Regional Growth Minister Enis Kervan has urged the Kosovo government to include the Gulenist Hizmet Movement, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and it’s Sirian branch the Democratic Union PArty (PYD) organization in the list of terrorist organizations.
Kervan, who represents Kosovo’s Turkish minority, submitted his request during a government meeting on Thursday that discussed the annual platform of the secret services agency.
“We definitely need to increase cooperation with Turkey against these organizations,” he stated.
Outgoing Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti responded that the issue should be dealt with by the secret services agency, and that the proposal shall be passed to them.
The two Kurdish political parties and their military wings are declared terrorist organizations in Turkey. The same fate followed the Gulenist Hizmet Movement after an attempted coup d’etat in July 2016 that left hundreds of victims. Turkey blamed the coup on Fethullah Gulen, a muslim clerics in self-exile in the United States, and his movement was declared a terrorist organization – Fethullaist Terror Organization (FETO).
Northern Cyprus and Pakistan were the only countries in the world to have followed suit with the Turkish request to do the same about the Gulen movement.
The movement had hundreds of schools throughout the world, and a vast activity in the Balkans, mainly in the field of education. However, its activity in the region shrank or changed hands after the coup, when Turkey fired and arrested thousands of its members.
In 2018, Kosovo deported six Turkish citizens living in the country in a secret operation arranged between the secret services of Kosovo and Turkey.
A parliamentary committee investigating the arrest and deportation found 31 violations by the Kosovo secret service and police. It concluded that the whole secret operation was illegal and unconstitutional.
A Turkish court sentenced the six to 56 years in prison for membership in “FETO”.
