Erdogan stepping up crackdown on Kurds
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is launching a new crackdown against Kurdish opposition figures, accusing them of joining terrorist organizations, including the Kurdistan People's Workers Party.
This is strange
because Erdogan struck a peace agreement with the party's leader Abdullah Öcalan when he came to power in Turkey.
Turkish police
arrested 74 people accused of having links with the Kurdistan People's Workers
Party which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, according to
Anadolu Agency.
It said police
raided homes in a number of Turkish cities, including in Istanbul to search for
suspects in connection with the same case.
The agency said
police are searching for a total of 106 people involved in the case.
It said police
confiscated unlicensed pistols and digital documents as well as banned books
during the raids they made.
The Bar Association
in the southeastern province of
Diyarbakır
condemned the latest arrests.
It noted that 17 of
its members had been arrested within the abovementioned campaign.
Diyarbakır will not be scared by these arrests, the
association wrote on Twitter.
The association
added that the arrests attest the presence of a desire inside official quarters
for suppressing its voice.
The opposition
People's Democratic Party, which backs the Kurds, came under tight security
supervision under accusations of having links with the Kurdistan People's
Workers' Party.
Some observers
attribute the ongoing campaign against the Kurds to the latest election victory
in the United States by Joe Biden.
The campaign, they
said, reflects the presence of fears inside decision-making circles in Turkey
from Biden's sympathetic approach to the Kurds.
