One of the first ones on the list from 1992 had an interesting backstory that's still relevant today:
The Turkish government assassinated two journalists [1] [2] for uncovering the fact the Turkish gov (or likely intel agencies) were financially supporting and training Turkish Hezbollah terrorists in their special forces offices. Why? These Hezbollah guys were being used as irregular warfare militia to kill marxist PKK (they killed 500 PPK members), in between their normal terrorist activity of killing regular citizens for being secular.
Then in February 2019 [3] the government decided to let all 100 of them out of prison on some questionable legal grounds (that the old court who sentenced them was Gulen-connected). But when PKK fighters sent to jail by the same court tried to appeal, on the exact same legal grounds, they were rejected. So essentially the current Erdogan gov's policy is to openly support one terrorist group over others.
This is a classic example of Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes at work, where each one secretly support any number of sectarian groups when it suits their interests, while they ignore any tangental atrocities. Which was the waters Americans/Russians both attempted to wade into and saw it backfire multiple times.
The Turkish government assassinated two journalists [1] [2] for uncovering the fact the Turkish gov (or likely intel agencies) were financially supporting and training Turkish Hezbollah terrorists in their special forces offices. Why? These Hezbollah guys were being used as irregular warfare militia to kill marxist PKK (they killed 500 PPK members), in between their normal terrorist activity of killing regular citizens for being secular.
Then in February 2019 [3] the government decided to let all 100 of them out of prison on some questionable legal grounds (that the old court who sentenced them was Gulen-connected). But when PKK fighters sent to jail by the same court tried to appeal, on the exact same legal grounds, they were rejected. So essentially the current Erdogan gov's policy is to openly support one terrorist group over others.
This is a classic example of Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes at work, where each one secretly support any number of sectarian groups when it suits their interests, while they ignore any tangental atrocities. Which was the waters Americans/Russians both attempted to wade into and saw it backfire multiple times.
[1] https://cpj.org/data/people/halit-gungen/index.php
[2] https://cpj.org/data/people/namik-taranci/index.php
[3] https://ipa.news/2019/05/22/100-members-of-the-turkish-hezbo...
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