Angry Kurds battled Turkish police with rocks and firebombs on Saturday to protest a decision by the country’s top court to shut down a pro-Kurdish political party on charges of ties to militants.
The party’s lawmakers said they would boycott parliament.
The party was banned on Friday, a day after the main Kurdish rebel group claimed responsibility for killing seven Turkish soldiers in an ambush in central Turkey, an attack that outraged the country.
The ban and ensuing violence deepened uncertainty over efforts to end a conflict between the state and its largest ethnic minority.
A crowd pelted an armored police bus with stones as firebombs hit two other armored vehicles, briefly engulfing them in fire in the town of Yuksekova, close to the borders with Iraq and Iran, Dogan news agency video showed.
Protesters blocked streets with barricades and burning tires. Police used water canons to mark the protesters with brightly colored water.
In neighboring Hakkari city, a mob attempted to lynch two police officers but were prevented by local Kurdish politicians, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.
Police detained about a dozen protesters, the area’s governor said.
Protests took place elsewhere in the region and the western cities of Ankara and Izmir, Anatolia said.
Democratic Society Party chairman Ahmet Turk said the remaining 19-seat group had withdrawn and would not attend sessions of the 550-seat assembly.
The party had 21 seats but the court on Friday expelled Turk and another legislator from the assembly.
The political turmoil has jeopardized a government project to reconcile with minority Kurds in the hopes of ending the fight with Kurdish rebels who have been labeled terrorists by the West. The party has resisted calls from Turkish politicians to label the guerrillas as such.
The EU has expressed concern over the ban, saying in a statement that “while strongly denouncing violence and terrorism, the presidency recalls that the dissolution of political parties is an exceptional measure that should be used with utmost restraint.”
The court said in its ruling that the party had ties to the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has fought for autonomy from the Turkish state since 1984.
The court also barred Turk and legislator Aysel Tugluk from joining any political party for five years along with 35 other party members, including Leyla Zana, a prominent Kurd who served a decade in prison on charges of separatism.
“What else can the court do when there are party administrators who declare the terrorist organization to be their reason of existence,” the Anatolia news agency quoted Turkish President Abdullah Gul as saying during a visit to Montenegro.
The court has shut down several Kurdish party on similar charges in the past.
The predecessor of the Democratic Society Party had dissolved itself in 2005.
The party is the 27th to be shut down in Turkey since 1968.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
RSS