ISTANBUL – Turks reacted with shock and anger on Monday to the news that Kurdish guerrillas had executed 13 Turkish soldiers and police held in captivity in a cave in the mountains of northern Iraq.
The men were being held hostage by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Maoist guerrilla movement that has been fighting the Turkish state for more than three decades. Turkish soldiers discovered their bodies in a cave during a military operation in Iraq’s Gara region, the government said on Sunday. All hostages were executed, all but one shot in the head, he said.
The death toll and the way the men were killed have dropped like a bomb in Turkey’s tense and divided policy. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his political allies condemned the attack, while opposition parties questioned why the government did not negotiate the release of the men and risked a military operation to rescue them.
The PKK said the deaths were caused by air strikes during the Turkish military operation that began on February 10. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said the responsible PKK commander executed the men as soon as the operation began.
Twelve of the hostages identified were junior members of the army and military police. All had been captured five or six years ago by the PKK, in a period after the end of peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdish guerrillas.
Guerrillas often block improvised roads on remote roads in areas of eastern and southeastern Turkey and kidnap members of the armed forces traveling on public buses or private cars to go home to visit their families and return to their bases.
The men found in the cave were kidnapped and taken across the border into the mountains of northern Iraq, a region that the PKK has long used as a rear base.
Ozturk Turkdogan, head of the Turkish Human Rights Association, said the organization has been in contact with 10 of the hostage families since 2015. But despite efforts to push for negotiations, Turkish security services have been adamant in seeking operations military, he said. Speaking on Arti TV, he also criticized the PKK for holding the hostages for so long.
The incident can be politically damaging to Erdogan, but it can also give him ammunition to stimulate nationalist sentiment and repress his opponents.
He called the mother of one of the soldiers killed during a speech broadcast on Monday, promising to avenge his son’s death. His political ally, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, promised that anyone who showed sympathy for the Kurdish group would be treated as a terrorist and an accomplice.
Erdogan attacked the PKK in his speech and said that the United States and the pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey were also responsible for the soldiers’ deaths.
He blamed the United States for supporting and arming the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, an affiliate of the Kurdish group, which American forces use to fight the Islamic State in Syria, although Washington, along with Turkey and the European Union , has designated the PKK as a terrorist group.
“If we are together with you at NATO, if we want to continue our unity, then you will act sincerely towards us,” said Erdogan in a speech to members of his party at a meeting in Rize, in the Black Quarter of Turkey. sea. “So, you will be with us, not the terrorists.”
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the American ambassador on Monday to protest the conditional text of a statement by the US State Department on the incident, which said: “If there are reports of the deaths of Turkish civilians at the hands of PKK, a designated terrorist organization, are confirmed, we condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. “
The Democratic Party of the Kurdish People, or HDP, is regularly accused of terrorism for its ties to the PKK. Erdogan’s criticisms may signal a new wave of oppression against the party, which has seen many elected representatives and activists removed from office and detained.
Anadolu Agency, the state news service, reported that an investigation was opened against two HDP lawmakers for “provocative” social media posts about the incident when news of the killings was released on Sunday. The HDP said on Monday that 700 people, including party officials, were detained overnight across the country.
Members of the HDP and the Human Rights Association have worked in the past to mediate with the PKK and secure the release of the hostages. The two lawmakers investigated met with the hostage families.
The party asked the government and the PKK to account for what happened in a statement on Monday.
“The government is in a position to answer for the losses to the families of the deceased and to society, instead of asking our party to hold them responsible,” says the statement.
“Likewise, the PKK must inform the public in Turkey and the world about how the captives lost their lives, who were entrusted to them, and about their responsibility for these deaths.”
The party also asked the PKK to release other prisoners in its hands.