Drug lords behind Lice, first fire shot by crowd: Governor

DİYARBAKIR

Clashes in Diyarbakır's Lice district reportedly broke out over the construction of a gendarmerie station. The AKP's Spokesman Hüseyin Çelik said they were only 'renewal' works and that no new gendarmerie stations were planned to be built. DHA photo

According to assessments by the Diyarbakır Governor's Office, the incidents leading to the tension in Lice were planned in order to prevent the successful recently launched anti-drug operations, and to block similar future operations.

A statement released June 30 noted that the crowd on June 28 read out a press statement for protesting and blocking the construction of the Kayacık Gendarmerie Outpost and subsequently launched an effective attack on the outpost. Despite soldiers at the outpost calling on the crowd to come in to engage in dialogue, some people from the group threw stones, hand-made explosive materials and Molotov cocktails at the soldiers and the construction site, it said.

“As the group didn’t disperse, despite all warnings, an intervention with gas was launched. Upon the shooting of fire toward the outpost from inside the group, security forces fired into the air and asked the group to disperse. However, insisting on not dispersing, the group tried to enter the outpost,” it said, noting that the shooters among the group were still trying to be identified.

The activities of "drug lords who want to disrupt the peace process" and "terrorist organization members" who have been aiding these are also being examined, the Governor’s Office said, adding that people should use "common sense" and not to get "trapped by provocations." 

Meanwhile, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chair Gürsel Tekin, speaking in Adıyaman, recalled on June 30 that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had received reports by the Wise Persons’ Commission just on June 26, only two days before the Lice killing.

“We are having difficulty in understanding all of these,” Tekin said, noting that the public opinion was told that “the first phase of the peace process” was finalized and that “the second phase” had begun.

“We haven’t understood anything from the first one. God willing, we will understand something from the second one. All of these things cannot work just with words. The center for resolution of this problem is the Parliament,” Tekin added.

For Van independent deputy Aysel Tuğluk, who travelled to Lice soon after the incident, it was a clear cut case of provocation.

“I see this incident as a very clear provocation,” Tuğluk, the co-chair of the Kurdish-umbrella organization Democratic Society Congress (DTK), told daily Radikal. “Öcalan had already given the warning about this. We know that a group which included members of ‘special [operations] team’ opened fire. The perpetrator should at once be revealed and arrested so that this incident should not grow,” Tuğluk said.