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Turkey’s Diyarbakir Explosion rocks police headquarters

April 11, 2017 By administrator

A powerful explosion has hit near a riot police headquarters in Turkey’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir.

Medics said at least four people were injured in the blast that rocked the largest Kurdish-majority city on Tuesday.

The blast could be heard in several areas of Diyarbakir, reports said. Gray smoke was reportedly seen rising from the area.

Ambulances and police were sent to the blast’s scene.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the explosion occurred during the repair of a vehicle at the police compound.

Tensions have been running high in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast since a ceasefire declared by the PKK collapsed in 2015 in the wake of Ankara’s military operations against the Kurdish group’s positions both inside the country as well as in northern Iraq.

Turkey has declared the PKK a terrorist organization and has banned it. The militant group has been calling for an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984.

In response to the military raids, PKK militants have stepped up their attacks against Turkish security forces over the past 18 months.

The blast comes few days before a referendum on constitutional changes. The April 16 plebiscite is mainly aimed at abolishing the office of the prime minister and giving more executive powers to the president. Critics say the vote would give the president dictatorial powers.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Diyarbakir, explosion, HQ, police, Turkey

Police officer wounded in bomb attack on AKP HQ in Turkey’s Diyarbakir

August 16, 2015 By administrator

f55d06e11a2ff4_55d06e11a3014.thumbOne police officer was wounded late on Aug 15 in an outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party(PKK) bomb attack targeting the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) provincial headquarters in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

PKK militants staged an attack on the AKP provincial headquarters in Diyarbakır with a cluster bomb at around 9 pm. One police officer on duty was wounded and immediately taken to hospital for treatment.
Meanwhile, security forces found an unexploded second bomb during the subsequent investigation. Bomb disposal experts were called to the area and defused the bomb.
A broad-scale operation has been started to apprehend the militants responsible for the attack.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: AKP, bomb attack, Diyarbakirr, HQ, Turkey

Turkey: Simultaneous explosions at pro-Kurdish party HQs

May 18, 2015 By administrator

12siCasualties have been reported after several explosions hit 2 leftwing pro-Kurdish party HQs in Turkey.
The blasts in the Adana-Mersin Metropolitan Area in south Turkey, went off simultaneously, Hurriyet daily reported.
According to preliminary reports, six people were injured by the Adana blast, Reuters said. No immediate casualty report from Mersin was available.

 

#HayatTV : HDP Adana İl örgütü binasının önünde patlama meydana geldi. İlk gelen bilgilere göre 4 yaralı var.. pic.twitter.com/vGebBeQ1fl

— Frhtdicle (@Frhtizm) May 18, 2015


The attack targeted two local headquarters of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which currently hold 29 seats in Turkey’s 550-seat parliament.
The explosions were reported 10 minutes apart, the party said.

The party said its Adana branch was hit by an explosion in a storage room while in the Mersin branch a flower bouquet delivered on the previous day turned out to be a bomb.
HDP in just one month endured no fewer than 56 attacks across Turkey, although only two of them involved use of weapons, according to Dicle News Agency.

The party is a relative newcomer in Turkish politics, having been founded in 2012 as a political wing for a union of several left-wing groups. Those include proponents of women and gay rights, secularists, anti-capitalists and environmentalists of Gezi Park protest renown.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: explotion, HQ, Party, pro-kurdish, Turkey

Is Turkey Hamas’ new headquarters?

August 26, 2014 By administrator

Hamas' Gaza leader Haniyeh flashes a victory sign to his supporters in front of the cruise liner Mavi Marmara in Istanbul

By Pinar Tremblay, for al monitor

Hamas’ Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh (C) flashes a victory sign to his supporters in front of the cruise liner Mavi Marmara in Istanbul, Jan. 2, 2012. (photo by REUTERS/Osman Orsal)

On Aug. 20, at the Association of Muslim Scholars conference in Istanbul, senior Hamas official Salach al-Aruri accepted the long-denied charges that Hamas had kidnapped the three Israeli teenagers on June 12. Their bodies were found at the end of June. From the very beginning, Israel said that the kidnapping and murders were carried out by Hamas.

