320 arrested in Turkey-wide police operation against PKK

KONYA – Anadolu Agency

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Around 320 suspects, including lawyers, politicians and students, were detained and 41 of them were arrested during country-wide anti-terror operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the three days before March 16, according to data gathered by Anadolu Agency.

In operations in Istanbul, which were supported by helicopters in 16 districts, 29 suspects, including lawyers, were detained. 

The police learned one of the detained suspects, identified as H. B., was the lawyer of Seher Çağla Demir, the main suspect of the March 13 bombing in Ankara.  

The claims against the lawyers included accusations they allegedly attempted to encourage their clients to join the PKK.

During the search of the building of a foundation which works for the families of the arrested, as well as searches at individuals’ houses, police found numerous documents related to the PKK as well as guns and sneakers allegedly designed to deliver letters to jailed convicts.   

While the operations mostly took place in southeastern and eastern provinces such as Elazığ, Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Kahramanmaraş, Malatya and Batman, police also detained university students in the western province of Bursa for allegedly being members of the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), a youth branch of the PKK and the outlawed Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK).   

In a separate operation in the western province of Manisa against the PKK/KCK, ten people, including Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) provincial heads Hatice Aslan and Sait Aycı, were detained, while two members of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), a party that is not represented in the Turkish parliament, were detained in the eastern province of Erzurum.