PKK claims responsibility for killing of village grocer

ISTANBUL

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has claimed responsibility for the killing of a village grocer in the eastern Turkish province of Ağrı.

The dead body of 45-year-old Mevlüt Bengi was found on June 26 tied from his hands to a utility pole in the Çiftlik village in the Doğubeyazıt district of Ağrı after he had been shot in the head.

“He was killed because he has been a state agent since 2015,” read the note next to the body found by gendarmerie forces.

Bengi, who owns a grocery store in the Turkmen village, was commissioned as a voting center representative for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) for the June 24 presidential and parliamentary elections.

The AKP had commissioned another representative at the local voting center after Bengi failed to show up on June 24.

Ahmet Şık, who entered parliament on the Kurdish issue-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) ticket in the June 24 election, condemned the killing of Bengi.

“I defend everyone’s right to live. Any action or any execution that violates that right never serves the purpose of ending bloodshed and the peace we desire to achieve. We not only condemn it, we will continue to oppose it,” Şık wrote on Twitter on July 30.

Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu also condemned the killing on Twitter.

HDP co-chair Pervin Buldan said on June 27 that Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu called her and blamed the HDP for the killing.

“He told me ridiculous things on the phone, like we ‘no longer have the right to live’ and that they would ‘completely destroy that village,’” Buldan said.