Gagrule.net

Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide

Angry Kurdish demonstrators tried to storm Turkish embassy in London

By

london-kurd-protestLONDON,— At least one British police officer was wounded Friday when angry Kurdish demonstrators tried to storm the Turkish embassy in London in protest against the detention of leading Kurdish politicians in Turkey.

The protest that began relatively peacefully degenerated into violence as dozens of protesters tried to break through police barriers and enter the embassy, Rudaw reported.

Police sources said the injuries of the officer were relatively light and not life threatening.

Hundreds of Kurdish activists and demonstrators gathered in front of the UK prime minister’s office in Downing Street Friday before moving towards the Turkish embassy in London.

Larger demonstrations are expected in London and other European capitals on Saturday as lawmakers of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) remain in Turkish police custody, Kurdish activists told Rudaw.

Prominent HDP lawmakers including party co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdaq were detained by the Turkish police Thursday night.

Turkish authorities have said the lawmakers were detained after they failed to respond to a court summons investigating terror charges.

The Turkish government accuses the HDP of being the political arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has fought an armed insurgency against the state for over three decades. The HDP rejects the accusation.

The Turkish parliament removed the legal immunity for a select group of lawmakers, including many from HDP, earlier this year, which has made it possible for the court to issue the warrants for their arrest.

The court also issued arrest warrants for three other HDP lawmakers on Friday after another four MPs were released on bail during the day. Police said 8 lawmakers, including the co-chairs, were now in custody.

In New York, demonstrations were held on Friday with hundreds of Kurdish protesters gathering in front of the UN headquarters.

The protesters demanded the UN condemn the arrests, but the world body has so far only “raised concern” for the crackdown on Kurdish politicians.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric condemned a deadly bombing that hit the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Friday, hours after the arrests. But he stopped short of condemning the lawmakers’ arrests, saying that the UN was concerned.

The United States used similar language. In the daily State Department press briefing on Friday, spokesperson John Kirby said “the United States condemns the indefensible bombing in Diyarbakir.”

Regarding the arrests of the HDP lawmakers, Kirby said the US is “deeply concerned.”

He said that US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Under Secretary Ümit Yalçın and made it clear “that when democracies pursue legal action against an elected representative, they must do so in a manner that reinforces the public’s confidence in rule of law.”

EU, France, Germany and several parties in the European Union legislature have strongly condemned the detention of Kurdish politicians by Turkish authorities over “terrorism-related” investigations.

The European Union is “extremely worried” by Turkey’s arrest of Kurdish opposition lawmakers, the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Friday, “Extremely worried for arrest of (Selahattin Demirtas) and other (HDP) MPs,” she said. “In contact with authorities.”

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population. A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

Turkey: Kurdish Freedom Fighter PKK attack killed 9, more than 100 wounded in Diyarbakır

By

pkk-turkeyAt least nine people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in an attack by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Bağlar district of the southeastern province of Diyarbakır early on Nov. 4.

“Two police officers and five citizens, one of whom was a technician, have lost their lives. One terrorist was apprehended dead,” Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım told journalists at a press briefing, adding that a bomb-laden car was detonated by the militants.

“Separatist terrorism has shown its baseless, disgusting face once again in Diyarbakır. A bomb-laden vehicle was detonated in an area where anti-terror police were stationed, where citizens were going to work, and where children were going to schools. Among the over hundred wounded, 93 have been released from hospital and the treatment of seven others is ongoing,” Yıldırım added.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Diyarbakır Mayor Hüseyin Aksoy, recently appointed by Ankara after elected mayor Gültan Kışanak was removed from office, to receive information regarding the attack.

“We won’t surrender to terror. Those who are linked to terror organizations will account for it,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş wrote on his Twitter account.

According to a statement issued by the Diyarbakır Governor’s Office, PKK militants claimed responsibility for the attack, which left massive damage on the buildings around the explosion scene. The statement added that the attack was carried out near the police headquarters in a very crowded area.

