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Turkey wedding attack puts militia in spotlight
Reuters - Thursday, May 7
By Seyhmus Cakan
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - Eight men arrested over the killing of 44 people at a wedding in Turkey were all members of a state-backed rural militia and used state-issued weapons in the attack, officials said on Wednesday.
The involvement of "Village Guards" in the worst mass killing in modern Turkish history raises pressure on the European Union-candidate country to rein in the heavily armed force, which was set up to help combat Kurdish separatists.
Human rights groups have accused village guards of illegal killings and drug trafficking, but the army has praised their role in combating Kurdish rebels.
Interior Minister Besir Atalay said assault rifles and grenades used by the masked assailants on Monday's attack at a wedding in the mainly Kurdish region were issued by the state.
"There are village guards among the suspects and the dead and the arms belonged to the village guards," Atalay told reporters. "A sad aspect of this incident is the involvement of village guards. We are studying this issue very closely," Atalay said, without elaborating any further.
The attack, blamed on a blood feud between families over who should marry the bride, demonstrated for some the dangers of arming such informal units in an area known for blood feuds and vendettas.
The Democratic Society Party , Turkey's only legal Kurdish party, called on the government to set up a parliamentary commission to abolish village guards -- a demand long made by human rights groups and critics.
"The massacre reveals to what extent the village guards system has been turned into a murder network," DTP vice president Emine Ayna told Sabah daily.
There are about 57,000 village guards in Turkey's southeast, part of a policy established in 1985 to protect villages against attacks from Kurdistan Workers Party guerrillas seeking an independent Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey.
EIGHT ARRESTED
Officials in the southeastern city of Mardin, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said all eight men arrested after the massacre in the village of Bilge were village guards.
The state-run Anatolian news agency said eight people were arrested, including a 14-year-old boy, but no charges had yet been brought.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said "no kind of tradition can justify the killing." But disbanding the militias would not be easy, especially with Turkey's economy heading for recession.
Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based analyst, said the livelihood of about 500,000 people in the poor southeast depended on the village guard network. Guards receive salaries, weapons and a state pension in rural areas where unemployment is above 50 percent.
Last month, armed forces chief General Ilker Basbug praised the village guards for playing an important role in the fight against PKK rebels. He pointed to Iraq and Afghanistan as having successfully implemented similar security systems.
Experts say a traditional culture based on tribal loyalties that eclipse the state and where children are taught to handle weapons as a rite of manhood will complicate disarmament.
The killings, which put pressure on Ankara to address the root causes of instability in the underdeveloped east compared with the industrialised and wealthy west, has embarrassed many in Turkey as it pursues efforts to join the European Union.
"Pain and shame" was the headline in the newspaper Milliyet.
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