Statements by U.S. Officials

Roundtable with Principal Deputy Asst Sec and Deputy to the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Frank Urbancic

Ankara, February 12, 2008

Asst Sec Urbancic:     I am really delighted to be back in Turkey.  This place talks in my heart.  I had no experience in Turkey before I went to Istanbul but it was spectacular.  So I’ve always really just loved working here.  I’ve been working on counterterrorism issues now for almost three years.  I’m working on PKK issues with West Europe.  Turkey faces a broad problem of terrorism launched by the PKK against it.  We have been working with our European allies to try to find some common ground with them on a unified plan to attack the PKK.  Because as you know a number of PKK leaders are legally in Europe, in the past some have obtained asylum and protection; how we deal with that as we go forward has been a real question mark. 

We’re consulting closely with our Turkish friends to coordinate this policy.  We’ve been also looking at legal remedies that we can recommend to the Europeans to try to get them to use other options against the PKK.  Two and a half years ago, we started to visit all major European capitals, including those with PKK presence.  We’ve also had conversations with Europeans in Washington.  Recently, we’ve intensified those conversations.  We’re very concerned about the broadcasting out of Denmark, we’re very concerned about the fundraising situation in places like Belgium and other places in Europe and we’re very interested in the experience that the Germans have had.  I’m not here as a lawyer for the Europeans and so when you start your questions, understand that we too have our issues with the European approach but I can’t say that over two and a half years we have detected a significant shift and attitudes on the continent toward the PKK.  They realize that the PKK does terrible things not just to Turks but also terrible things which are bad for Europe.  The PKK is actually exploiting and trafficking people. The same people they’re exploiting are the people they purport to represent.  That is starting to be understood especially at the law enforcement level in Europe and that’s the area where we are placing our greatest focus in our discussions. 

We see the PKK as a sort of an octopus with tentacles that spread out across the continent.  The Europeans developed a whole system of laws in asylum and other types of protection, free speech of course, which we all admire.  But they were done at a national level.  It’s almost as if the PKK has a handbook of European law and they know every crack in that law, every place that’s not covered across borders.  So they find out that they can go exactly this far and no further in Denmark on free speech issues and they can go exactly this far and no further in another country for fundraising and exactly this far and no further on organization.  And they do that and within those borders then because of the nature of Europe, those law enforcement agencies look on their territory and they say they’ve broken no law.  But the collective effect of this is like the same thing as the mafia, it’s across borders and it’s a fundraising effort, it’s an exploitation effort, it’s a propaganda effort and it’s a terrorist effort.  Terrorism is my primary interest.  In the middle is this massive fundraising organized crime organization and then at the bottom is the cultural offices and all the other things that they do. 

So we’re working with the Europeans to come up with an approach which we call the Al Capone approach, you may know he was a gangster in the 1920’s in the U.S.  Our government was never successful in convicting him on any of the crimes he was really guilty for except tax evasion.  So we threw him in jail and he died in jail because he didn’t pay his taxes.  But what do we care if he was taken off the street if he was in jail because we called him a terrorist,  but the important thing is to cripple the organization.  So we’re working with the Turks and the West Europeans on this strategy.  I met with the Ministry of Justice yesterday.  We will be working especially to bring prosecutors in Turkey together with prosecutors in the principle countries of PKK activity in Europe to come up with common approaches to make sure that the cases that the Turks prepare are actually used in European courts against the PKK.  We find a large disconnect in the dialogue between our two partners, two friends, the Europeans and the Turks and we want to find the way to be a bridge.  Not only are you suffering, you’re also very competent and you have good services that are doing good work against the PKK.  But that isn’t getting translated into use in European courts.  And until it is, we will continue to face larger challenges.  So, with that introduction, I’m glad to talk about any aspect of what we’re doing.

Q:        What was the feedback you got in Copenhagen? Because you know this Roj TV business has turned into a major issue between the two countries almost to the extent that you know the Turkish intelligence units believe that the PKK is actually operating through Roj TV by means of cold signals, through news bulletins, and various programs. The Danes are being extremely naïve and perhaps even a bit optimist on this core due to perceptions rather than what is actually the situation on the ground.

