Turkish PM denies WSJ Uludere report

ISTANBUL

AFP Photo

A recent Wall Street Journal report that said U.S. aerial vehicles provided the intelligence that precipitated the December 2011 Uludere massacre was "made up,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, according to private broadcaster NTV.
 
"The Armed Forces already made a statement [about the report]. Unmanned air vehicles work directly under the Turkish army's command,” Erdoğan was quoted as saying by NTV today. "We acted on our own devices.”
 
The legal process on the issue is continuing, Erdoğan added.
 
The botched air raid by the Turkish military that killed 34 civilians on Dec. 28, 2011, was conducted based on intelligence received from an unmanned U.S. aerial vehicle, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had previously reported.
 
The 34 victims in Uludere, most of them teenagers, were bombed after allegedly being mistaken for militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but were actually local villagers involved in the smuggling of small goods from Iraq.