For Immediate Release

202.483.6444

July 23, 2000

Turkey Awards US For Its Killing Machines

The Turkish government officials announced their decision to buy their choppers from Bell Textron, a US company based in Texas on Friday. The contract will add 145 additional copters to the Turkish arsenal for an amount of $4 billion.

Viewed by many as, "the helicopter deal of the century," the contract is supported by the Clinton administration, but is expected to run into a stiff opposition in the US Congress.

"Leadership is wanting at the White House. A true leader would have paid a higher premium to exporting basic American values such as freedom of speech and assembly to Turkey. Arming imbecile Turkish generals with deadly toys who believe that the Kurds are a dispensable people is not a sound policy for a country that calls itself 'the indispensable nation' of the world," said Kani Xulam, the director of American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN).

For more than a decade now, the Turkish armed forces have engaged in a campaign of scorched earth policy with made in America copters destroying more than 3.000 Kurdish villages and turning their residents into displaced people seeking refuge all over the world.

The Clinton administration that has gone on record for urging the Russians to forgo their campaign of scorched earth policy towards the Chechens. The same administration is now content with supplying Turkey with weapons that Russians are using to turn what is left of Chechnya into a wasteland.

"It may not even dawn on the Clinton administration officials that the decision to arm Turkey with these deadly weapons, on the heels of the Kurdish rebels' decision to lay down their arms and limit their demands to cultural and linguistic rights, will only harden the resolve of hawkish circles in the Turkish military who never believed in granting Kurds any rights," said Mr. Xulam.

On February 29, 2000, this nation was shocked with the news of a six year old child killing a six year old girl, Kayla Rolland, at Theo J. Buell Elementary School in Mount Morris Township, Michigan. But a few days later, the authorities had Tamara Trinese Owens, the mother of the accused child, stand trial together with Jamelle Andre James, the owner of the loaded gun for involuntary manslaughter.

In a more perfect world, the representatives of the Clinton administration would have also stood trial for arming a country that has the record of being one of the worst human rights violators in the world. As we Kurds wait for that day whether it is in the distant future or in our own times, we also urge the members of the US Congress to be guided by their better angels to deny this sale to Turkey.