Kurd rebels warn they will turn Turkey 'into hell'

After a rash of bombings, a Kurdish militant group has warned that it will turn Turkey "into hell", and urged tourists to avoid travelling to the country, in what appeared to be a trend in the Kurdish guerrilla war against the Turkish state – bombings against “soft targets”.

Many people sunbathing and partying on the Mediterranean coast said they were nonetheless not changing their plans, a sign that the extremist tactics were not having much of an impact.

Travel agents said yesterday that there were no significant cancellations after one bomb killed three people in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya and a previous blast injured 21 people, including 10 British tourists, in the seaside town of Marmaris.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, a small, militant group, took responsibility for the blasts and vowed in a message on its website Tuesday to “turn … Turkey into hell”.

“The fear of death will reign everywhere in Turkey,” it said.

The past few months have seen an upsurge in violent attacks that have left dozens of soldiers and guerrillas dead in the overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. In response, Turkey has cracked down harder in the region, massed tanks and artillery along the Iraqi border and threatened to attack the main guerrilla bases in northern Iraq, from where Kurdish militants have been infiltrating from Iraq in their decades-long fight for autonomy.

Since 1984, the separatist conflict has killed 37,000 people in the mountainous southeast.

Turkey is increasingly pressuring Washington to take measures against the guerrillas in northern Iraq, and Ankara has threatened to take unilateral action if Washington continues to stall.

Yesterday, the US appointed former Air Force General Joseph Ralston as a special envoy for countering the main guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

“General Ralston will have responsibility for co-ordinating US engagement with the government of Turkey and the government of Iraq to eliminate the terrorist threat of the PKK and other terrorist groups operating in northern Iraq and across the Turkey-Iraq border,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Those actions may have helped push the militants to redirect their attacks.

On Sunday, three bombs struck the tourist resort of Marmaris, injuring 21 people, including 10 British tourists. On Monday, a bomb tore through a main street in the beachside Mediterranean city of Antalya, killing three and injuring at least 20, including tourists from Israel, Germany and Russia.

Tourism is a key industry in Turkey, with foreign visitors bringing in 13.9 billion dollars last year.