Turkey: The Entire Kurd Leadership are in Prison, Eight opposition HDP lawmakers arrested, including co-chairs

By

kurd-leadership-are-in-prson-1DİYARBAKIR – ANKARA,

Eight lawmakers from Turkey’s opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), including its co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, were arrested on Nov. 4 in a probe that was launched against 14 of the party’s lawmakers over alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The arrests of Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ along with Mardin deputy Gülser Yıldırım and Hakkari deputy Selma Irmak came couple of hours after two Diyarbakır deputies, İdris Baluken and Nursel Aydoğan, as well as Şırnak deputy Leyla Birlik were arrested by local courts. Şırnak lawmaker Ferhat Encü was also later arrested.

In raids that came early on Nov. 4, police teams detained 12 members of the party.

Faysal Sarıyıldız and Tuğba Hezer Öztürk, who were also sought for detention, escaped captures because they were abroad.

During the day-long legal proceedings, HDP deputies Ziya Pir, İmam Taşçıer and Sırrı Süreyya Önder were released on probation that included an overseas travel ban, with the former two being freed by prosecutors and the latter by a court. There are three deputies who are still under detention amid continuing proceedings.
The lawmakers’ detentions came upon the orders of the chief public prosecutors’ offices in Diyarbakır, Şırnak, Hakkari, Van and Bingöl, which took the action after the lawmakers did not show up to give testimony to officials over their summary of proceedings on charges of terror for alleged links to PKK.

The proceedings had come after probes were launched against a number of party deputies for their alleged actions carried out during the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır between Dec. 26 and 27, 2015, and the Oct. 6-8, 2014, Kobane events, as well as their alleged involvement in the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) events.

‘Representative of hundreds of thousands of voters’

Tension rose during detentions as police tried to force Baluken to get inside the police vehicle, while people around reacted to the incident.

“Get your hands off me! I represent thousands of votes. You can’t shove my head and take me like that,” said Baluken, before entering the police car and being detained.

The detained members gave a joint defense that was prepared when the immunity of the representatives were lifted by a parliamentary vote in June, the party said, underlining that they could only questioned by the people that elected them as their representatives.

“Only the people who have elected me can question me about my political activities,” the joint defense read.
“We are the elected representatives of the people. We represent the people who voted for us, not ourselves. I am standing in front of you as a parliamentary representative and a member of parliament with impunity. I will never allow anyone disrespect to the identity that I represent and the will of my people,” it said, while adding that they did not want “to be extras in a judicial theater play ordered by [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan.”

According to a written statement from the Directorate General of Press and Information of the Prime Ministry, the lawmakers were detained for failing to appear in response to summons by prosecutors asking for testimony in a terrorism propaganda case.

The constitutional immunity from prosecution was lifted for all parliamentarians in a vote in May, although the HDP was affected most severely by the move, with a large number of its MPs facing cases for alleged terrorist propaganda.

“As known, those who refuse to respond to summons by prosecutors asking for their testimony in probes and hence break the laws are taken into custody so as to take their testimony. The constitutional amendment on lifting the parliamentary immunity of parliament members passed with 376 votes at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in May without a need to hold a referendum,” read an announcement from Turkish authorities.

The Diyarbakır Chief Prosecutor’s Office said in a written statement that the detention and search warrants were issued due to “strong suspicions based on solid evidence.”

There was an ongoing investigation on accusations of “being a member of an armed terror organization and terrorist propaganda,” the statement said, adding that the political immunity of the lawmakers had been lifted by parliament.

‘Those involved in terror pay price’

Those who come with elections go with elections, but they should “pay the price” if they engage in “terror,” Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has replied to Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in regard to the main opposition leader’s reaction against the detention of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputies.

“Politics cannot be a shield for committing a crime. Turkey is a state of law,” Yıldırım told journalists on Nov. 4, adding that HDP members should have given their testimonies when called to do so by Turkish state authorities.

“The superiority of the law is fundamental,” he added.

Yıldırım also said the internet connection issues were part of measures taken for security purposes and that they were temporary.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ meanwhile, criticized HDP lawmakers for not appearing to give testimony which left no any other means than summoning them by force.

