Kurds attack governor in South-East Turkey
  • 12 years ago
A local governor in the southeast of Turkey is surrounded by a crowd of furious Kurds.
He had gone to the village of Gulyazi to pay his condolences to the families of the victims killed in the air strike near the Iraqi border, which claimed 35 civilian lives.
The governor is hustled into a petrol station for his protection, which is then mobbed, before he can be dragged to safety.
The airstrike by the Turkish military on Thursday killed 35 villagers who had been mistaken for Kurdish militants.
The incident has outraged the Kurdish minority in Turkey, and sparked a wave of protests across the country.
Here, protesters set a surveillance camera on fire and pelted a police car with stones.
The airstrike threatens to derail efforts by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to engage the Kurdish community in talks for a new constitution addressing long-held grievances.
It could also ignite more violence from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which Turkey, the E.U., and the U.S. all say is a terrorist group.
Kurds are a minority that inhabit parts of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, and have become increasingly assertive of their rights.
Nick Rowlands, Reuters.
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