Rights Group: Civilian Deaths Rise In Turkey’s Kurdish Areas

Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast region has seen renewed hostilities between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after July’s breakdown of a two-year peace process.

The Turkish army said it has killed more than 110 Kurdish fighters as part of its major operation against the Kurdish resistance group in the country’s southeast.

With tensions rising throughout Turkey’s southeast, police fired tear gas canisters in the city of Van to disperse a protest of about 500 people against the curfews, arresting 18 people, the Dogan news agency reported.

Late on Monday, a special sergeant was also killed in a separate attack by the PKK in Sur, a central district of the province of Diyarbakır which has been under curfew for almost four weeks. Turkish police killed two female “terrorists” in a pre-dawn raid Tuesday on a cell of suspected militants in Istanbul, media reports said.

Meanwhile, the co-leader of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party attacked Ankara for justifying curfews, crackdowns and civilian deaths by pointing to “ditches” and “barricades” that people in Kurdish neighborhoods have reportedly constructed to deter military incursions. It also urged Kurdish armed groups to “stop digging trenches planted with explosives” to seal off their neighborhoods from security forces.

While several such killings have been documented by HRW “in detail” through interviews with relatives and witnesses, “well over 100 civilian deaths and multiple injuries” have been recorded by local human rights activists, the worldwide organization said.

Demirtas accused the government and military of targeting citizens who were presented as “terrorists”. Turkey has vowed to press ahead with the operations until the region is clear of rebels.

Many towns are under curfew and electricity has been cut in many Silopi districts as transformers have been damaged. Food and drinking water were running scarce, residents told Reuters news agency.

The Turkish government criticized the visit following the falling out between Ankara and Moscow over the downing of a Russian jet last month on the Syria border. It added that entering people’s homes by force, whether by the state or the PKK, was trespassing and “unacceptable”.