Turkey's Hizbullah Terrorists: Erdoğan's New Ally
by Burak Bekdil • May 9, 2023 at 5:00 am
Turkey's Hizbullah is not to be confused with the Lebanese Shia terror group Hezbollah, although their name has the same meaning in Arabic: The Party of God.
Operating primarily in Batman Province, Hizbullah murdered 188 people in and around the mainly Kurdish city of Batman. The victims included 32 shot in the neck: men for drinking alcohol and women for wearing mini-skirts.
A prominent feminist Islamist, Konca Kuriş, was abducted by Hizbullah and tortured for 35 days before she was murdered. Her Islamism was fine; her feminism was not.
The international community would do well to understand that Kurds, US allies in northern Iraq and Syria, are not monolithic. Secular Kurds are allies. But there are also Islamist Kurds who support Erdoğan.
To win, Erdoğan would ally with radical Islamists: certified terrorists.
If Erdoğan does win on May 14, there will be, for the first time, radical Islamist terrorists in the Turkish parliament. Hizbullah terrorists -- responsible for the torture and deaths of hundreds of people in ISIS-style executions -- in the parliament of a NATO member state?! This potential outcome is the biggest talk among Western diplomats in Ankara. Most are shocked. They should not be. It is vintage Erdoğan.
Turkey's Hizbullah is not to be confused with the Lebanese Shia terror group Hezbollah, although their name has the same meaning in Arabic: The Party of God. Turkey's Hizbullah is radically Sunni and pro-Kurdish.
At the peak of its violent campaign between 1991 and 2001, Turkey's Religious Affairs Directorate announced that the organization's ideology was "to fight every non-Islamic regime and administration in lands where Islam is not predominant." In those years, Hizbullah had nearly 100 associations and NGOs under its auspices.
After security operations against Hizbullah in 2000, the Turkish public was shocked to learn that the organization had abducted more than 100 rival Islamists, tortured and buried them in what was repugnantly dubbed "houses of graves."
