He was one of eight victims of a wave of attacks across the country on the same day.
Advertisement
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who as prime minister pursued talks to end the three-decade Kurdish conflict, now says the PKK poses as great a threat to Turkey as Islamic State.
The violence began around 1 a.m. Monday in the city’s Sultanbeyli district, police said, when a vehicle-borne bomb exploded near the police station, wounding at least 10 people.
Also Monday, shots were reportedly fired near the U.S. consulate in Istanbul.
Police sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the middle-aged woman was known by the alias Hulya, and had been designated as a potential bomber by the far-left group.
In addition to the airstrikes, Tuesday also saw Kurdish militants attacking a Turkish army base in Sirnak, taking one casualty. The bomb attack injured three policemen and seven civilians and caused a fire that collapsed part of the three-story building. Those attacks are the latest in a series on the security forces both on police and the military, predominantly in the Kurdish southeast. The U.S. Department of State tweeted that there were “no injuries to Consulate personnel or customers”.
The United States and the European Union, like Turkey, classify the PKK as a terrorist organisation. Shoot-outs between Turkish and PKK forces also ensued throughout the night.
In a statement posted on its website, the group described the consulate attacker, Asik, as a “revolutionary” fighting American oppression and vowed to maintain its struggle until Turkey is “cleared” of all American bases.
The PKK’s military wing killed two Turkish police officers, claiming they had collaborated with IS in the bombing, and in response Turkey began bombing PKK camps in northern Iraq at the same time as launching air strikes on IS militants in Syria.
TATTERSALL: Well, the DHKP-C is a far-leftist group that has claimed responsibility in the past for attacks on U.S. interests.
No one was hurt in the attack on the US Consulate, which came just weeks after Turkey agreed to take a more active role in the US-led campaign against Isis. In 2013, it claimed a suicide bomb attack at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of the HDP, said at a peace rally in the southeastern province of Van on Saturday, “the PKK must take its hands off the trigger immediately and declare that it will abide by the terms of the cease-fire”. More than 220,000 people have died and millions have been displaced as a result of the long-standing military violence in the country, according to the UN.
In accordance with a toll by the AFP information company, 29 members of the safety forces have been killed in violence linked to the PKK because the present disaster started.
Advertisement
The state-run Anatolia news agency reported over the weekend that so far 390 “terrorists” had been killed in the campaign against the PKK.
