A car bomb yesterday rocked southeastern Turkey’s largest city, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 100, security sources said, hours after police detained the leaders of the mostly Kurdish region’s biggest political party.
The blast struck near the police station in Diyarbakir where some of the party leaders were being held in a terrorism probe. It tore off the facades of buildings and firefighters were searching debris for people trapped there.
Turkish Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdag said police and civilians were killed.
Photo: AFP
The detention of the leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Turkish parliament’s second-biggest opposition grouping, and 10 other of its lawmakers would heighten concern among Western allies about a deepening crackdown on dissent under Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
The move, which drew immediate condemnation from the EU, comes as Turkey has detained or suspended more than 110,000 officials in the wake of a failed July coup, mulls the reintroduction of the death penalty and days after journalists from a leading opposition newspaper were detained.
“Very bad news from Turkey. Again. Now HDP members of parliament are being detained,” the European Parliament’s Turkey rapporteur Kati Piri said on Twitter of a country that is seeking membership of the EU.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Twitter she was “extremely worried” by the arrests and had called a meeting of EU ambassadors in Ankara.
Southeastern Turkey has been rocked by political turmoil and violence for more than a year after the collapse of a ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy.
CURRENCY PLUMMETS
The Turkish lira hit a new record low against the US dollar after the arrests, trading at 3.1319 at 9:40am.
Access to social media, including Twitter, Whatsapp, YouTube and Facebook, was blocked, an Internet monitoring group said, and a reporting ban was imposed on coverage of the blast.
A US Internet company official, who declined to be identified, confirmed some sites were being “throttled,” a method of slowing them to the point where they are unusable.
Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party accuse the HDP of links to the PKK, which is deemed a terrorist organization by the US and the EU.
The HDP, which won more than 5 million votes at the last general election, denies direct links.
The government introduced a nationwide state of emergency after a failed military coup on July 15 which gave it broad powers to round up suspects linked to the putsch. More than 110,000 civil servants, soldiers, police, judges, journalists and other officials have been suspended or detained.
The authorities have also used the emergency powers to round up pro-Kurdish opposition politicians, including Diyarbakir’s joint mayors, who were detained late last month, and has closed all major Kurdish media outlets.
In comments cited by state-run Anadolu Agency, Bozdag said yesterday’s detentions were within the law and rejected criticism of the move.
“The lawmakers who are detained ... disregarded the law,” he said. “They were sent an invitation but they don’t come. What other solution is there? It is to bring them forcibly.”
INTERNATIONAL CALL
Police raided the house of Figen Yuksekdag, HDP co-chairwoman, and Selahattin Demirtas, the other party leader, in Diyarbakir, after they refused to give testimony for crimes linked to “terrorist propaganda.”
“The HDP calls on the international community to react against the Erdogan regime’s coup,” the party said on Twitter.
A court official said the prosecutor was seeking Demirtas’ formal arrest and that both he and Yuksekdag were in court after police questioning.
“I will not hesitate to be held accountable in front of a fair and impartial judiciary. There is nothing I cannot answer for,” Demirtas said in a statement to the prosecutor, which was shared by HDP lawmaker Besime Konca.
“But I refuse to be an actor in this judicial theater just because it was ordered by Erdogan, whose own political past is suspicious,” he said.
Police also raided and searched the party’s head office in Ankara. Police cars and armed vehicles had closed the entrances to the street of the HDP headquarters.
A group of protesters chanting slogans tried to reach the party offices, but were stopped by police before they could enter the street, a witness said.
The HDP is the third-largest party in the 550-seat Turkish parliament, with 59 seats.
Parliamentarians in Turkey normally enjoy immunity from prosecution, but the immunity of many lawmakers, including HDP deputies, was lifted earlier this year.
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