Turkey prepares ‘dictionary of terrorism’

ANKARA

REUTERS photo

Turkey’s Undersecretariat of Public Order and Security has prepared an 802-page dictionary of key security terms, consisting of 564 entries and focusing on threats from various designated terrorist groups.

The dictionary includes detailed information on tens of organizations such as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). 

The dictionary refers to terms such as “agent provocateur,” “brainwashing,” “fifth column activity,” “crypto,” and “national alarm system.” It also includes information on Turkey’s anti-government Gezi Park protests in summer 2013, the “democratic autonomy” term used by Kurdish nationalist groups, “terrorism exploiting religion,” and Deniz Gezmiş, a left-wing student leader executed in 1972 for attempting to overthrow the constitutional order. 

The dictionary devotes most space to the PKK and FETÖ, referring to the followers of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, an ally-turned-nemesis of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  

On the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the dictionary states: “DAEŞ [another name for ISIL] has economic power, uses social media in an effective way, and has self-declared a caliphate state, which makes it easy for the organization to recruit members.”

On the PKK’s headquarters in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq, the dictionary said it was chosen by the group as a base after 1997 due to its suitable topography.