Turkey: At least 10 killed, almost 300 wounded in string of blasts in eastern Turkey

August 18, 2016 By administrator

A third explosion in the past 24 hours has rocked eastern Turkey, killing four security personnel and injuring seven in Bitlis province. It comes after two car bombings targeted police stations, leaving at least six people dead and as many as 290 injured.

First, village guard Müslüm Yaldız was killed, and a soldier wounded in clashes with PKK militants in the village of Nazar, Hurriyet Daily News reports. Then, a hand-made explosive went off on a road near the village of Gayda, when a military vehicle was passing by. Three soldiers were killed and six injured in that attack.

Early Thursday, a car bombing hit police headquarters in the eastern Turkish city of Elazig, the administrative center of Elazig Province.

A bomb-carrying car exploded in front of the police station building, creating a hole in it and severely damaging the facility, according to local media.

Another car bombing attack on a police station in the eastern province of Van, near the Iranian border, killed a police officer and two civilians late Wednesday.

https://twitter.com/MunzurMunzur62/status/766184632098426880

Clashes, militant bombing kill nine in southeast Turkey

September 13, 2015 By administrator

Diyarbakir, Turkey, September 13, 2015. REUTERS/Sertac Kayar

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey | By Seyhmus Cakan,

Kurdish militants killed two police officers in a car bomb attack on a checkpoint in southeast Turkey on Sunday, as authorities imposed a curfew in the region’s largest city Diyarbakir where clashes broke out, security sources said.

Turkish forces backed up by helicopters and commandos shelled a mountainous area where the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters had fled after the checkpoint attack in Sirnak province, killing six of them, the sources added.

A police officer was reported killed in another confrontation.

Hundreds of militants and more than 100 police and soldiers have died since a ceasefire collapsed in July, shattering a peace process launched in 2012. It is the worst violence Turkey has seen in two decades.

The Diyarbakir governor’s office said it had placed the central historic Sur district under a round-the-clock curfew. Security sources said seven police officers were wounded in clashes there.

In other central areas of the city, police fired tear gas and water cannon at small groups of youths who threw stones and tried to set up street barricades in protest against the curfew.

Speaking to reporters near the Sur district, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, called for the Turkish state and PKK leadership across the border in Iraq’s Qandil mountains to halt the violence and return to peace talks.

Source: reuters

Kurdish PKK senior figure voices criticism of Turkey’s Erdogan

August 15, 2013 By administrator

Asharq Al-Awsat

A member of the Group of Communities in Kurdistan reveals that the Kurds have run out of patience and will return to war unless the Turkish government takes serious measures by September.

August 15, 2013

ERBIL,— A senior figure from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) told Asharq Al-Awsat that the pledges the Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayyib Erdogan had made are no more than “early election propaganda.”

Speaking exclusively to Asharq Al-Awsat, Zagros Hiwa, a member of the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), said: “Once elections end, Erdogan will go back on all of his pledges and calls to open up as well as solve the Kurdish issue by democratic and peaceful means.”

“Erdogan will once again bring the country into a bloody conflict which Turkey has suffered from for over four decades and caused tens of thousands of victims”, he added.

Zagros’ comments came after Erdogan announced that the Turkish government will present the parliament with a number of draft laws aimed at meeting some of the political and cultural demands of the Kurds.

Zagros told Asharq Al-Awsat that Erdogan’s pledges are out of touch with reality and that “the Turkish army is currently taking advantage of the vacuum left by our fighters’ withdrawal from the Turkish territories by sending more reinforcements and renewing the camps and military sites as well as recruiting large numbers of mercenary Kurds.”

“This is a certain sign the Turkish government has no intention to go ahead with the peace process which our detained leader Abdullah Ocalan had proposed,” he added.

According to Zagros, these recent steps are definite “signs of war” and an attempt by the Turkish government to renew military attacks against Kurdish fighters.

Regarding the draft laws which Erdogan claimed the government would submit to the parliament,www.ekurd.net Zagros wondered: “What laws can Erdogan present to the parliament to grant national rights to our people!? In the main law of the government there are obvious articles that ban the use of the Kurdish language and culture.”

“Election law does not allow Kurds to stand for elections on the basis of their nationality,” he added.

Zagros also slammed Erdogan for not taking any serious steps towards the peace process insisting that “tens of thousands of [Kurdish] political prisoners of whom a large number are sick have not been released from Turkish prisons yet.”

As for the Kurdish side, Zagros said: “We have fulfilled all of the pledges we gave our leader Ocalan. We have released prisoners, stopped fighting and avoided responding to the Turkish army’s provocations.”

The member of the KCK concluded his comments by saying that “Erdogan is trying to deceive the Kurdish people by promising to resolve the Kurdish issue but it needs successive steps and this we have not seen neither from Erdogan nor his government.”

“We have run out of patience and therefore we can no longer wait and procrastinate,” he said, adding that unless the Turkish government takes serious measures towards the peace process by September, the country’s Kurds will return to war.

By Sherzad Shekhani – Asharq Al-Awsat