Turkey that Syria tried for some time to employ without avail.[115]

According to the Turkish press, Tehran wants to control not only the PKK but also Hizbullah, which is organized in the same region. During his interrogation, PKK’s leader Abdullah Ocalan admitted that Iran served as mediator between the PKK and Turkish Hizbullah. Seyit, an Iranian secret service agent visited Ocalan occasionally in Syria until 1996 and discussed the border question with him. Ocalan asked Seyit to mediate in the confrontation between PKK and Hizbullah.[116]

In July 1999 the Turkish authorities reported again that according to information provided by Abdulaziz Tunc, the first “confessor” of Hizbullah, and an assistant of its escaped leader, Huseyin Velioglu, Iran provided support to this terrorist organization. Tunc and other members of the Hizbullah traveled to Iran in 1988 and were trained there under the auspices of the Iranian administration on how to use hand grenades, automatic weapons and rockets.[117]

The same month Tehran complained that Turkey had bombed an Iranian border town at the mountainous junction of the Iranian, Iraqi, and Turkish borders - an area used by PKK guerrillas - killing five people and wounding ten. Iran retorted by capturing two Turkish soldiers accused of straying into Iranian territory while pursuing the PKK; rather than return the soldiers immediately, Iran initially announced that they would be put on trial. These incidents fueled the bilateral tension between the two countries.[118]

On the political level the military incidents were accompanied by harsh criticism of the Iranian regime by Turkish prime minister Bulent Ecevit, who labeled student protest demonstrations in Iran’s cities a “natural” reaction against an “outdated regime of oppression.” Ecevit accused Iran of replacing Syria as the biggest base for rebels of the PKK. “It seems that Iran has taken Syria’s place to a great extent,” the Anatolian News Agency quoted Ecevit as saying.

The tension was defused after the liberation of the two soldiers taken prisoners and a series of Turkish-Iranian security meetings focusing on Tehran’s allegedly growing support to anti-Turkish organizations. Korkmaz Haktanir, the Undersecretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, visited Iran between October 17-18 and had talks with the Iranian leaders. During the talks Iran was asked to be vigilant against terrorists uIranian territory for transit passages. Sermet Atacanli, the Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman, later stated that security mechanisms between Turkey and Iran were set up and as a result of the operation of the security mechanism positive developments are taking place.[119]

The Turkish daily Milliyet analysed Iran’s policy in this context: “Democratic and modern Turkey that nonetheless respects and is committed to its religion constitutes a model for the Iranians, and the Tehran regime is uneasy about that.” Tehran is also aware of its military weakness. Iran’s economy is frail and the latest student protests demonstrated that there are many dissatisfied people ready to oppose the regime. Moreover, Iran is worried by the possible attitude of its important Azeri Turk minority. All these factors entail that even if Iran creates difficulties it is unlikely to risk a hot war with Turkey. But, “[w]ill Turkish-Iranian relations return to normal if this crisis is over? Will there not be new grounds for disputes?” asks the Turkish newspaper. Its estimation is that even after the end of the prisoners’ crisis Iran will not want to pursue friendship with Turkey as long as it does not have a democratic and strong regime and the stormy relationship between the two countries will continue.[120]

The Iranian estimation concerning the thorny bilateral relations, as conveyed by the Tehran daily Resalat, is not optimistic either. The bombing by Turkish military aircraft on Iranian territory “has put the Iranian nation in psychological conditions of war and rancour toward the government and the military ruling over Turkey.” The newspaper accuses the Ecevit government and his personal remarks to be responsible for directing the Turkish anger against Iran, because it regards Islam in Turkey as an extension of the growing Islamic tendency in Iran. Moreover, the Turkish military aggression against Iran must be seen not only “in terms of that country’s national interests and objectives…but also as the direct result of Turkey’s membership of NATO …and its special ties with America and the Zionist regime.” It stresses the fact that the recent incidents coincided with president Demirel’s visit “to the occupied Palestine.” Turkey is presented therefore as a linking platform between military activity against Iran and “the centers controlling those activities in the West and the Zionist regime.” Thus, even if the present crisis was over “enmity and hatred would still continue to remain in the minds of the Iranian nation.”[121]

The Impact of the Turkish-Israeli Strategic Agreement
According to Alan Makovsky, since the Gulf War Turkey has emerged as a regional power, both in fact and in self-image. This renewed self-confidence and new activism include its relationship with Israel and the willingness to threaten to use force when it deems necessary, as during the crisis with Syria in September-October 1998.[122]

Turkey and Israel are both Western-oriented and pro-U.S., deeply concerned about terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. They are also the two most democratic, economically dynamic, and militarily powerful states in the region.[123] Therefore, it was quite natural for the two states that have kept good relations from 1949 on, sometimes discreet or secret, to arrive finally in 1996 to a strategic agreement which included common military training, defense industrial cooperation, collaboration in gathering intelligence on Syria, Iran, and Iraq, and free trade (bilateral trade, virtually non-existent in 1990 and roughly $450 million in 1998, will reach more than $1 billion by the year 2000).[124]

The irony of the history let it happen during Erbakan’s premiership. Although the RP and Erbakan were staunch opponents to the Turkish-Israeli alliance, they were forced by the military “to swallow the frog” and sign it against their will. The signing of the agreement by Erbakan himself signaled to his followers and his opponents alike the weakness of the Islamist movement and the limits of its political weight.

