MHP head Bahçeli urges ‘common sense’ amid PKK attacks

ANKARA

Turkish people “must not lose their common sense in the face of intolerable attacks” carried out by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli said on Dec. 18, noting that he “could not justify the arson attacks” carried out across the country on Kurdish issue-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) buildings and headquarters following the Dec. 17 Kayseri attack. 

“No matter how right we are, no matter how intolerable the attacks we are exposed to, we must not lose our common sense,” Bahçeli said in a tweet.

“We cannot say ‘OK’ to these invitations of provocations, even if we are hurt. We cannot see the arson of buildings as right and reasonable,” he added.      

The MHP leader also said the aim of the attacks was to drag Turkey into civil conflict and that PKK militants wanted to “trouble the streets because they failed to do what they wanted on the mountains.” 

“They cannot achieve our country to drag into a civil conflict and a clash environment by itching our sensibilities. The state is powerful and it will overcome treason because there is no other cure. What we have to do is to give support, pray and make struggle easier,” Bahçeli said.

Meanwhile, EU Minister Ömer Çelik also said those who targeted political party headquarters after the PKK attacks were “damaging the country in the greatest way.”

“Those who attribute duties to themselves from the situation and resort to violence can never hide behind the identity of patriotism,” Çelik tweeted, adding that “being patriotic requires responsibility and responsible actions.”

The remarks came after a suicide car bomb targeted a military vehicle on Dec. 17 in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri, killing 14 soldiers and wounding 55 others.

A group of people marched on the provincial branch office of the HDP in Kayseri following the attack, attacking and inflicting damage on the property in an act that was repeated in several other provinces across Turkey.

Speaking to private broadcaster NTV on Dec. 17, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş said all signs pointed to the PKK in the Kayseri attack, which followed twin bombings claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), affiliated with the PKK, that killed 44 people, mostly police officers, in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district on Dec. 10.