Kurdish militants have claimed responsibility for the assassination of two officials in Turkey’s southeast and the country’s prime minister said the insurgency had entered a new “heinous” phase in targeting the AK Party founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said it had shot dead Deryan Aktert, AKP head in the city of Diyarbakir’s Dicle district, in his office on Monday for his co-operation with the state in fighting the PKK, an organisation listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
Aktert was hit by gunfire at a gas station and later succumbed to his injuries, a party official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
After the latest killing, Turkish security forces have launched a hunt to find perpetrators, the official said.
On Sunday, assailants killed Aydin Mustu, the AK Party’s deputy leader in the Ozalp district of Van, a city 350km (215 miles) east of Diyarbakir.
“The attacks on AK Party officials show that the terrorist organisation has entered a new period of heinous attacks. They are enacting new orders to stage suicide attacks, assassinations against ruling party officials,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told his party in parliament yesterday.
Erdogan, also facing spillover of Islamic State (IS) attacks from Syria and the aftermath of an attempted military coup in July, has vowed to destroy the PKK following collapse of a ceasefire last year.
In recent months, a huge army operation has forced PKK rebels from cities where the fighters had set up barricades and taken control of streets.
“We will continue our operations until our citizens no longer carry any security fear,” Yildirim said, referring to Turkey’s three-pronged effort to root out PKK militants, coup plotters and Islamic State along its border in Syria.
More than 40,000 people have been killed since 1984 in a PKK campaign for more political and cultural autonomy for mainly Kurdish areas in the southeast.
Turkey fears the creation of a breakaway Kurdish state.
Suspected PKK militants set off a truck bomb, killing 15 people at a military checkpoint in Hakkari province on Sunday, officials said.
Police in Diyarbakir said they had also detained 55 officials from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and its sister Democratic Regions Party (DBP) yesterday in a counter-terrorism investigation.
Yildirim: (The PKK) has entered a new period of heinous attacks.
