"The Turkish government thought they could deal with this problem by eliminating Ocalan, but they're facing a multi-headed hydra," says TIME U.N. correspondent William Dowell. "Responding effectively to a nationalist movement or a terrorist threat requires more subtlety than simply trying to stamp it out. To deal with people who believe that acts of terrorism are the only way they're to make their grievances heard requires a political response, too." But as a new wave of attacks and crackdowns hardens attitudes on both sides, the strife is unlikely to end even with Ocalan out of the picture.
Kurds Threaten Turkish Tourism
If Abdullah Ocalan's capture was designed to snuff out Turkey's Kurdish
insurgency, the result appears to have been the opposite. Ocalan's
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) announced Monday that it would launch attacks
against Turkey's $7 billion-a-year tourism industry, and warned foreigners
to stay away. The announcement came on the heels of a Saturday attack in
which Ocalan supporters firebombed an Istanbul shopping mall, killing 13
people. A car bomb exploded in the city Monday, and a second device was
defused at a Burger King outlet. Nine days earlier, four people were killed
in a car bomb attack by a leftist Kurdish splinter group in central Turkey.