“[The prosecutor] summons and they did not go; what other solution is left? The only means left is to summon them by force,” Bozdağ said Nov. 4.

“What should be criticized is not the justice, it is the ones who violate the constitution and state of law while saying they are respecting the law, [as well as violate] the necessity of the democratic state of law and the constitution by failing to heed the summons [of the prosecutors],” he said.

Bozdağ stated that everyone is equal before the law and that the MPs were taken within the scope of the law.
“What is happening is that Turkey is a state of law and everyone is equal before the law,” he said. “The law that is implemented for everybody is also implemented for the lawmakers. Why do you feel uncomfortable with equality?”

Strict security measures were taken around the HDP building in Ankara, with the police setting up barricades on the roads leading to the building and deploying water cannon.

Kurdish freedom fighter (PKK) attack in eastern Turkey, At least three soldiers were “neutralized” and five others injured

By

pkk-killed-turkish-soldiersTurkey At least three soldiers were killed and five others injured in an Kurdish freedom fighter (PKK) attack in eastern Turkey,

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to media, said the PKK militants attacked security forces with mortar shells in the Çukurca district in the Hakkari province.
One soldier is in critical condition, said the source.

October/29/2016

Also  on Oct. 30 One soldier killed in PKK attack in Turkey’s east, attack in the eastern province of Hakkari, Doğan News Agency has reported.

PKK opened fire on soldiers in the Çukurca district of Hakkari.

Conflict between Iraqi Government and Kurdish KRG began to emerge on Mosul Takeover administration

By

kurd-iraqi-confertationIraqi government forces have managed to liberate more areas around the northern city of Mosul as part of a massive offensive aimed at retaking the entire city from Takfiri Daesh terrorists.

Iraq’s Joint Operations Command (JOC) announced that security forces had liberated Qala region and taken control of Janin military base east of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad.

Commander of the Mosul Operations, Major General Najm al Jabouri, also said his forces established control over the villages of Saf al-Tuth and Nana on Wednesday, following a fierce exchange of gunfire with Daesh snipers.

Additionally, Iraqi armed forces welcomed more than 1,000 Iraqi refugees from the recently-liberated village of Shoura, located 40 kilometers south of Mosul.

The government forces are going to transport the internally-displaced people to a processing center and refugee camps within the next few days.

The prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region said Peshmerga forces will not enter Mosul in order to avoid the danger of a “potential ethnic conflict.”

Nechirvan Barzani, however, issued a veiled warning to the Iraqi central government, suggesting that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) wanted to take over the administration of Mosul after it was liberated.  

Mosul is of paramount significance to the KRG, he said, warning that the city would become the birthplace of another terrorist group if it is not administered well after liberation from the grip of Daesh extremists.

Terrorist State of Turkey detains co-mayors of mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir

By

Gultan Kisanak, co-chair of Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), speaks during a news conference in Istanbul March 14, 2013. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Gultan Kisanak, co-chair of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), speaks during a news conference in Istanbul March 14, 2013. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Turkish police on Tuesday detained the co-mayors of the mainly Kurdish southeast’s biggest city, part of a government crackdown after more than a year of militant violence in the region, security sources said.

Gultan Kisanak, a former parliamentarian before her election as mayor in Diyarbakir, and Firat Anli, her co-mayor, were taken into custody as part of the local prosecutor’s investigation into terrorism links, the sources said.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the removal of elected officials and civil servants who are accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, is a key part of the fight against the armed group.

Authorities were also searching the mayor’s office, security sources said.

An aide to Kisanak said the mayor’s home was being searched by police but was unable to provide further details and did not know what the pair were accused of.

Turkey appointed new administrators in two dozen Kurdish-run municipalities in September after removing their elected mayors over suspected links to militants. Those arrests triggered protests across the region.

Police formed a security cordon around city hall in the event the latest detentions stirred unrest, witnesses said.

