TURKEY:Not everyone is fully convinced by the radical Islamist group's new-found moderation, writes Nicholas Birch
HUSEYIN YILDIRIM carries a heavy weight on his shoulders. While he never killed a man, he was jailed for membership of Kurdish Hizbullah, a radical Islamist group that murdered at least 500 people in the 1990s. Now he heads a countrywide NGO which he insists is dedicated to peace.
"Yes, some of our members were Hizbullah, but we are opposed to violence, categorically," Yildirim says, at the headquarters of the Association for the Oppressed (Mustazaflar-Der) in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey's biggest city. "Our fight is against poverty, ignorance and all sources of social conflict."
In the region, where memories remain fresh of the conflict between Hizbullah and the left-wing separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, many remain sceptical.
"Hizbullah did all this killing in the name of Islam," says Celal Aygan, head of another Islamic-minded association in Diyarbakir. "People do not trust Mustazaflar."
Others fear they might just be beginning to. When police found torture chambers and grave-filled safe houses during a massive crackdown on Hizbullah in 2000 that led to the arrest of roughly 6,000 members, the group was nicknamed "Hizbatrocity". Now, some observers say, the NGO seems to be able to pull crowds bigger than the PKK, traditionally the strongest group in the region.
In February, during a Turkish army incursion against PKK camps in northern Iraq, 40,000 Islamists marched in Batman, near Diyarbakir, to protest against Israeli attacks on Palestine.
Thousands turned out last week in towns across Turkey when the NGO organised celebrations for the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. Inzar, an Istanbul-based monthly magazine close to Hizbullah, now sells almost 10,000 copies.
The group "can become an influential power in southeast Turkey in the mould of Lebanon's Hizbullah, Iraq's Mahdi army, and Hamas" in Palestine, a policy paper published last September by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy warned.
Many local analysts think this sort of talk is exaggerated, a knee-jerk reaction to the religious-minded AK Party government's tripling of its Kurdish vote at general elections last summer.
When 100,000 people gathered in February 2006 during the Danish cartoon crisis, the media presented it as a Hizbullah march, says Bulent Yilmaz, head of a conservative local NGO.
"In fact, 95 per cent were ordinary people - Kurds are close to their religion and always have been. None of the groups you see today - including this one - have come out of nowhere. Personally, I'd be delighted to see signs of the Islamisation the media is talking about, but I don't."
Ideology-wise, Hizbullah seems as radical as ever. The group's publications refer to Turkey's secular regime as taguti, or sinful. "If Islam comes to the fore, there won't be any need left for fighting and killing," says Sait Sahin, the soft-spoken head of Mustazaflar's Istanbul branch office.
In a book published in 2004, Hizbullah's Germany-based leader Isa Altsoy is more forthright. "Imperialists and Zionists [used the September 11th attacks to] launch a great war against Muslims . . . all around the world. Those who oppress us should know that if they don't stop, we will turn their world into hell."
Yet the NGO's activities appear peaceful enough. "We are a bridge between rich and poor," Huseyin Yildirim says, explaining how his group provides basic food for 300 poor families in Diyarbakir alone every month. With permission from the local governor, eight doctors volunteering for the organisation also do medical tours of surrounding villages.
Nesip Yildirim, a member of human rights group Mazlum-Der and no relation of Huseyin Yildirim, thinks Mustazaflar serves an important purpose. "Hizbullah was like a closed box," he says. "Coming out on to the street, as the NGO is doing, starts the socialisation process, and that leads to moderation. That should be supported. These people must not be convinced they were wrong to choose the path of legality."
Question marks do remain about the group, though, not least in its ambiguous attitude towards its brutal past.
Celal Aygan, a lawyer who has talked to former members of Hizbullah's armed wing in jail, says many appear to regret what they did. Asked about the group's notorious torture cells, though, Mustazaflar's Huseyin Yildirim argues that the worst atrocities were the work of state agents in the group.
The group's failure explicitly to criticise past brutality makes some worry that only its strategy has changed. In the past, it took the state and the PKK on and lost. Now it is gathering its strength and waiting. One local journalist cites the recent police confiscation of Russian-made guns being imported from Syria as evidence that the group is rearming.
A prominent Kurdish intellectual and former politician, Hasim Hasimi, thinks more violence is unlikely.
"War has brought suffering to the people of this region for 25 years, killing 40,000, making millions homeless," he says. "Backing more violence means losing support."
Journalist and writer Rusen Cakir agrees that the fading away of the two main causes of Hizbullah radicalism - the Iranian revolution and the PKK war - reduce the chances of a second bout of brutality - yet he remains nervous.
"A Hizbullah member told me recently how much the majority of community members appreciated my articles," he says. "I said I was afraid of the minority. The majority may not be a threat, but some of them can kill people."