4 troops killed in Turkey amid rising terror tension

Four soldiers were killed over the weekend in clashes with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, as police detained dozens of people accused of fueling ethnic tension in an Istanbul neighborhood.

Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin on Sunday condemned terror and said unity is needed in the country, which was created with great sacrifices.

“This land is not ordinary. We did not buy this land on the real-estate market, these borders [of Turkey] have been drawn by shedding blood,” Şahin said.

Three Turkish soldiers were killed by suspected PKK members in an ambush late Saturday night in a village in the southeastern province of Mardin, while another soldier, wounded in clashes Friday in Hakkari, died at a military hospital in Ankara on Sunday.

The attacks come at a time of heightened clashes between Turkey’s armed forces and PKK militants in the country’s southeast, and amid a parliamentary boycott by deputies backed by a pro-Kurdish party.

The clashes have fueled ethnic tension in Istanbul’s Zetytinburnu district, where police recently detained more than 70 people in connection with fights and attacks that have taken place over the last week.

Some of the detained allegedly spread stories such as “they [Kurds] are killing Turkish nationalists” and “they [Turks] have started a fire at a Kurdish cafe” to fuel the tension between Turks and Kurds living in the district.


/Hurriyet Daily News/