Turkish Hezbollah recently hit the headlines after being implicated in terrorist attacks in Turkey. A Kurdish Islamic extremist organization comprised primarily of Sunni members, the group arose in the 1980s in the south east of the country. It has no connection to the Lebanese (Shia) organization called Hezbollah.
Initially, members of Turkish Hezbollah (hereafter called Hezbollah or Turkish Hezbollah) received military training in Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) camps. Cooperation soon turned to rivalry however, with Hezbollah accusing the PKK of murdering Muslims, cooperating with Armenians, serving communism and seeking to divide the Muslim community. Consequently, Hezbollah set out to kill its PKK rivals across the provinces of Batman, Diyarbakir and Van, often posing as women during operations to avoid suspicion. This struggle went on for many years, resulting in over 500 deaths among the PKK and other Kurdish groups.
Throughout this period Hezbollah also began expanding into different parts of Turkey. Its members used mosques and safe houses to spread their message, recruit new members and house militants and military equipment. The group also set up bookstores that distributed religious works and other publications on Islam. Though the group claimed that it was financially and logistically supported by many common tradesmen, extortion seemed to represent Hezbollah’s main source of funding. More than 200 Kurdish businessmen connected with other Islamic groups were kidnapped by the group in the six month period prior to January 2000.
Internal conflict within Turkish Hezbollah prevented it from becoming homogenous. The group was comprised of two factions that disagreed on the methods needed to advance its main goal: an Islamic state in Turkey. The Ilimciler (the scientists), the larger of the two, advocated the use of violence and armed struggle, while the Menzilciler (the rangers), supported an intellectual approach and believed armed struggle to be premature. As these views solidified, the factions attempted to destroy one another. The Ilimciler came out the stronger -- particularly after the Menzilciler leader’s death. Over 400 people died as a result of this internal struggle.
Typical Hezbollah targets included members of pro-PKK political parties, newspapers and leading Kurdish figures. In the mid-1990s, the group further broadened its modus operandi to include low-level bombings against liquor stores, bordellos, and other establishments that the organization considered “anti-Islamic.” Moderate Islamists were also targeted, as were people who refused to fund Hezbollah. During this period the group also moved into Istanbul and other major cities in Turkey, underscoring their growing strength. Turkish Hezbollah saw torture and killing as acts of religious piety, just about required by Islam. Moreover, they held a rigid view that the enemy included not just “infidels,” but also other Muslim groups that Hezbollah believed to be on the “wrong path” (i.e., those who did not share their convictions). Notably, despite its strong anti-secularist teachings, Hezbollah never attacked the state apparatus, and thus avoided direct confrontation with the authorities.
Hezbollah did not come to the forefront of Turkish politics until Jan. 17, 2000, when three of its members were cornered in Istanbul. Following a four-hour police operation, two of the Hezbollah operatives were captured and the third killed. It was later revealed that the dead individual was Huseyin Velioglu, the leader of the group’s Ilim faction. The captured individuals soon turned informant and the incident was followed by a year-long series of police raids throughout Turkey (from Istanbul to as far east as Van, near the border with Iran), during which the mutilated bodies of dozens of Turkish Hezbollah’s victims were discovered. These individuals had been kidnapped, tortured, and buried alive, as was shown on video recordings made by the group. State security forces confiscated the tapes, and the government refused to release them to the public due to the brutality of their content. During the raids, more than 60 victims were found and hundreds of suspects arrested. The episode was the first time that Turkey witnessed militant Islamism similar to the violent movements in Algeria, Israel and Egypt, and recognized violent religious activism as an imminent challenge to its social order.
It is widely believed that Turkish Hezbollah had previously been covertly backed by the country’s security apparatus and used as a government pawn. In the 1980s, the primary enemies of the Turkish state were Kurdish nationalists, sympathetic with, or active in, the PKK. It therefore seemed logical for the state to support the formation of an enemy organization based on Islamic ideology. These allegations of collusion became more credible when evidence surfaced that Turkish Hezbollah was using weapons secretly imported by a Batman governor in the mid-1990s. Additionally, when in 1999, the PKK called a truce, rendering Hezbollah militants useless to the state, Turkish security forces began to target the group – as evidenced by the raids in 2000. Turkish people were reportedly unsurprised by rumors about the connection between Turkish Hezbollah and certain factions of the state bureaucracy, as the emergence of such secretive inner circles, each determined to “save the state” by any means available, was a natural corollary of Turkey’s security-first structure.
Like its Lebanese namesake, Turkish Hezbollah is also suspected of having ties with Iran. In March 2000, Hurriyet published photographs of Velioglu meeting with government officials in Tehran. They also showed a copy of his Iranian “foreign staff officer” identification card, and cited documents from 1992-1998 describing the training Turkish Hezbollah would receive in Iran. In May 2000, the Turkish media also reported that arrested Turkish Hezbollah members had “confessed” to receiving training and support from the ‘Jerusalem Warriors’ – a group of Iran-based ethnic Turkish Sunni terrorists on the U.S. Terrorist Exclusion List. On the other hand, it seemed that Velioglu had at least ideologically dissociated himself from Iran – banning books by Iranian clergy from pro- Turkish Hezbollah bookstores and circles. Overall, analysts believe that the group was not a puppet of the Iranian regime, but did have low-level connections with it.
Following the death of Velioglu in 2000, hundreds of Turkish Hezbollah members escaped into Iran and northern Iraq. Some are believed to be allied with local Islamist terrorist groups such as Ansar al Islam and to have developed ties with al Qaeda. In November 2003, Turkish police identified the bombers of the recent synagogue attacks as ethnic Kurds from Turkey’s southeastern province of Bingol. Though authorities have not yet revealed the identities of the bombers of the two British targets in Istanbul, press reports describe them as Turkish citizens who assisted in the planning of the synagogue bombings. All of the suspects are believed to be linked with Turkish Hezbollah.
Sources
Bulent Aras and Gokhan Bacik, “The Mystery of Turkish Hezbollah,” Middle East Policy Council Journal 9.2 (2002), pp. 147-160.
Asli Aydintasbas, “Murder on the Bosporus,” Middle East Quarterly 7.2 (2000), pp. 15-22.
“Iran Report,” Radio Free Europe - Radio Liberty, 3.12 (2000). <http://www.rferl.org/iran-report/2000/03/12-200300.html>.
Robert Olson, “Turkey-Iran Relations, 1997 to 2000: the Kurdish and Islamist Questions,” Third World Quarterly 21.5 (2000), pp. 871-890.
“Terrorist Organizations in Turkey,” Security and Defense Solutions International. <http://www.sdsint.com/en/securityresearches_terroristorganisations.asp>.
“Turkey - A finger points,” The Economist, Feb. 26, 2000.
“Turkey after the bombings - An Islamist Facing Islamic Terrorism,” The Economist, Nov. 27, 2003.