Asst Sec Urbancic:     Perceptions of Turkey are the biggest thing you face everywhere in Europe, this is really what we have to overcome.  This is the baggage of the past.  On Roj TV specifically, we’re convinced that Roj TV is front for a terrorist organization, it’s a propaganda arm.  The Danes can speak for themselves but they have a particular problem because of the cartoons, they are determined not to allow themselves to be seen in any way to be restricting free speech.  And this is an example of what I was talking about the cleverness of the people that were trying to work against.  They were able to be closed down administratively in Britain.  They were able to be closed down administratively when they broadcast from France.  So they go where it takes a law to shut them down.  So attacking the television station itself as a terrorist organization is going to be very difficult.  But there are other vulnerabilities that the PKK has because all PKK activities fundamentally are based on corruption and extortion.  And that’s vulnerability that I think we can perhaps work on. 

Q:        You mean financing of the station?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     Of the station and of the PKK itself, all of its activities.  But the station is part of the PKK.  There’s no question about that.  So we will be working with the Danes on our side to see what can be done certainly encouraging them to do their own investigations of the stations.  We’re not to sing loud the things but we will be working with others.  I think the Danes understand that this is important to Turkey.  But this may be an issue that can’t we take on fully simply because of  the history that Denmark has just gone through the last year or two years with cartoons.   

Q:        You named Denmark and Belgium as two problematic countries, one for the broadcast one for the fundraising. Could you evaluate a bit how they work on fundraising in Belgium very freely and what are the other countries in Europe that you spotted as problem? For ex. With France we had a problem last year in the case of arrest and release of some PKK chiefs.

Asst Sec Urbancic:     I don’t want to be singling out European countries as problem countries.  There are countries that I think we have to work with more intensively than others and there are a number of countries and I think Belgium is one of them.  They’ve actually moved quite far.  But that said the government itself and the prosecutors worked very hard and they were not doing this on the side.  They worked really hard to bring the DHKPC to justice and they actually won in two courts.  It was the third court where they lost.  So I think they have to go back and re-assess where they are and what their options are.  But I think that, I suspect that the PKK is much less comfortable in Belgium today than it has been in the past.  And that’s good.  The first thing we have to do is to disrupt their activities, make them uncomfortable, keep down off balance, make them run and as they run they’ll make more mistakes and as they make mistakes we will be able to find them easier.  Belgium is not the place it was in the past.  France is not the place it was in the past.  The UK is not the place it was in the past.  Germany has been very aggressive in working against the PKK.  They recognize that the PKK presence is fundamentally unhealthy for them and unhealthy for their citizens, because it brings in crime that they don’t have to deal with.  We don’t even have to mention drug dealing, because it’s right there in front of everyone. 

Q:        There are some countries in Europe which oppose you very strongly in Iraq, one would assume this would make it more difficult to cooperate in this notion, fighting terrorism but ironically Denmark is your ally there, you know that’s very much tuned in to the American perspective on fighting against terrorism.  Does this not give you that little edge in perhaps not pressurizing but convincing friends to be a little more meaningful on this issue?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     We’re certainly not trying to pressure anybody.  What we are trying to do, and I think where we had real success, is to paint the fight against terror as a global problem where every single brick counts.  If there’s a hole in this wall, there’s a hole and terrorists will go through it.  The PKK is one of those places where you have to pay attention.  That’s the discussion that we’re having.  We do not link Iraq to the PKK.  We don’t link Iraq to the FARK which is the terrorist organization in Columbia just for example.  Each one of them on their own merits deserves to be eliminated as an organization because they use terrorism against civilians.  So the discussion we have with the Danes about the PKK is about the PKK.  It’s in that context that the larger discussion about counterterrorism which the Danes and all the Europeans now take seriously.  I mean they’re all, they know targets of one type or another.  They don’t see their citizens dying quite so much at the hands of the PKK.  But they do feel themselves very much target of for example Al-Qaeda.  It is clear to them now.  And becoming clear that this thing which various groups in Europe and this is not universal yet but we’re trying make it universal, they used to consider freedom fighters as sort of a part.  This is starting to fray and as it frays, the PKK becomes just another group of terrorists who need to be put under control.  Now that’s where we want to end up, that’s not where we are.  But that’s where we’re trying to go.

Q:        I want to ask what the Turkish government should do. You said that Turkey has very competent information but there are still some problems I understand that they can bring their case to the Europe.  So what’s your suggestion to the Turkish side about this issue?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     I hope that’s where the U.S. can be helpful.  Because the Turkish government is properly energized on this and we met many of your diplomats in Europe on this trip and they are tracking and working for your interest.  They know who the PKK is and where their countries are.  They know what they’re doing, how they’re acting.  They are in close contact with those governments.  What’s not happening is that it’s not translating into action in the courts.  So that’s where we’re trying to bring our value added in finding some mechanism to have that translated into activity against the PKK. 

