Car bomb rocks Diyarbakır hours after arrests, killing nine people, as western allies denounce detention of senior Kurdish figures in terror investigation

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Turkey’s opposition parties have condemned the arrests of a dozen Kurdish officials including senior politicians in a terror investigation, branding it an affront to democracy amid mounting outrage by Ankara’s western allies.



The Turkish lira fell to a three-month low against the dollar over fears of instability after midnight raids led to the detention of the two chiefs of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) and at least 10 other party members, whom the government accuses of abetting the activities of Kurdish insurgents.

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Among the detainees was Selahattin Demirtaș, the charismatic Kurdish politician and an opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“You can never bring peace to a country if you say, ‘I will apprehend those who came with elections, jail them, kill them, destroy them, shoot them and silence them in mafia-like ways,’” said Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the head of the Republican People’s party (CHP), the largest opposition bloc in parliament.

“If you defend democracy, then you should recognise that those who come to power with elections should go with elections,” he added in a speech on Friday. “If not, you will slaughter democracy.”

The HDP denounced the arrests, saying the “dignity of justice” was compromised in what the party sees as a politically motivated smear campaign. It called on the international community to respond to what it described as a coup by Erdoğan.

The detentions came against a backdrop of rising tensions in Turkey, months after a coup attempt in July shook the nation and prompted a broad purge of thousands of police officers, teachers, academics, army personnel and journalists accused of having links to Fethullah Gülen, a US-based preacher Ankara says masterminded the putsch.

A simultaneous crackdown has also targeted prominent Kurdish personalities and media organisations that the government accuses of fomenting propaganda on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a separatist group that has carried out attacks in Turkey and is designated as a terror group by the US.

Peace talks between the PKK and the government collapsed last year in mutual recrimination, and violence has since flared up repeatedly in Kurdish areas in the south-east of the country.

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Hours after the detentions began, the city of Diyarbakır was rocked by a car bomb outside a police building in attack the authorities blamed on PKK militants. At least nine people were killed and more than 100 injured in the attack in the majority-Kurdish city.

In a statement, the Turkish government said the detentions had been carried out after HDP MPs refused to testify in a terror probe. HDP is the third-largest party in the 550-seat Turkish parliament, with 59 seats. Parliamentarians in Turkey normally enjoy immunity from prosecution, but that privilege was lifted earlier this year in a measure widely seen as targeting the HDP.

The prime minister, Binali Yıldırım, told reporters that elected officials who incite and encourage terrorism must face legal proceedings and that the MPs were detained because they had refused to give testimony.

“Politics cannot be a shield for committing a crime,” Yıldırım said. “Turkey is a state of law.”

“Those who come to power by elections but prefer to embrace terrorism will of course be held accountable by the law,” he added.

There were reported outages in social media services including Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp throughout Turkey, which the country’s premier said was a security measure.

Rights groups and western officials also condemned the arrests.

Emma Sinclair-Webb, the Turkey director for Human Rights Watch, described it as an “outrageous step in the draconian crackdown”, and Amnesty International said it was “the latest escalation in the onslaught on dissent”.

The US government said that it was “deeply disturbed” by the arrests, while the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said they compromised Turkey’s parliamentary democracy.

“We expect Turkey to safeguard its parliamentary democracy, including respect for human rights and the rule of law, and we are conveying these expectations directly to the Turkish authorities,” Mogherini said in a statement with the EU’s enlargement commissioner, Johannes Hahn.



Germany’s foreign ministry said it had summoned Turkey’s chargé d’affaires to discuss the arrests.



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Relations between Turkey and the EU are delicate. Officials in Ankara accuse their European counterparts of not showing enough support for Turkey in the aftermath of the failed coup, and bristle at criticism of the crackdown.

Meanwhile, a deal to limit the flight of migrants from Turkey to Europe in exchange for visa-free travel for Turkish citizens in the EU may fail in the coming weeks because Europe has not kept its end of the bargain.

A measure to reintroduce the death penalty in Turkey is also likely to be debated in the coming weeks in parliament, likely to end Turkey’s EU accession talks.

Turkey remains under a state of emergency, imposed after the failed coup attempt, which critics say has gone well beyond targeting the plotters. Thirteen staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, including the editor-in-chief, were detained on Monday, further heightening strains in Turkish society.



Opponents of Erdoğan are likely to interpret the latest developments in the campaign as a move to further consolidate his power ahead of an expected referendum and parliamentary vote in the spring on constitutional amendments that would transform Turkey from a parliamentary democracy into a presidential system.