Turkey’s Hizbullah is not to be confused with the Lebanese Shia terror group Hezbollah, although their name has the same meaning in Arabic: The Party of God. Turkey’s Hizbullah is radically Sunni and pro-Kurdish.
At the peak of its violent campaign between 1991 and 2001, Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate announced that the organization’s ideology was “to fight every non-Islamic regime and administration in lands where Islam is not predominant.” In those years, Hizbullah had nearly 100 associations and NGOs under its auspices.
After security operations against Hizbullah in 2000, the Turkish public was shocked to learn that the organization had abducted more than 100 rival Islamists, tortured and buried them in what was repugnantly dubbed “houses of graves.”
Cow shoes used by Moonshiners in the Prohibition days to disguise their footprints, 1924
Operating primarily in Batman Province, Hizbullah murdered 188 people in and around the mainly Kurdish city of Batman. The victims included 32 shot in the neck: men for drinking alcohol and women for wearing mini-skirts.
A prominent feminist Islamist, Konca Kuriş, was abducted by Hizbullah and tortured for 35 days before she was murdered. Her Islamism was fine; her feminism was not.
In 2001, Hizbullah assassinated Gaffar Okan, chief of police in Diyarbakır Province, home to the largest Kurdish city in southeastern Turkey, along with five police officers.
Read more: Gatestone Institute
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