Vera Eccarius-Kelly
ince the Kurdish Worker’s Party (#PKK# ) unexpectedly abducted three German hikers near Mt. Ararat in Turkey on 8 July 2008, and then released them on 20 July, intelligence sources in Europe have in-tensified their surveillance of PKK operatives among members of the particularly numerous Kurdish Diaspora in Germany. According to German newspaper reports, the PKK demanded that in ex-change for the release of the hikers “Berlin stop its hostile politics towards the Kurds and the PKK in Ger-many”. While the exact purpose of the abduction requires further analysis, it is clear that it was the armed branch of the PKK, known as the People’s Defense Forces (HPG), that kidnapped the German hikers at their Mt. Ararat encampment at 10,500 feet in the evening hours—only to release them unharmed some two weeks later.[1]
=KTML_Link_External_Begin=https://www.kurdipedia.org/docviewer.aspx?id=563852&document=0001.PDF=KTML_Link_External_Between=Click to read Interpreting the PKK’s Signals in Europe=KTML_Link_External_End=