Turkish authorities yesterday detained 22 suspected radical leftists in the southern city of Antalya, a day after a hostage siege in an Istanbul courthouse in which a senior prosecutor and his leftist captors were killed.
Acting on a tip-off, police in raids detained 22 students, all of them linked to the outlawed Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), the same group behind Tuesday’s drama.
The announcement came shortly before Mehmet Selim Kiraz’s funeral.
Photo: EPA
Police late on Tuesday launched an operation to free Kiraz after an hours-long standoff with his captors, but the prosecutor died shortly after arriving at hospital.
A ceremony to remember Kiraz was to take place outside the courthouse yesterday and his funeral was scheduled to take place at the Eyup Sultan Mosque in Istanbul attended by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the Anatolia news agency said.
“The day we went into darkness,” the daily Cumhuriyet said after a day which also saw Turkey’s worst nationwide power cut in 15 years.
“Black Tuesday,” the Hurriyet daily said.
Kiraz had been leading a hotly politicized investigation into the killing of teenager Berkin Elvan, who died in March last year after spending 269 days in a coma from injuries inflicted by police in anti-government protests in the summer of 2013.
So far no one has been brought to trial for the crime and the captors demanded that Kiraz hand over the names of the suspects and force them to confess.
Publishing photographs of the prosecutor with his mouth bound and a gun to his head, they threatened to kill him if their demands were not met.
“As a nation, we see this attack not only an attack against our prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz, but also an attack against the Turkish judiciary, Turkish democracy and all the citizens in Turkey,” Davutoglu said.
“No one should doubt that we will continue to fight against terrorism with determination and take whatever steps necessary,” he added.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, arriving on a visit to Romania, said the attackers had entered the courthouse disguised in legal robes.
He said Kiraz had suffered three gunshots to the head and two to his body.
The circumstances of the police operation were not immediately clear, but Istanbul police said it was launched after they heard gunshots.
Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz vehemently denied there was any link between the hostage drama and the power cut, after opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu claimed the power could have been cut intentionally to assist the captors.
The drama came at time of intensifying political tensions in Turkey ahead of June 7 legislative elections.
Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party is seeking a landslide victory, which would pave the way for him to change the constitution to boost the powers of the presidency, which he assumed last year after more than a decade as prime minister.
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