One Person Killed in Clashes in Southeast Turkey
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – One person was killed in clashes in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday, security sources said, as violence continued to rock the mainly Kurdish region days after a general election.
Turkish jets pounded 16 targets belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq for a second day on Tuesday, the military General Staff said on its website.
The AK Party won back a parliamentary majority on Sunday in a major victory for President Tayyip Erdogan, who has pledged to continue operations against the PKK after a two-year ceasefire that he had championed collapsed in July.
A 20-year-old man was shot dead in the town of Silvan on Wednesday, where authorities have ordered a 24-hour curfew in three neighbourboods for a second successive day, security officials said. Clashes between security forces and the PKK's youth wing continued throughout the day.
On Tuesday, one man was killed in Silvan and two others in Yuksekova, some 450 km (280 miles) to the east.
The autonomy-seeking PKK, listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, took up arms in 1984, and more than 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, have died in the conflict.
Erdogan had granted some political and cultural rights to Turkey's estimated 15 million Kurds, but the government abandoned efforts for a negotiated settlement this year ahead of a June vote when the AKP lost its parliamentary majority.
