Around 20 people were wounded when a blast struck
outside a police building early Friday in Turkey’s southeastern
city of Diyarbakir, the centre of the country’s Kurdish minority,
security officials said.
The explosion occurred just hours after police detained the two
co-leaders of the country’s main pro-Kurdish party and several
other MPs in a major escalation of a broader crackdown against
leading Kurds.
An AFP reporter said that several ambulances were dispatched to
the scene of the blast, the cause of which was not immediately
clear.
Earlier Friday, police detained Selahattin Demirtas of the
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) at his home in Diyarbakir while his
co-chairperson Figen Yuksekdag was held in Ankara as part of a
terror investigation, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Their detention appeared part of a large-scale operation against
the HDP, which is the third largest party in the Turkish parliament
with 59 seats and the main political representative of the Kurdish
minority.
NTV television said the pair were accused of spreading
propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) while
Anadolu said Demirtas was accused of provoking violence in deadly
protests in October 2014.
The raids come as Turkey remains under a state of emergency
imposed in the wake of the July 15 failed coup, which critics say
has gone well beyond targeting the actual coup plotters.
Thirteen staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper,
including the editor-in-chief, were detained on Monday, further
heightening strains in Turkish society.
Tensions have surged in the Kurdish-dominated southeast since a
fragile ceasefire declared by the PKK collapsed in 2015.
It has since stepped up its insurgency against the Turkish
security forces, staging regular attacks that have claimed hundreds
of lives among the military and the police.
The HDP seeks to promote the cause of Turkey’s Kurdish minority
and defend the rights of Kurds as well as those of women, gays and
workers.