Kisanak, 55, is a well-known Kurdish political figure and became Diyarbakir’s first female mayor in 2014. Earlier on Tuesday, she testified upon the invitation of lawmakers at a parliamentary commission in Ankara looking into a failed military coup on July 15.

It was not immediately clear whether her testimony was related to the detention order. Kisinak was detained upon her return to Diyarbakir at the airport, while Anli was detained at his home, sources said.

Erdogan accuses their opposition party, the Democratic Regions Party, a sister party to the third-biggest grouping in parliament, of links with the PKK, which both parties deny.

The PKK took up arms in against the Turkish state in 1984.

It abandoned a fragile two-year ceasefire in July 2015 after peace talks had ground to a halt, and violence has escalated sharply since. Hundreds of soldiers and police officers, thousands of militants and about 400 civilians have been killed.

(Reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Alison Williams)

Serial Monitor Kurdish, Alevi and Armenian does not like

By

minority-right-in-turkeyASULİS Language, Dialogue, organized by the Democracy Lab ‘story Difficult Status: Native Arrays in Turkey and Discrimination’ main issues discussed at the panel how the widespread discrimination known in the number of subject and minorities, was how the place where you can find the number of conflictual other and the Turkey issue .

people from various sectors of society in its native range in Turkey are struggling to find a place for themselves. The difficulties encountered in the scriptwriting process, passing in front of a sector that enables communication of different sounds. In the series, different ethnic and religious groups and the judiciary produced about sexual identity, relationships with common forms of discrimination in society, popular culture, the most important issues to be discussed. ASULİS Language, Dialogue, organized by the Democracy Lab ‘story Difficult Status: Native Arrays in Turkey and discrimination titled’ interview, a leading figure tomris giritlioğlu sector, Gaye Boralıoğl and Nilgun the Ones participation was discussed discrimination and representation issues in popular culture. The panel was moderated by the Bosphorus University, his Feyza Akınerdem video recording, Hrant Dink Foundation can be viewed from the YouTube channel.

tragic situation

The main issues discussed at the panel, how the subject of widespread discrimination and minorities known in the series, was how to find a place in the series of conflicting and other issues in Turkey. share their personal experiences in this regard from the screenwriter was asked.

“Discrimination and the number of sectors in the count we have to say in the middle is a tragedy,” said Gaye Boralıoğl of groups such as minorities in the wall told us that power many of introducing into this structure. Boralıoğl Referring to the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, for example, said: “it was never reflected in this series, but the biggest issue. Dine like … religious conflicts, we can not get into sectarian conflict. For example, ‘Bazaar’ We are writing the series; Alevis are a lover of one of the characters will be introduced to the girl come to the boy’s mother. the boy says to the girl, ‘the wrong way, but in the first meeting that I not tell you the flame.’ This publication they stopped two hours ago. “Nilgun Ones,” in relation to the other, “the subject in range of described as a group,” until a certain time, the ‘other’ when he is called minorities make fun way to use, not a problem to make a satirical material . When they entered their job seriously bindirip turns out the problem areas, “he said. The tomris giritlioğlu, the same issue, “Sometimes I think, have things we did in the past madness. I saw that the Kurds do not like this country does not like Alevis, Armenians do not like at all, “he said.

“You can not tell Tours”

Nilgun Referring to represent the native range of sexual identities Ones, “For example, gay characters, always wave remained as factors that will pass, the audience in a way that would impose, were shown it will make the joke” that was found in the review, Boralıoğl also, “unless you have a cartoonish have no problem, but you humanize you naturalize you face obstacles, “he said. “I see it as a matter of basic discouragement” if he continued to tomris giritlioğlu he said: “A self-censorship works wonderfully for producers and channels. Maybe they care about this issue a little more. Channel, to be more courageous filmmakers, they have to be people who are faced with making the rebellion that society also deserved. For example, I would love to tell the trip but you can not tell, on the edge of, you can not switch from the end. “

Source: Agos

Turkey terrorizing Kurdish population in Northern Iraq and Syria heavy bombardment

By

turkey-terrrorizing-kurdTurkey struck Syrian Kurdish militias in northern Syria for the second time since the middle of the week, said Saturday the Turkish army, quoted by the official news agency Anadolu.

