A vehicle bomb exploded Monday outside the provincial headquarters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the eastern Turkish city of Van, wounding more than 50 people, including four police, local authorities said.
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Anadolu said Abdullah Ocalan’s message was relayed Monday by his brother Mehmet Ocalan, who was allowed to visit the PKK leader at his island prison south of Istanbul the day before the Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha.
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.
According to Turkish officials, a total of 48 people were wounded in the blast, including two police officers and six Iranians.
The blast tore the front off a four-storey building.
“Our government took this decision based on all of this evidence”. The mayors were reportedly removed over suspected links to militants, but they have accused the government of an “administrative coup” against them.
Four people, including a deputy mayor, were briefly detained in a minor skirmish outside city hall in the southeastern province of Hakkari.
The HDP decried what it said was an “administrative coup” and said the move was illegal.
The PKK is recognised as a terrorist organisation by the European Union, the U.S., and Turkey.
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Turkey has a “binding duty” to defeat the Islamic State in neighboring Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an address Sunday.
Being elected a mayor does not mean you can do anything you want.
“You do not have such an authority”.
Separatists groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have carried out several terror attacks on the country in recent months after a two-year ceasefire with the government broke down last year.
“First of all, it wasn’t us who destroyed the process”, he said, referring to a peace process which began in 2013 but collapsed in past year.
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Turkey’s top military commander says an ongoing offensive in northern Syrian will continue until southern borders are secured and Turkish forces mop “all terrorists” out of the region.
