Kidnapped ruling party official found dead in Turkey’s southeast

ŞIRNAK – Doğan News Agency

This photo shows some mebers of the Jirki tribe.

A member of a southeastern tribe who was also the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) youth branch leader in the Beytüşşebap district of the southeastern province of Şırnak has been found dead, less than 24 hours after he was kidnapped along with his brother by outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants late on Aug. 12.

Security forces on Aug. 13 found Jirki tribe member Naci Adıyaman’s body around one kilometer away from where he and his brother, Fikret Adıyaman, were kidnapped after their car was stopped by PKK militants some five kilometers away from central Beytüşşebap, near the village of Ayvalık, which lies around 11 kilometers north of the Syrian border.

While police took Naci Adıyaman’s body to Beytüşşebap Public Hospital for autopsy, operations to find Fikret Adıyaman continued on Kato Mountain. 

An older member of the family, Tahir Adıyaman, stood as an AKP candidate for Şırnak in the June 2015 general election. He leads the local village guard and was injured in a PKK attack in April.      

The PKK - listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU - resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.

Since then, more than 600 security personnel, as well as more than 7,000 PKK militants, have been killed, according to official numbers.