This event seems to indicate the final step of the secular Turkish establishment, under the pressure of the unanimous military command, to resolutely leave behind the failed Turkish-Islamic Synthesis strategy and profiting from the new international set-up to definitely subdue the growing Islamist movement and neutralize its political, social and violent strongholds. The alliance also allowed defeating militarily the PKK, seen more and more as an objective ally of the Islamists, by forcing Syria to expel its leader and militants and stop any support to the Kurdish separatist movement.

On October 26, 1999, General Cevik Bir (ret.), former deputy chief of the Turkish General Staff, addressing The Washington Institute’s Policy Forum on Turkish-Israeli relations and Turkish security in the region remarked that “Turkey became a ‘front country’ in the region when new threats emerged after the Cold War…The initiation of Turkish-Israeli relations should be seen in this light. Contrary to the beliefs of some, neither the United States nor any other third party initiated Turkish-Israeli cooperation or the 1996 military training and cooperation agreement. These were the initiatives of the Turkish leadership.”[125] General Bir affirmed that this military agreement paved the way for resolution of the Turkish-Syrian crisis of autumn 1998 and in his opinion Syria’s more responsive attitude toward Turkey since then proves that the Turkish-Israeli agreement works.[126]

Conclusion
The Islamic fundamentalist movement in Turkey has many common features with movements in many Muslim countries but, as we have seen, it has understood the constraints and dangers of a direct clash with the nationalist Kemalist ideology and, above all, with a military establishment sworn to defend the secular regime and its values at all costs. The use of Islam by the new intellectual and economic elite and military for their own political needs - believing they could tame and transform it to be a pillar of the regime - has been skillfully exploited by the Islamic movement in its bid to achieve power and install an Islamic regime.

This is also true regarding the more radical, violent off-shoots of the Islamic movement. Their expansion and relative freedom of action was tolerated on the same grounds until they became a real threat for internal political stability. The RP’s parallel growth, electoral success, and its leadership’s indulgence toward the Islamists’ terror has no doubt encouraged and fed their violence.

It is noteworthy that following Refah’s biggest electoral success in December 1995 and until the resignation of Erbakan’s government in June 1997, no serious terror acts were perpetrated by Islamic groups, except low-level actions waged by IBDA-C, the most independent of these groups. It is possible that Erbakan’s policy to boost relations with Iran and Libya has given the radical groups the impression, or the hope, that the RP government will indeed succeed in following a more extremist Islamic policy.

The resignation of Erbakan’s government under the army’s pressure, the new government’s steps to curtail Islamic influence on the education system, the outlawing of the RP, and the recent steps to outlaw its successor the FP, have changed the “rules of the game.” The secular establishment, under the double pressure of the powerful military and the anxious Turkish people, faithful in his majority to the Kemalist ideology and regime, has definitely renounced the hope that the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis could represent a solution to the intricate problems faced by Turkey. It has understood that this strategy has only advanced the interests of the Islamist movement, which was on the point to take control of the county or to turn it in a new Algeria.

The self-confidence given by its new strategic status as a result of the Gulf War, the fall of the Soviet empire, the liberation of the Turk people in Central Asia, the weakening of the Iranian regime on the internal arena, the strategic agreement with Israel, have permitted Turkey to challenge resolutely the growing radical Islamicforces and bring their failure.

Until 1996, despite the exposure of its key role in backing the terrorist activity of Turkish Islamic groups, Iran paid a very low price for it. Iran welcomed RP’s rise to power and in exchange Erbakan did his best to improve bilateral relations and overlook its involvement in terrorist dealings.

Iran is entangled in an internal strife between the more moderate policy proposed by the President, Khatami, and the old revolutionary strategy sustained by the Spiritual leader, Khamene’i, and the radicals who keep the key posts in the political and security establishment.[127] It seems that on the issue of the relations with Turkey, as on other important subjects, the radicals have the upper hand and prefer to walk on the tight rope between seemingly correct bilateral relations and a strategy of subversion through the enfeebled PKK and the remnants of the violent Islamist movement.

According to the evaluation of Alan Makovsky, the specialist on Turkey of the Washington Institute, Turkey’s relations with Iran have much in common with its relations with Syria before the Ocalan expulsion. Turkey does not want confrontation with Iran, and Ecevit no doubt wants a diplomatic resolution to Iran’s support for the PKK. “Given Turkey’s more assertive regional policies of recent times, Ankara likely will continue to press Tehran - over time perhaps with threats or even limited use of force - if the Iranians do not alter their behavior and rein in the PKK” he says.[128]

Last year, Turkey threatened to use force unless Syria dismantled PKK bases on its territory and expelled rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan. Syria bowed to Turkish pressure. Asked whether the row with Iran could reach the same intensity, president Suleyman Demirel said, “No, no, I don’t think so; at least not for the time being. “[129]

Notes