Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin has said roughly half the members of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) killed by Turkish security forces are not Turkish citizens but rather citizens of Iran, Syria and Iraq.
Şahin said Kurdish citizens of Turkey do not lend support to the terrorist PKK or approve of its terrorist activities. On the contrary, they are disturbed by the PKK and its affiliated organizations, according to the minister. “They [Turkey’s Kurds] have no lack of rights, justice, law, equality or freedom. But they have problems such as the PKK and the Kurdistan Communities Union [KCK]. These groups abuse both our Kurdish brothers and the region and seek to establish a false world for themselves,” the minister stated.
Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the United States, the PKK has been carrying out a bloody war in Turkey’s Southeast since 1984. Dozens of soldiers have been killed in clashes with the PKK over the past months.
