Ankara, December 16: Two people have been fatally shot and several others sustained wounds in southeastern Turkey as protests against a Turkish Constitutional Court decision to ban the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) continue apace.
Two people were killed and seven were wounded on Tuesday when a shopkeeper fired on demonstrators in the town of Bulanik in the eastern province of Mus.
The shooting came after the protesters stoned shops and banks along the route of a march and harassed shopkeepers who had not closed their stores in protest of the ban on the DTP. Protesters broke the windows of the gunman’s shop and torched his vehicle after he refused to pull down shutters, the Anatolia news agency reported on Tuesday.
The shopkeeper was arrested and his weapon was confiscated.
Officials identified the two people who were gunned down as Kemal Kayacan and Nejmi Oral.
There have been daily protests in the Kurdish-populated southeast and east of Turkey as well as major western towns with large numbers of Kurdish migrants since Friday when the Constitutional Court banned the DTP.
According to the court ruling, the party’s founders, including party leader Ahmet Turk as well as Aysel Tugluk, Nurettin Demirtas, Leyla Zana, and Selim Sadak, are banned from politics for five years. They will be unable to found, join, administer, or supervise any other political party during their ban.
In addition, Turk and Tugluk will be removed from their seats in Parliament and the party’s assets will be transferred to the Treasury as soon as the verdict is published in the Official Gazette.
The ban and the ensuing political turmoil have dealt a blow to government efforts to end decades of conflict with the Kurdish population and have jeopardized an Ankara project to reconcile with its largest minority.
——Agencies