Diyarbakir (Turkey) (AFP) – Outlawed Kurdish rebels on Thursday claimed a deadly attack on a police station in southeastern Turkey that killed six people including a pregnant policewoman.
The claim by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party was issued after a bloody two days that shattered the start of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in Turkey.
In all, at least 17 people were killed in bombings blamed on Kurdish militants in the southeast and the main city of Istanbul, the latest in a wave of deadly attacks in Turkey over the past year.
“A major suicide attack was carried out on the police headquarters of the fascist state forces in Midyat town… by our comrade,” the PKK said in a statement.
It said the six-storey police station was a place where “all kinds of dirty plans… and pressure” were applied against “our people and our values”.
The number of dead from Wednesday’s attack rose to six after a third police officer died, Turkish media reported. The other two officers were both women, one of them pregnant.
– ‘Nothing to discuss’ –
Turkish authorities had blamed the PKK, which has been waging a decades-long insurgency against the state and is listed as a terror group by Ankara and much of the international community.
The suicide bomber, identified by his guerrilla name “Dirok Amed”, fought in the ranks of the PKK, and was from the majority Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir, according to the group’s statement.
On Tuesday, a car bombing against a police bus in the heart of Istanbul claimed 11 lives, including six officers. There has so far been no claim for that attack.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the outlawed group had made a bid for dialogue after almost a year of renewed violence that ended a two-and-a-half year truce.
“These days news comes, directly or indirectly, from the terrorist organisation saying ‘we can negotiate, we can lay down arms, we should talk’,” Yildirim said.
“There’s nothing to discuss,” he said late on Wednesday, quoted by the Dogan news agency.
Violence flared last year between Kurdish rebels and government forces, shattering a 2013 ceasefire reached after secret talks between PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and the Turkish state.
Over 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK took up arms in 1984 demanding an independent state for Kurds. Since then the group has narrowed its demands to greater autonomy and cultural rights.
“The attacks that occurred in the month of Ramadan show the vile terrorist organisation does not recognise any sacred value,” Yildirim said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed that the fight against the PKK will continue “until doomsday”.
In angry front pages, Turkish newspapers focused on the fact two of the police officers killed in Midyat were women.
Serife Ozden Kalmis, 31, was six months pregnant and had worked in the security detail of ex-president Abdullah Gul, who in a message on Twitter praised her “devoted service” and expressed “immense sadness”.
Another victim, Nefize Ozsoy, was a mother of a four-month-old daughter.
The Turkish military has over the last months carried out long, curfew-backed operations in a string of towns and cities in a bid to eliminate militants from the PKK from urban centres in the southeast.
The authorities insist it was the only way to ensure security but activists claim civilians lost their lives due to needless force and entire districts of cities razed to the ground.
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