Turkish police Saturday detained 19 people after deadly clashes erupted during an election campaign visit to a town in the southeastern Turkish province of Şanlıurfa by an MP from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ruling AKP party.
State-run Anadolu Agency reported that an MP candidate from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and several district administrators of the HDP, as well as its local affiliate the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), were among the detained.
"Some of those who were involved in this incident were registered in the police records for their past links to the [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party/Kurdistan Communities Union] PKK/KCK," Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım claimed.
İbrahim Halil Yıldız, a member of parliament from the ruling AKP party, was visiting shops in the Suruç district of Şanlıurfa province when a fight broke out between his entourage and shopkeepers.
The MP escaped unharmed, his brother, a man and two people from the opposing side were killed.
Eight people were also wounded in the shooting.
Servet Gören, the parliamentary main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) chair in Suruç district, alleged that Esvet Şenyaşar and his son - from the opposing side - were murdered at the hospital where they were sent following the fight. According to the reports, Esvet Şenyaşar was an official of the DBP, a local affiliate of the pro-Kurdish HDP.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has blamed the bloodshed on the HDP and the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
"İbrahim [Yıldız] comes from a family who has been fighting against terror. When he visited the local tradesmen there, they told him, ‘Don’t you know we are HDP supporters? Why have you come here?’ Then a verbal assault began and they attacked," Erdoğan told broadcaster Kanal 7.
Unconfirmed reports blamed bodyguards of the MP for the attack, after he was met with hostility during the visit to the shopkeepers. Anadolu agency, AKP government's mouthpiece, described it as an attack against the AKP party. According to the Mezapotamya news agency, deputy Yıldız’s bodyguards were firing shots after the dispute.
Yıldız claimed that the brawl started after the opposing group told the delegation that “they support the PKK” and asked why AKP members went there despite knowing this.
MINISTER BLAMES CHP'S PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu stirred outrage by blaming the CHP's presidential candidate, Erdoğan's rival, Muharrem İnce over the attack.
"I am saying it very clearly: The reason and the enabler of the Suruç incident is Muharrem İnce," Soylu said on June 16 during his visit to the AKP’s Beşiktaş district headquarters in Istanbul.
"But there is someone who spoils [the HDP] and it is Muharrem İnce, who represents the very understanding that sets them apart from politics and closer to violence," he said, blasting the CHP candidate’s visit to the HDP’s jailed presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş.
