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Five dead in suspected Kurdish attack on
Turkish police bus
9.10.2008
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October
9, 2008
DIYARBAKIR, Kurdish Southeastern region of
Turkey, — Suspected Kurdish PKK rebels, armed with
assault rifles, attacked a Turkish police bus in
Turkey's Kurdish southeast on Wednesday, killing
five people and injuring 19, officials said.
The attack came as the parliament extended the
government's mandate to order cross-border strikes
on Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants
using northern Iraq as a springboard for attacks on
Turkey as part of a 24-year separatist campaign.
The assailants opened fire on the bus -- carrying
employees of the police academy -- from two
different positions as it was passing through a
residential area in Diyarbakir,www.ekurd.net
the main city in the
Kurdish-populated region, Interior Minister Besir
Atalay told reporters in Ankara.
The victims were four police officers and the
civilian driver of the bus, he added. All of the
injured were police officers. |
Suspected Kurdish PKK rebels, armed with assault
rifles, attacked a Turkish police bus in Turkey's
Kurdish southeast on Wednesday |
Hospital sources said six had sustained heavy
injuries and were being operated on.
Speaking after the vote in parliament, Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested the attack
was the work of the PKK and said Ankara was
determined to rout the rebels.
"These (attacks) will not daunt us. We will continue
our struggle until the terrorist organisation lays
down arms," Erdogan said, using the official jargon
for the PKK.
President Abdullah Gul also condemned the violence
in a written statement and said: "Those who carried
out this treacherous attack against our security
forces ... will definitely be brought to justice."
After the attack,www.ekurd.net
police immediately
cordoned off the area, where they also found an
unexploded hand grenade. News reports suggested that
the assailants had thrown it under the bus.
An operation, supported by two helicopters, was
underway to catch the attackers, security sources
said, adding that police were questioning six
people. It was not immediately clear whether they
were suspects.
Wednesday's assault comes days after PKK rebels
killed 17 soldiers in a deadly attack on a military
outpost in the province of Hakkari near the Iraqi
border,www.ekurd.net
in the bloodiest attack
this year.
Turkey charges that thousands of PKK rebels are
holed up in the autonomous Kurdish-run north of Iraq
where they obtain weapons and explosives for attacks
on Turkish territory.
Ankara accuses Iraqi Kurds of tolerating the PKK
presence in northern Iraq and has repeatedly urged
them to take tougher action.
The PKK routinely targets Turkish security forces
and although the fighting mainly takes place on
rural ground in the southeast and east, the rebels
have also been blamed for a series of attacks in
urban centres.
In August, 16 people, most of them policemen and
soldiers, were injured in a powerful car bomb blast
in the western city of Izmir that was later claimed
by a radical Kurdish group that Ankara says is
linked to the PKK.
Authorities suspect the PKK to be behind two bomb
attacks in a crowded street in Istanbul in July,
which killed 17 people, among them five children,
and wounded more than 150.
In the last bomb attack in Diyarbakir, in January
last year, a powerful car bomb, blamed on the PKK,
went off as a bus carrying soldiers was passing,
killing seven people, six of whom were teenagers
attending classes at a private school.
Turkey has never, and still does not, recognize the
Kurdistan region government (KRG) and refuses to
meet with its representatives in any official
capacity. That reflects Ankara's fear that any
international respect shown to the autonomous Iraqi
Kurdistan region would only embolden Turkey's own
large Kurdish minority to seek similar home-rule
status.
Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan regional
government that holds sway in northern Iraq,
regretted Ankara's refusal to hold direct talks on
the crisis over the Turkey's separatist Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) rebels.
In earlier statement by Iraqi Kurdistan forces chief
Brig. Gen. Jabbar Yawar, an undersecretary for the
ministry governing Kurdistan protection forces known
as Peshmerga, said "Turkey wants imaginary and
impossible demands. They want us to kill all PKK for
them while they themselves cannot do that," he said.
Iraqi Kurds says previously we saw the Turkish army
invading the region under the pretext of chasing the
PKK and this army did nothing.
Over 39,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish PKK
guerrillas have been killed since 1984 when the
Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly
Kurdish southeast of Turkey (Turkey-Kurdistan). A large Turkey's
Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK rebels.
The PKK demanded Turkey's recognition of the Kurds'
identity in its constitution and of their language
as a native language along with Turkish in the
country's Kurdish areas, the party also demanded
an end to ethnic discrimination in Turkish laws and
constitution against Kurds, ranting them full
political freedoms.
The PKK is considered a 'terrorist' organization by
Ankara, U.S., the PKK continues to be on the
blacklist list in EU despite court ruling which
overturned a decision
to place the Kurdish rebel
group PKK and its political wing on
the European Union's terror list.
Turkey refuses to recognize its Kurdish population
as a distinct minority. It has allowed some cultural
rights such as limited broadcasts in the Kurdish
language and private Kurdish language courses with
the prodding of the European Union, but Kurdish politicians
say the measures fall short of their expectations.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AFP | Agencies
** Kurds are not recognized as an official minority
in Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in Big
Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to 25 million ethnic Kurds, a large
Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise with
the Kurdish PKK for a Kurdish homeland in the
country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media. The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet has led
to judicial persecution in 2000 and 2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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