Washington DC - Documents publicized by whistleblower Edward Snowden show that false US intelligence provided to the Turkish government resulted in the 2011 massacre of nearly three dozens of Kurdish villagers on a mountain in eastern Turkey.
In a cold and snowy December night in 2011, 34 civilian cigarette smugglers were killed in an aerial strike launched Turkey under the false belief that the men on Mount Cudi were fighters affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group designated as a terrorist group.
But they were not. They were merely hardwokring villagers trying to make the ends meet in one of the most impoverished, isolated and inhospitable area of Turkey.
“An American Predator drone flying overhead had detected the group, prompting US analysts to alert their Turkish partners,” reports Der Spiegel, a German magazine, based on documents released by Snowden.
“Documents from the archive of U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden that Der Spiegel and The Intercept have seen show just how deeply involved America has become in Turkey’s fight against the Kurds. For a time, the NSA even delivered its Turkish partners with the mobile phone location data of PKK leaders on an hourly basis. The U.S. government also provided the Turks with information about PKK money flows, and the whereabouts of some of its leaders living in exile abroad.”
What is ironic is that the US is now on the same side with the Kurds, including the PKK, against the Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq and Syria.
Posted by Namo Abdulla
In a cold and snowy December night in 2011, 34 civilian cigarette smugglers were killed in an aerial strike launched Turkey under the false belief that the men on Mount Cudi were fighters affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group designated as a terrorist group.
But they were not. They were merely hardwokring villagers trying to make the ends meet in one of the most impoverished, isolated and inhospitable area of Turkey.
“An American Predator drone flying overhead had detected the group, prompting US analysts to alert their Turkish partners,” reports Der Spiegel, a German magazine, based on documents released by Snowden.
“Documents from the archive of U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden that Der Spiegel and The Intercept have seen show just how deeply involved America has become in Turkey’s fight against the Kurds. For a time, the NSA even delivered its Turkish partners with the mobile phone location data of PKK leaders on an hourly basis. The U.S. government also provided the Turks with information about PKK money flows, and the whereabouts of some of its leaders living in exile abroad.”
What is ironic is that the US is now on the same side with the Kurds, including the PKK, against the Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq and Syria.
Posted by Namo Abdulla
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