Armenians, Kurds join for war on Turkey

Press, 9 April 1980, Page 9

Armenians, Kurds join for war on Turkey

NZPA-Reuter Sidon, Lebanon A Kurdish and an Armenian Leftist guerrilla group have announced that they are joining forces to fight the Turkish Government.

Hooded gunmen from the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party made the announcement to journalists guided to a secret meeting place deep in the heart of the old Souk (market) in Lebanon’s warshattered southern town of Sidon.

Both groups are fighting for an independent State in separate parts of rugged eastern Turkey hit by months of violence. A.S.A.L.A. said it was responsible for almost 100 bomb attacks against Turkish diplomats, Western airline offices, and other targets in Western. Europe and inside

Turkey over the past five years, including 41 in 1979. Giving what they said was their first press conference, the Kurdish group stated that their guerrillas had fought their most important battle with the Turkish army on March 30.

A Kurdish guerrilla, his face masked by a black hood, said the battle took place in the Mardin district of eastern Turkey, which is under martial law. Mardin lies close to the Syrian border. Seven guerrillas were killed, three injured, and 20 arrested for the loss of two Turkish soldiers, including an army captain, he said.

! The two groups said they were natural partners, as they both wanted to throw off what they described as the yoke of Turkish repression and fascism.

They declined to go into details as to what form their co-operation would take.

The Kurdish Workers’ Party said that it was not directly linked to the Kurdish Democratic Party, which, under the leadership of Abdolrahman Ghassemlou, controls most of the well-anned Kurdish guerrillas known as the Pesh Merga who are fighting for autonomy in northern Iran. An estimated 16 million Kurds are spread across Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the southern tip of the Soviet Union. Their guerrillas have battled the central Governments in both Bagdad and Teheran, using rifles against helicopter gunships and' tanks.

Turkish Kurdistan lies close to the Armenian - speaking area that overlaps into the Soviet Republic of Armenia. The Armenian minority has been fighting Turkish rule since an estimated 1.5 million of them were wiped out in 1 1915-16..