An off-duty soldier has been killed Tuesday in a gun attack in Turkey’s southeastern Hakkari province.
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Most of the suspects allegedly belong to Daesh, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) and the Patriotic Revolutionist Youth Movement (YDG-H) linked to PKK, Anadolu agency reports.
The Turkish Armed Forces said in a statement that infantry sergeant Ziya Sarpkaya died in the Hakkari Devlet Hospital.
The security forces have launched an operation to find the assailant.
Turkey has faced a number of terrorist attacks in recent days.
In the eastern Mus province, seven people were detained in an operation against the YDG-H.
Addressing the opening of a conference titled “Religious Services Abroad” in Turkey’s western Sapanca district on Monday afternoon, Head of Turkey’s Presidency for Religious Affairs Mehmet Gormez said: “How unfortunate it is to present a book that sets about making peace a mutual goal as if it approves bigotry committed in the region”. His daughter and wife were also wounded in the attack.
Nobody was injured in Tuesday’s attack but the road was closed to traffic.
This was the latest incident in a series of escalatory retaliatory attacks between the PKK and the Turkish security forces since 23 July, when the separatist group shot dead two police officers in retaliation for the Islamic State suicide IED attack in Suruç.
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The renewed military campaign and the arrests targeting the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state partly from camps in northern Iraq, has raised suspicions that Turkey’s real agenda is checking Kurdish territorial ambitions rather than fighting ISIS.
