Ankara, February 14: Turkish police on Saturday arrested 69 people suspected of links with Kurdish separatist rebels in operations in eight provinces in the southeast and east of the country, security sources said.
They said the swoop was aimed to prevent feared demonstrations marking Monday’s 11th anniversary of the arrest of the head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan.
The sources said those arrested included leaders and local elected officials of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Party for Peace and Democracy (BDP). The police raids in the southeastern provinces of Batman, Hakkari, Mardin, Siirt and Sirnak, as well as Agri, Mus and Van in the east, came some three weeks after a similar swoop which netted some 60 people.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms against the government in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.
In August, the government announced plans to expand Kurdish freedoms in a bid to erode popular support for the PKK and end the insurgency.
But the project was hit when the country’s main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), was banned by the constitutional court in December for links with the PKK, triggering violent demonstrations. The BDP came to the fore in the wake of the ban.
Ocalan, 61, has been serving a life sentence for treason since 1999 on the prison island of Imrali in northwestern Turkey, after he was snatched in Kenya by Turkish special forces.
——–Agencies