The government has stepped up its military campaign in the restive southeast to eradicate PKK militants, who have launched nearly daily attacks since the rupture of a fragile ceasefire previous year.
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The “large explosion” is understood to have targeted the party’s provincial offices in the city, an MP for Turkey’s ruling AK party told CNN Turk. “We have 19 injured – including two police officers, and one of the injured is in a critical condition”, Atalay told the private NTV television.
“No democratic state can or will allow mayors and MPs to use municipality resources to finance terrorist organisations”, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Twitter following the sacking.
The Interior Ministry said in its statement that when local governments “come under the influence of terrorist organizations, it is the state’s primary duty to take precautions against those who have usurped the people’s will”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday defended the suspension of 28 mayors over alleged links to Kurdish militants or US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, saying it was a long-overdue move. The rest belong to pro-Kurdish parties.
The United States and European Union both list the PKK as a terrorist organisation.
On Sept. 4, 2016, a mortar attack was launched on a police checkpoint in the Edremit district of Van Province, but there were no injuries.
The Anadolu agency said the explosion occurred Monday morning on the first day of Eid al-Adha, an Islamic holiday.
He added that the Turkish government is determined to end the “scourge” of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which renewed its 30-year insurgency for autonomy within Turkey after peace talks failed last year.
“It is a step taken too late in my opinion”.
The PKK have fought since 1984 for an autonomous Kurdistan in southeastern Turkey in what is historically Assyrian and Armenian land.
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Turkey’s army and worldwide coalition forces on Wednesday started an operation to drive Islamic State jihadists out of a key Syrian border town, a statement from the Turkish prime minister’s office said.
