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Turkish officials deny Der Spiegel's claim on use of chemical weapons

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News | 8/13/2010 12:00:00 AM |

Turkish officials denied Friday claims by a German magazine that the Turkish military had used chemical weapons in its fight against the outlawed PKK.

Turkish officials denied Friday claims by a German magazine that the Turkish military used chemical weapons in its fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

“These claims are not new; they have been made in the past as well. It’s pure PKK propaganda with the purpose of tarnishing Turkey’s credibility,” a Foreign Ministry official told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Friday.

According to a story published Thursday by the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, German experts had confirmed the authenticity of photographs purportedly showing the burned, maimed and scorched body parts of eight alleged PKK members killed by Turkish chemical weapons.

The magazine said the claims were backed up by forensic reports from Hamburg University Hospital.

“The latest findings are so spectacular that the Turkish side urgently needs to explain things,” Der Spiegel quoted Claudia Roth, co-chair of Germany’s Green Party, as saying. “It is impossible to understand why an autopsy of the PKK fighters was ordered but the results kept under seal.”

Roth is among the German politicians who have demanded an investigation into the allegations, the magazine reported.

“Turkey has been a signatory since 1997 to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction and it has passed 12 inspections,” the anonymous Turkish official said. “The inspections clearly showed that Turkey is a chemical-weapons-free country.”

The Foreign Ministry official also said Turkey is active worldwide in working “for the prohibition of the development and use of chemical weapons.” He said senior Turkish diplomat Ahmet Üzümcü was recently elected as the director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the regulating body of the convention. “As you see, our purpose is to work for the eradication of such weapons,” the official said. “How can we possibly develop them and use them?”

According to the official website of the Turkish General Staff, the country’s defense strategy excludes weapons of mass destruction. “Turkey does not possess WMD and does not intend to have them in the future. Turkey adheres to all major international treaties, arrangements and regimes regarding nonproliferation of those weapons and their delivery means, and actively participates and supports all efforts pertaining to nonproliferation in NATO,” the website said.

The military site also repeated the country’s commitment to the goal of extensive and complete disarmament of WMDs under strict and effective international control.

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