Death toll rises to 4 after clashes in Turkey’s Kurdish region

Ekurd.net

SIRNAK, Turkey’s Kurdish region,— Zeki Alar, 32, an ethnic Kurd, who was injured by Turkish police bullet during clashes between a Kurdish-Sunni Islamist, Hür Dava Party, (Huda Par) and supporter of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party PKK in Turkish Kurdistan in the southeast of the country on Dec. 27 has died on Sunday, and was laid to rest by tens of thousands of people, media reported.

Alar was seriously injured in the province of Sirnak and had been moved to Diyarbakir Dicle University Medicine Research Hospital, but he did not survive after numerous surgical operations.

Tensions have escalated in the Kurdish town of Cizre on Dec. 27 when the Sunni Muslim Hür Dava Party (Hür Dava Partisi), a Kurdish-based Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political party in Turkey, attacked tents belonging to rebels of the PKK, AFP reported.

Huda Par is known to be the political extension of Turkish Hezbollah and has long been hostile to the PKK — which has fought Turkish security forces in a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish self-rule.

Fierce street fights between the Huda Par group and the PKK took place in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast in October 2014 when the Islamic State was fighting Kurdish forces in the Kurdish town of Kobani across the town in Syrian Kurdistan. More than 30 people were killed in the rioting.

The PKK issued a statement regarding the recently enhanced attacks, said “If there is a provocation in question, it has been planned and practised by the very self of the AKP government. Hür Dava Party is just a front organization used for this purpose”, the KCK emphasised and noted that Hür Dava Party which has the blood of hundreds of Kurds in its hands hides behind Islam in a dirty, ugly and false manner, just like what the Islamic State group IS is doing.

“Hür Dava Party is as much Muslim as the IS. They are introducing themselves as Muslim, and telling a lie”, the PKK statement said, remarking that Hür Dava Party uttered threats and promoted provocation through its written and visual press and media. The PKK also pointed out that Hür Dava Party drew its strength from the AKP government, just like what it did during the 90’s, and that the party was only a paramilitary force serving the colonial policy.

Since it was established in 1984 the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, with the aim of creating an independent, Kurdish state. But now limited its demands to establish an autonomous Kurdish region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 75-million population but have long been denied basic political and cultural rights, its goal to political autonomy. A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

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