Some 70 positions of the Kurdish people Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish party PYD, were targeted Friday said the military in a statement, without specifying whether there were casualties among the Kurdish fighters.

Two Syrian rebels, backed by Ankara, were wounded in exchanges of fire with members of the YPG in the Syrian city of Jarabulus (north), they added.

On the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the Turkish Army announced it had conducted a series of strikes against the Kurdish militias in the region of Aleppo, the great city in northern Syria, claiming to have killed up to 200 fighters.

For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has provided a much lower balance of at least 11 dead and 24 wounded in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDS), an Arab-Kurdish coalition and 30,000 Kurdish fighters Arab backed by the United States.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in this respect threatened to continue operations against the YPG and the PYD, warning that if these two organizations “continue to attack (the Syrian opposition, ed) fighter Daech” the group Islamic state, Turkey would be “necessary”.

Anadolu quoted Saturday by the minister again accused the YPG seeking to create its own “canton” expanded rather than focus on the fight against EI, wanting to demonstrate “the attacks against moderate opposition” .

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that Syrian rebels backed by Turkey were now advancing towards Al-Bab after taking Jarabulus and Al-Rai in the Islamic state.

“We must prepare a zone free of terrorists,” he said again in Bursa, in northwestern Turkey, in a televised address.

Syrian Kurdish militias are supported by Washington in the fight against EI. But Turkey, which wants to prevent the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region on its border in northern Syria, considers them terrorists.

Ankara last month triggered a ground operation in northern Syria which aims to support the rebels of the Syrian opposition and drive the Islamic State of the border, but also the Kurdish fighters of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party ) which took up arms for the first time in 1984 against the Turkish authorities, and YPG.

Turkish jets kill scores of Syrian Kurdish YPJ fighter

By

turkey-syrian-kurdTurkey says its warplanes have carried out more than two dozen airstrikes against Kurdish positions in northern Syria, killing scores of militants.

Jets carried out 26 airstrikes against YPG targets, killing 160 to 200 militants, the Turkish army said in a statement on Thursday.

The army said its jets hit militant targets in the villages of al-Hasiya, Um al-Qura and Um Hosh and destroyed nine buildings, one armored vehicle and four other vehicles that belonged to the Kurdish militia.

YPG forces had recently captured the areas from Daesh militants. Attacks on YPG positions have been an ongoing source of contention between the United States and Turkey.

The US says it supports YPG and considers the militia group to be an effective force against Daesh Takfiris in Syria. Ankara says the YPG is an extension of its own outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which it considers a terrorist organization.

Ankara won’t “wait for terrorists to come and attack” Turkey, said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before the airstrikes.

In August, Turkey sent troops and tanks into northern Syria without Damascus’ consent purportedly to help drive out Daesh and Kurdish militants from the border area.

Ankara, which is an open backer of militants fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, is helping the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) militants take territory near the border.

The FSA and its affiliated groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, as well as more than a dozen other militant groups are fighting the government in Damascus since 2011.

Destruction in Kurdish capital of south-east Turkey is dark mirror to Syria

By

turkey-southHundreds of houses are peppered with bullet holes in Diyarbakir, where the Kurdish PKK, or Workers’ Party, are fighting the Turkish government

By Robert Fisk in Diyarbakir

All day and all night, the big white trucks roar along the muddy road inside the black, volcanic walls of Diyarbakir. They enter the old city empty and leave piled high with rubble. When I walk down the same narrow road after dusk, two massive bright searchlights switch themselves on. Despite the glare, I can see a crumpled house, a smashed roof. And then a policeman in a flak jacket holding an AK-47 steps into the light. “You can go no further,” he says to me in Turkish, bored, tired. He’s given this order a thousand times to the Kurds.

In the narrow laneways behind me, where a tiny 16th century palace tea-house and an ancient Islamic madrasa school have survived, there are hundreds of houses peppered with bullet holes, their glass broken, scorch marks above the windows. When I walk into the broken entrance of one, I find the internal lower walls have been smashed through as fighters sought to move between buildings to avoid government snipers. There are the remains of tunnels through which the same men climbed to avoid capture.

