Erdoğan vows Kurdish rebels ‘will be buried in trenches they have dug’

Turkish police fired tear gas and water cannon on Sunday to disperse hundreds of protesters on an Istanbul street calling for an end to curfews in the southeast.

A Turkish policeman was martyred on Tuesday after he was injured in a PKK terrorist attack in Turkey’s southeastern province of Sirnak last week, security sources said.

T urkish tanks pounded Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) targets in Cizre, a city in the southeast of the country and a regular flashpoint in its Kurdish conflict, on Tuesday. He criticised Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, who met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow today. The military also reported the death of 11 PKK militants, pushing the total count of “terrorists” killed to 80.

“The Turkish government should rein in its security forces, immediately stop abusive and disproportionate use of force, and investigate the deaths and injuries caused by its operations”, HRW senior Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair-Webb said. During repeated prolonged curfews imposed by Turkish officials on entire neighborhoods, locals have been left without access to food, and water and electricity supplies have been cut. The bomb was detonated while fighting between the security forces and PKK militants are ongoing in the district.

The decades-long conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK have so far claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people, a lot of them Kurds.

The fighting mainly took place in the predominantly Kurdish cities of Cizre and Silopi in Sirnak province and inside a neighbourhood in Diyarbakir.

CNNquoted a source from the armed forces as saying that the operation aims “to neutralize the members of the separatist terrorist organization nesting in residential areas” as well as to “establish public order and security” and “enable civilians to resume normal living conditions”.

Since August 16, provincial authorities in the southeast have announced repeated prolonged curfews in whole cities and towns or in particular neighborhoods.

Traditionally foccused on the countryside, the PKK has shifted to southeastern towns, setting up barricades and digging trenches to keep security forces away.