HDP deputy claims mules killed by Turkish military in Turkey’s southeast

ŞIRNAK

A deputy from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has claimed the Turkish military conducted an operation at the Uludere district of Turkey’s southeastern province of Şırnak early on June 30, killing many mules, while the Şırnak governorate said in a written statement 13 soldiers had been wounded in incidents in Uludere on June 29. 

HDP Şırnak deputy Ferhat Encü said via his personal Twitter account on June 30 the army had raked the village early in the day, killing many mules.

“The TSK [Turkish Armed Forces] has launched an operation at dawn. Houses were raked. The people of Roboski [the Kurdish name of Uludere] were the target. It is by chance that nobody was out. Many mules were killed when the fire opened,” Encu tweeted. 

Encü, answering questions after the incidents, said this was “an open massacre attempt,” adding the people from the region did not have security for their lives, daily Evrensel reported on its website on June 30. 

“There could have been people on the roads when the soldiers raked the village and these people could not be alive right now. This is the continuation of the war opened against us four years ago,” daily Evrensel reported Encü as saying, in reference to the killing of 34 people, most of whom were children and youth, on Dec. 28, 2011, when the Turkish army carried out air strikes in the Ortasu village of Uludere, near the Turkish-Iraqi border. 

Meanwhile, the Şırnak governorate issued a statement late June 29, stating 13 soldiers had been wounded and four people had been detained in incidents which occurred during the day in Uludere. 

Some 250 to 300 people attacked military personnel, who were sent to the region to support the forces combatting smuggling on the border and also to intervene in a possible social incident, with stones and bats, while they also closed a main road in the region, the governorate’s statement read. 

Earlier in the day, Doğan News Agency had reported the tension had risen when a group of locals wanted to block a road on the grounds they were protesting the change of military personnel working at the Turkey-Iraqi border and the density of military actions there. Locals threw stones at soldiers, while the soldiers used gas bombs to disperse the crowd.