Sound familiar? But no. This is not Aleppo. Nor Homs. Nor the crushed suburbs of Damascus. This is the Kurdish capital of south-eastern Turkey today, the dark mirror to the tragedy of Syria; a largely unreported catastrophe which has joined all the other forgotten suffering of this region – occupied “Palestine” comes to mind – now that Washington and Moscow are fighting over the right to decide the future of the Middle East. Only today, of course, it is the Kurdish PKK “workers’ party” – more gruesomely-obedient party than workers, I’ve always thought – which is fighting the Turkish government’s soldiers and policemen.

Walking around both the brashly, almost repulsively new, and staggeringly old versions of Diyarbakir, you cannot fail to understand its uniqueness. No Islamist fighters would ever join this battle. Indeed, they might choose to take the side of the Erdogan government, which effectively restarted this old war when it abandoned a genuinely optimistic peace process with the Kurds and whose AKP – and here’s the rub for lovers of independence wars – has more adherents in “Kurdistan” than any Kurdish party. Until the truce fell apart amid Erdogan’s arrogant assumption that nationalism was more important than peace, many Kurdish people in this land believed there might be rapprochement at last with their Turkish neighbours.

But amid the daily attacks in the city and in the countryside – on PKK fighters, police stations, army patrols – all that was gained when Kurds briefly entered the national parliament is now being squandered. Kurdish newspapers have been closed, along with their television stations. Even the Tigris University is still constrained to call its Kurdish department “the Department of Living Dialogue”, although at least it still exists. Take the battles that consumed this city towards the end of last November and then in the first months of this year. Not only did they destroy part of the centre of Diyarbakir, a small- scale version of the soukh-destruction of Aleppo, but they turned war once more into something normal.

After a recent gun battle amid the orchards alongside the miserable sewer that still passes for the Tigris river, the authorities were only just prevented from cutting down this city’s biological lung – as American troops often did in Iraq and Israeli troops do in the occupied West Bank and Syrian soldiers do north of Lattakia – by the threat of mass protests. Thus the pageant of trees remains, courtesy of potential demonstrations, as both cover for the PKK and ambush points for the army. Truce saves arboretum.

Everyone can recall the most recent drama – Kurds and Turks tell remarkably similar stories – which was the culmination of street battles between the PKK and the army. On 28 November last year, the head of the local Bar Association, Tahir Elci, was holding a press conference in front of the “minaret of the four legs” – a sobriquet earned by the rather Big Ben-style minaret which is supported by four stone piles — in the very centre of Diyarbakir. He wished to protest about the continuation of the fighting. Two PKK fighters apparently set out to assassinate him.

Both were apparently being trailed by the cops. A battle broke out and the two PKK members hijacked a taxi which – as in every movie – happened to be driven by an off-duty police officer. He managed to contact his headquarters whose uniformed police then stopped the taxi. The gunmen then killed both the police and the off-duty driver and fled towards the scene of Elci’s press conference. More police then opened fire on the PKK and the two men shot back and Elci was hit by a bullet in the head – “right between the eyes”, as one witness told me, as if to emphasise the deliberateness of the act. A stray round? And if so, who fired it? Thus began, even before Elci’s funeral, the inevitable question: was the man “assassinated” by the police or by the PKK?

In the aftermath, the battles resumed in the city centre, and the authorities managed to destroy so much of the place in their scramble to destroy the PKK fighters there – the PKK, of course, being the “terrorist” force infinitely more important to Erdogan’s “anti-terror” war than Isis — that national shame has taken the place of victory. The police have draped a huge curtain of heavy plastic across the street where Elci died beside the minaret – so that you can no longer see the destruction of the ancient buildings behind. The plastic sheet has taken the place of words.

 

Source:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/destruction-in-kurdish-capital-of-south-east-turkey-is-dark-mirror-to-syria-a7354161.html