A water cannon sprays in front of damaged buildings and vehicles after suspected Kurdish militants detonated a auto bomb near local government offices in Turkey’s southeastern city of Van September 12, 2016 in this still image taken from video.
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A vehicle bomb exploded Monday (12 September) outside the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) headquarters in the eastern Turkish city of Van, wounding 48 people including two police officers, local authorities said.
He also said Turkey would defeat the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the Feto group of USA -based cleric Fethullah Gulen.
Protests erupted in southeastern Turkey after the government sacked about two dozen elected mayors from Kurdish-run municipalities on Sunday (11 September) and replaced them with new ones.
A Turkish official said 48 people including two police officers were wounded, two critically.
Erdogan said in a televised message marking the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha that Turkey has a “primary duty” to its people to destroy ISIS and prevent it from staging attacks in Turkey.
Turkey’s finance minister on Monday accused local municipalities under the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) of having financed PKK terrorism, Anadolu agency reported.
“If the state is ready… we have a plan and this problem can be ended in six months”, Mehmet Ocalan, who visited his brother on Sunday, quoted the PKK leader as saying.
The blast happened in an area between the local offices of the ruling AKP party and the governor’s office.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday gave an impassioned defense of the government decision to suspend 28 mayors from office over alleged extrem links.
Ankara deployed troops and tanks into northern Syria on August 24 in a bid to eradicate Daesh and Kurdish militants.
“You, as mayors and municipal councils, can not stand up and support terrorist organisations”.
Turkey has also launched an operation inside Syria to remove the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group as well as Syrian Kurdish armed groups from its frontier.
Unconfirmed reports also suggest that the bomb was detonated by the outlawed Kurdish PKK militants, who carried out attacks against Turkish security forces in Van earlier this year.
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“It is a step taken too late in my opinion”, Erdogan said, as cited by Reuters.