Q:        There’s not only one Al Capone in PKK.  Now you see the performance of Turkish finance system against the tax issue, how can we be optimistic about this?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     Taxes are only part of our approach.  Finances are a big part of it.  None of this happens without money.  And we’re talking about significant amounts of money.  They have their annual fundraising campaigns which are just extortion rackets.  They’re trafficking in persons, we all know they smuggle people into Europe, they make a lot of money that way.  The reason we’re using the term ‘Al Capone’ is to distinguish it from pure terrorism.  At the moment the conversation on pure terrorism and PKK is a more difficult one in Europe, in some parts of the Europe.  In other parts of the world it’s very easy and a very productive conversation.  But what they all agree on is that crime is not good in their country. And crime exists in all of their countries by the PKK and so when I say Al Capone, that’s what I’m talking about.  Hit the criminality, cripple them where their money and if you take away their money, you’ll seriously destroy their ability to even continue the criminality but also then to carry out the terrorist attacks in Turkey.  So it’s not just taxes but taxes are a part of it.  If that’s where they’re most vulnerable, you can find that their books have been cooked in their fraud.

Q:        But there won’t be a St. Valentine Day’s massacre?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     I hope not.  Our goal is to eliminate that.

Q:        I’d like to ask two things. Number one, do you think that a better human rights record in Turkey would help Turkey’s image in combating terrorism? And secondly you refer to one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.  Were getting different kinds of reports concerning PEJAK which is an off-shoot of the PKK and there are some suggestions that perhaps America finds PEJAK useful to use against Iran.  Can you clarify?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     I’ve been gone myself for two weeks, so something has happened over the last two weeks.  PEJAK is not a group that we are friendly with.  There was a PEJAK member who as I recall three months ago had a German passport and traveled on a German passport.  But there’s no friendliness.

Q:        Using a Belgium phone.

Asst Sec Urbancic:     Has he gone back to the U.S.? Because we were caught up short.

Q:        He is in the U.S.  He’s distributing his business card in the U.S.  His business card says ‘Head of PEJAK’.

Asst Sec Urbancic:     Ok, I’ll just have to find out on this.

Q:        He’s acting freely.

Asst Sec Urbancic:     I do not know the specifics of this.  I will just have to find out.  Because I have been on the road for two weeks.  And I’ve been focusing only on PKK in Iraq. 

Q:        But you say you have no friendly approach.

Asst Sec Urbancic:     No.  Plus what I will say is that we do not condone terrorism.  It is a piece, I mean as a single unit, it has lots of faces and a number of organizations used but terrorism is not an acceptable form of self expression or of political activism.  And your first question concerns human rights in Turkey.  Your government is and has been working on this and the good news is that there have been successful extraditions from Europe.  Turkey has done what it needed to do and the Europeans have been able to extradite and this is good thing.  As a matter of fact it’s an important thing that we want to work with Europeans on.  In many cases, extradition will be some time away because the confidence between your two systems isn’t enough to allow that to happen.  But it has happened with very significant European countries and we think it should continue to happen.  And we will certainly try to encourage your Justice Ministry to work with those prosecutors to make sure that happens increasingly.  That said, do we really care if they’re in jail Turkey, or if they’re in jail in another country?  So long as they are out of action and not running activities, that’s the first and primary goal and we can build those other bridges over time as we need to.  Turkey does have this image problem in Europe.  I think it dates from the old days, before you were a candidate country, but you still do have to work on that.  But you’re not the only candidate country to face that kind of scrutiny and criticism from Europeans. 

Q:        There are some known PKK leaders living in Europe, Zubeyir Ayda, Remzi Kartal.  They’re carrying the passports of more than one country and they live in Belgium.  These people are freely giving press conferences.

