ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Suspected Kurdish rebels opened fire on a coffee house in southeastern Turkey, killing three people, a news agency reported today. It was the latest in sporadic violence in the country since the arrest of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The attack occurred Thursday in Genc, a town in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern province of Bingol, Turkey's semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported.Meanwhile, Turkish prosecutor Nuh Mete Yuksel has said that Ocalan confessed that Greek churches helped fund his guerrillas, a development that threatened to heighten tensions between Turkey and Greece.
Yuksel said that Ocalan disclosed in a 36-page statement that Greek churches collected money for his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, Anatolia reported. It did not elaborate. Athens has denied backing Ocalan.
Yuksel is one of three prosecutors who have interrogated Ocalan since Turkish commandos captured the rebel leader outside the Greek embassy in Kenya and brought him to Turkey for trial this month. Ocalan faces treason charges and could get the death penalty.
"Greece has emerged behind it," Turkish President Suleyman Demirel said Thursday, referring to the 15-year Kurdish conflict, which has claimed 37,000 lives, mostly PKK fighters and Kurd civilians. The rebels want Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey.
Greece and Turkey are partners in NATO but have had a long-running dispute over the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which is divided between two hostile republics -- one Greek Cypriot, one Turkish Cypriot.
On Monday, Demirel issued a thinly veiled threat of military force against Greece, saying his country had a "right to self-defense" against any Greek support for the PKK. Greece in turn raised the state of alert of its military units in the Aegean Sea to its highest level.
Meanwhile, Turkey's Foreign Ministry is considering reinstating a visa requirement for Greeks, the Hurriyet daily reported Thursday.