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<P><BR><BR>Did you read this?<BR><BR>Juan Cole writes:<BR>"The Turkish Hizbullah originated in the radical Kurdish struggles of <BR>Eastern Anatolia. Its leader was a classmate of Abdullah Ocalan of the <BR>Marxist militia/party, the PKK, which carried out terrorist attacks <BR>especially in southeastern Turkey. It broke off from the Marxists, <BR>aiming at establishing an Islamist state instead, and for a while <BR>mainly targetted the PKK. Then it turned against the Turkish <BR>government, especially as the PKK subsided. See for background the <BR>Al-Ahram Weekly piece by Gareth Jenkins from a couple of years ago."<BR><BR>His source, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/467/re2.htm , writes:<BR>"Hizbullah grew out of the Kurdish Islamist movement of the early <BR>1980s when Velioglu, ironically a former classmate of Kurdistan <BR>Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, broke away to form his own <BR>group dedicated to using violence to establish a Kurdish Islamic state <BR>based on
the model of Iran. Velioglu slowly built up a network of <BR>militants. Turkish security officials also claim, despite denials by <BR>Teheran, that the organisation received considerable financial and <BR>logistical support from Iran. Many captured Hizbullah militants have <BR>reportedly named both camps in Iran where they were trained and the <BR>names of Iranian officials who trained them."<BR><BR>There's quite a difference breaking off from the Kurdish Islamist <BR>movement and the PKK.</P>
<P><BR><BR>What he's saying is that TH was closely aligned at least ideologically to PKK (whether organizationally connected is left vague), but that it "spun" in an un-Marxist direction before arriving at its current coordinates. Decades ago, many Islamist groups were also Marxist in their orientation, hard as it is to believe today.</P>
<P>So, yes, I did read it.</P></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><p><hr SIZE=1>
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