ISTANBUL,— A female suspected member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was killed Friday in Istanbul in a police operation against militants suspected to be planning suicide attacks, reports said.
Counter-terrorism police raided a home in Istanbul’s Sancaktepe district after receiving a tip-off that PKK militants had arrived in Turkey’s biggest city to carry out suicide attacks, Dogan news agency said.
A female member of the PKK was killed in the ensuing shootout with police while three other militants were detained, Dogan said.
Turkish Police teams raided an alleged “cell house” on Dumanlar Streets of Sancaktepe Thursday night. A young women by the name of Dilan Kortak (19) was killed by police during the operation on the house, ANF news reported.
Kortak’s family and HDP Deputy Hüda Kaya are waiting at the Forensic Medicine Institution where Dilan’s body is being held at the moment.
Speaking here, father İbrahim Kortak said; “This is an execution. Police gave me no information as to how my daughter died. She was my youngest daughter.”
Following the procedures at Forensic Medicine Institution, Dilan Kortak’s body will be taken to İzmir where she will be laid to rest.
Police also detained 10 suspected members of the radical Marxist Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) in a separate operation in several districts of Istanbul, state-run Anatolia news agency said.
The MLKP, an offshoot of the Turkish Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist (TKP-ML) set up in 1994, is a small armed group that seeks to replace Turkey’s political system with a communist regime.
It is considered by the Turkish authorities as close to the PKK, which has over the years narrowed its demands from an independent Kurdish state to greater autonomy and cultural rights.
The PKK initially took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, with the aim of establishing an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population, although lately the demands have focused on greater autonomy and rights.
The Turkish government has been waging a relentless offensive aimed at crippling the PKK, which has staged a string of attacks against security forces in Turkey since a two-year-old ceasefire fell apart in late July.
The violence has destroyed hopes of fresh talks to end a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, AFP | ANF | Ekurd.net
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