"TURKEY: AN ISLAMIC RADICAL GROUP RESURFACES, STRIVING TO EMBRACE PEACEFUL CHANGE
Nicholas Birch 5/01/08
Huseyin Yildirim carries a heavy weight on his shoulders. While he says he never killed a man, he was jailed for membership in Kurdish Hizbullah, a radical Sunni Islamist group that was reputedly connected to about 500 murders in the 1990s. Now, he heads a countrywide NGO that he insists is dedicated to peace.
'Yes, some of our members were Hizbullah, but we are opposed to violence, categorically,' Yildirim says, speaking in his office at the headquarters of the Association for the Oppressed, or Mustazaflar-Der, in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey’s biggest city. 'Our fight is against poverty, ignorance and all sources of social conflict.'"
More:EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Turkey: An Islamic Radical Group Resurfaces, Striving to Embrace Peaceful Change