Turkish academics probed for criticizing military operations

A court yesterday remanded in custody two suspects in a truck-bomb attack on a police station on Thursday that killed six people, including three small children, in one of the biggest strikes since July, the prosecutor said.

A Syrian suicide bomber carried out the attack, Erdogan said on Tuesday while Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters on Wednesday that the police identified the suicide bomber but did not supply a name.

Turkish security forces briefly detained 27 academics accused of terrorist propaganda, local media said, over a declaration that criticized military action in the largely Kurdish southeast and urged an end to curfews.

Vowing to flush the PKK from Turkey’s urban centres, the authorities have in recent weeks enforced curfews in three locations in the southeast to back up military operations that activists say have killed dozens of civilians.

Under heavy government and public pressure, Beyazit Ozturk, the host of a popular television talk show, apologized last week after giving airtime to a caller who introduced herself as a teacher from the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where fighting between Kurdish militants and government security forces has been most intense. “These are dark people”, Erdogan said.

Turkish police took 14 academics into custody on Friday and were seeking to detain seven others over a petition which called for peace with Kurds in the south-east of the country, amid an uptick in violence.

Those detained are lecturers at Kocaeli University in north-western Turkey, the state-run Anadolu news agency said. “They are cruel people, because those who ally with cruelty are themselves cruel”, Erdogan said on January 15, referring to the detention of academics.

The academics also called for the resumption of peace efforts with the rebels.

Ankara’s controversial mayor Melih Gokcek, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), hit back at Bass by telling him to go home and saying he was “a wrong choice for the U.S. in Turkey”. The government claims to have killed over 400 PKK guerillas in Turkey and air strikes in neighbouring Iraq.

“Return to your country”, Melih Gokcek tweeted. The PKK, fighting since 1984 firstly for an independent Kurdistan and now for Kurdish autonomy, is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union as well as Turkey.

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