Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1993
Copyright 1993 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times
February 18, 1993, Thursday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 11; Column 3; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 144 words
HEADLINE: TURKISH GENERAL KILLED IN AIR CRASH
BYLINE: By Associated Press
DATELINE: ANKARA, Turkey
BODY:
A general who led last year's campaign against separatist Kurds died Wednesday
when his military plane went down in flames on the outskirts of Ankara.
Interior Minister Ismet Sezgin told Parliament that the plane's twin engines
failed.
There was no immediate evidence of sabotage.
Gen. Esref Bitlis, the commander of gendarme forces, was en route to Diyarbakir,
the main city in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.
Four other soldiers on the plane were killed.
In October, Bitlis supervised a military offensive against Turkish Kurdish rebel
bases across the border in northern Iraq. After the campaign, Iraqi Kurdish
leaders promised that they would no longer let Turkish Kurds use northern Iraq
as a base for attacks on the military in southeastern Turkey.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party has been fighting a guerrilla war for
almost nine years.