BDP demands answers for botched air strike

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Peace and Democracy Party co-leader Gültan Kışanak blames the government for the killing of 34 people in Uludere. DAILY NEWS photo

The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) has demanded the prime minister reveal who ordered a botched air raid late last year after military officials told a parliamentary committee that they zero involvement in the strike.

“We’ll continue to ask this question until we get an answer,” BDP co-chair Gültan Kışanak said during her party’s group meeting in Parliament yesterday. “Our prime minister [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] is more concerned with massacres in Syria and the tragedy in Palestine. But a prime minister who knows so much cannot even mention the Uludere massacre,” she said.

Military officials from the area where the massacre occurred in the southeastern province of Şırnak’s Uludere district told Parliament’s Human Rights Inquiry Committee that they were not involved in the strike and did not have any information on it beforehand.

Thirty-four villagers were killed in the air raid Dec. 28, 2011. The victims were smugglers, mostly teenagers.

Referring to the accounts of the local military officials, Kışanak said: “It is clear who ordered the raid. The order came from the prime minister or the chief of General Staff, or both.”

Also pushing for answers, main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu asked whether the flawed intelligence for the operation was provided by either the CIA or MOSSAD and accused the government of becoming “the toy of foreign intelligence services.”