All along, Hamas has denied its involvement vehemently. Al-Monitor’s Palestine Pulse reported that many Palestinians believe Israelis “orchestrated the kidnapping and murders” to justify an attack on the Gaza Strip. The same conspiracy theory was widely supported in Turkey, too. It is safe to assume that the majority of Turks do not believe the news of Aruri’s acceptance of involvement despite the video recording. Most Turkish pundits are convinced Hamas had no direct involvement, and that the kidnapping and murders of the three teenagers was nothing but an Israeli conspiracy.

However, speaking from Istanbul, Aruri asserted that the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades’ mujahedeen carried out the kidnapping to show solidarity with Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons. In an interview with Yahoo News on Aug. 22, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal did not deny Aruri’s contention, and only emphasized that it was carried out without the knowledge of the political wing. Fars News Agency promptly denied the news about Aruri’s revelations as false.

Given all this, why does Turkey, a NATO member country, host Hamas operatives, have high-level meetings with them and support their rhetoric? Hamas is on the list of terrorist organizations of the United States, the European Union, Canada and several other countries, but not on that of the UN Security Council and it is not considered a terrorist organization in Turkey. Therefore, it is safe to say most, if not all, of Turkey’s Western allies considers Hamas a terror organization.

Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northeastern University, who specializes in terrorism and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, told Al-Monitor, “Countries do not gain strategically by hosting terrorist groups. My research demonstrates empirically that terrorism is politically counterproductive behavior that erodes popular support for the political cause and results in a backlash from the target country. Hosting terrorist groups is thus a political liability. There is no strategic sense in supporting terrorist groups because the net strategic effect is almost always negative.”

Domestically, not many even ponder upon such questions with mainstream media boasting how Gazans thanked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his support. Alptekin Dursunoglu, senior editor of Yakin Dogu Haber, which focuses on news exclusively from the Near East, told Al-Monitor, “I would say even if it may look like Turkey’s heart is with Hamas, its sword is with Abbas. Right now since almost all Palestinian factions appear to act together, I do not see this constituting a risk for Turkey in regard to its relations with the United States.” Dursunoglu explained how difficult it is to convince the Turkish public that Hamas might be planning a plot against the PA; indeed, most in Turkey would not be convinced that Hamas was behind the kidnappings even after a strongly alleged confession from its own senior leader. One of the strongest justifications as to why Turkey is hosting Hamas is because it has payoffs from the majority of the domestic audience. Turkish public opinion strongly sides with the suffering of the Palestinian people, and in the era of the Islamic State (IS) threat on its doorstep, it is not likely to consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

In addition, after multiple attempts at diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, Turkey has accepted that it has failed. It gradually switched its focus to supporting nonstate entities, and thus attempting to make inroads on its neighbors. One diplomat, who is not pro-AKP, told Al-Monitor, “Trying to be a major actor in the Middle East and having felt betrayed multiple times, the Erdogan administration decided we have to be Middle Eastern, which means nonstate entities should be considered as serious actors, partners, enemies and allies. Is there a country in the region that has not taken this road? Is it possible to survive ignoring these nonstate actors?”

This may indeed be the case. Even a few Turkish critics question whether “Turkey is replacing Iran” in being the latest supporter of Hamas. The issue that generates some degree of conflict with rules of engagement is because Turkey is also a member of various Western organizations such as NATO, which was not the case for the former supporters of Hamas, i.e., Syria and Iran. In addition, if the support for Hamas is just a part of “becoming an effective player in the Middle East,” it may be a strategy with mixed blessings as the latest PEW Research Center figures demonstrate that support for Erdogan dropped sharply in four of seven Middle Eastern countries. Interestingly, only in Israel are favorable views of Erdogan on the rise, from 14% to 16% — which is attributed to the Israeli Arabs — while in the Palestinian territories Erdogan’s favorability rating has gone down from 74% to 55%.

Turkey’s support for Hamas — along with Qatar — hampers Israel’s ability to isolate Hamas. The Turkish government has been rather frank and “proud” of its engagement with the organization despite all financial and political repercussions. Whether or not its support for Hamas will provide Turkey more regional influence is yet to be seen, but for now it is fair to assume expansion of Erdogan’s domestic powers would translate into further support for Hamas in the near future.

Pinar Tremblay
Contributor, Turkey Pulse

Pinar Tremblay is a doctoral candidate in political science at University of California, Los Angeles, and an adjunct faculty member at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She

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Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: hamas, HQ, Turkey

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