The rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Friday urged Kurds in Turkey to stage an “uprising” after an air force raid killed 35 villagers near the Iraq border. “We urge the people of Kurdistan… to react after this massacre and seek a settling of accounts through uprisings,” Bahoz Erdal from the armed wing of the PKK, labelled a terrorist organisation by Ankara, said in a statement. Turkey’s ruling party on Thursday said the strike could have been a “blunder” that killed civilians and not Kurdish separatists. “According to initial reports, these people were smugglers and not terrorists,” said Huseyin Celik, vice-president of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP).
“If it turns out to have been a mistake, a blunder, rest assured that this will not be covered up,” he said, adding that it could have been an “operational accident” by the military. Turkey’s military command said it had launched an air raid on PKK militants after a spy drone spotted a group moving toward its sensitive southeastern border under cover of darkness late Wednesday. “The area where this happened is called Sinat-Haftanin, in northern Iraq, where there is no civilian population, and where the terrorist organisation has bases,” a military statement said, referring to the outlawed PKK.
But the country’s main pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said the planes had bombed villagers from Kurdish majority southeastern Turkey who were smuggling sugar and fuel across the border on mules and donkeys. “It’s clearly a massacre of civilians, of whom the oldest is 20,” BDP leader Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that called on Turkey’s Kurdish population to respond “by democratic means”.
ERDOGAN ‘REGRETS’ DEATH OF KURDISH CIVILIANS IN AIR STRIKE: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed regret Friday for the death of 35 Kurdish civilians in an air strike, saying it had been determined they were smugglers and not separatist rebels. Speaking to journalists in Istanbul, Erdogan offered his condolences to the families of the victims for what he called an “unfortunate and distressing” incident.
