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Turkish police round up Kurds over deadly blast
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TURKEY’S police rounded up more than 100 members of a Kurdish political party yesterday as the country mourned the dozens killed in a bombing attack near an Istanbul stadium.
Police detained 37 individuals linked to the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, in morning raids in Istanbul and the capital, Ankara, according to state-run Anadolu Agency.
The state-run television channel TRT reported similar dawn raids, saying 58 were detained in the port city of Mersin and 51 in Sanliurfa in the southeast.
All were rounded up for alleged terrorism links.
The reports did not specify whether those detained were suspected of involvement in the Saturday bombing that killed 44 people.
Health Minister Recep Akdag said yesterday the fatalities included 36 police officers and eight civilians.
The attack caused deep shock in the soccer-loving nation and triggered patriotic demonstrations. Taxi drivers drove round the Besiktas stadium waving Turkish flags.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish authorities accuse the HDP of supporting terrorism and having ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
The party, which was democratically elected into parliament in 2014, denies the accusation. Its two leaders are currently behind bars on terrorism-related charges.
Turkey is facing renewed conflict with Kurdish rebels in the southeast and has suffered a string of suicide bombings this year.
A Turkey-based Kurdish faction, known as the Freedom Falcons Movement, claimed responsibility for twin bombings that struck shortly after the conclusion of a soccer match.
Known as TAK, the shadowy group is considered as an offshoot of the PKK.
It has also claimed two suicide bombing attacks in Ankara this year. The group says its actions are revenge for state violence in the southeast and for the ongoing detention of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader.
The PKK and the Turkish state have been locked in a decades-long conflict that has killed tens of thousands.
Violence resumed after the collapse of peace talks in 2015.
Turkey is a member of NATO and partner in the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group, which has been blamed for multiple attacks in Turkey. A state of emergency was decreed in the wake of a failed July 15 coup attempt which the authorities blame on a US-based Islamist cleric.
That measure and the sweeping purges of state institutions that followed have alarmed Western governments, human rights group and legal experts.
Turkey’s campaign against armed Kurdish militants in the southeast has also drawn international criticism for human rights abuses.
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