Asst Sec Urbancic:     This is one of the things we are working on with Belgium.  This goes back to the PKK’s ability to find the cracks in the European legal system because European asylum laws were developed actually to help people.  I mean they’re really based on fundamental human rights, principles that if somebody’s in trouble in one country, they should be able to come to a place like Belgium or a place like Sweden and live without a threat.  Those laws were developed in haphazard ways and developed individually in countries and the PKK has figured out how to exploit those laws.  And one of the conversations we are trying to do is just come to understand how those laws work because they’re very complex.  And I think it’s fair to say that Europeans themselves haven’t looked in a comprehensive way at how asylum applies across the continent since it’s granted on a single government bases.  But I think they are aware of these short comings and are starting to look at it, putting in what we call a grandfather clause is probably the only way they’ll be able to apply retroactive retribution but in no case do I think that even somebody who has this record and a Belgian or Swiss or Norwegian or whatever passports you want, in no case they’re immune from prosecution on criminality laws that’s taken place since that asylum or passport was granted.  And I think the European governments are aware of this option and I hope they’ll be exercising it more.  The specific ones you mentioned, I mean these are important cases but I don’t think that those people feel as comfortable today as they did a while ago.  I don’t claim success and victory but we have had some progress and we want to continue that progress.  We want to make them first uncomfortable, we want to make them then accountable and we want ultimately them to be brought to justice. 

Q:        You’re obviously looking into PKK activities in Europe.  You mentioned extortion, human trafficking, and drugs.  Do you have a rough idea of what they may be doing?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     They’re an organized crime group, if they can make money, they will.  They counterfeit cigarettes, they traffic people, they smuggle people into Europe, they’re engaged in prostitution, and they’re engaged in drugs.  The really significant thing is to link it together in a court context a case which will be found against them, which is provable in the legal system of Europe in which they are operating.  Because again they do it across borders and so it’s very difficult to coordinate a counterfeiting case across borders. For example a drug case, if it’s a small amount a town like Munich, it’s difficult to determine if 50 pounds or 50 kilos were purchased in Istanbul.  You really have to track it backwards.  That’s the discussion that we’re starting to have, how we can make it a much broader link.  And the Europeans are interested in this.  Because it is criminality on their territory and they’re interested in preserving the territorial integrity and the integrity in their laws.  But yes, they’re an organization, they’re ruthless, they kill people that they don’t like.

Q:        What about the local advisors and partners in European community?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     I think they have a lot of money and they hire good lawyers, they hire good accountants and they hire good bodyguards.  These things are for sale.  And they live very good lives on the backs of very poor people. 

Q:        How do you cut the linkage between the fundraising and the all propaganda activities in Europe and the activities in northern Iraq?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     We are trying to do exactly that.  There are direct flights from Europe to Erbil.  We are trying to work on those.  There are all kinds of banking and other questions that we have to look at.  We’re closing our eyes to none of it and we’re trying to take all of it on, it’s a challenge though.  I mean they are very well entrenched and money does talk esp. when you’re talking about a place like Iraq.  But we deny none of it.  We try to attack all of it. 

Q:        Your support to the Turkish government on its fight with PKK in Iraq has been turning point.  First, this started to help the American image in Turkey.  Also Turkish people feel that this cooperation is there, so they’re not alone.  The PKK has not attacked the American targets so far.  Just to clarify there was a small report in the Turkish press recently that Head of National Intelligence said that this may make America a target for PKK.  Is it true?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     You know, when you stand up for the right thing, you can always end up being a target.  This is just what we have to do because it’s right.  First of all, it’s just right.  Secondly, it’s right for Turkey.  Thirdly, you deserve our support.  But mostly, we just have to fight terrorism.  A lot of people want to kill us and a lot of people have my name.  But we have to do this.  And it’s not just the PKK.  What I want is for the PKK to renounce violence.  When they do that, we’ll have a different dialogue but until they renounce violence, then making threats against any person or U.S. interest is something they can continue to do. 

Q:        Last year, when this NATO project to send more combating troops to Afghanistan was up table, it’s still up table, the Chief of Turkish Joint Staff said that ‘as long as we have a terrorism problem of our own, I don’t think we can send any soldiers to Afghanistan.’ Now we have a different situation.  If there will be some solid fruits of this cooperation, if some PKK members are arrested, given to Turkey or put in prison anywhere else, as a result of Turkish-American cooperation, do you think the situation can change and Turkey could have more activity to the global fight against terrorism in Afghanistan?

Asst Sec Urbancic:     The fight against PKK is a fight against PKK.  The fight against Taliban and the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan is the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan.  And Turkey has major role to play.  But they’re not same and they’re not linked and one is not conditional on the other.  No matter what, we are with you on the PKK.