Turkish gov’t to build 39 new military security posts, mostly in southeast

ANKARA

A cabinet decision designating locations for 39 new fortified military installations has gone into force, with a majority of new security posts to be built in southeastern Turkey, which is currently scene to violent clashes between the security forces and outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants.

The cabinet’s related decision for the immediate nationalization of 39 sites in 10 provinces went into force after being published in the Official Gazette on Jan. 28. 

Of the 39 security stations, 21 will be built in Şırnak, five in Mardin, three in Bingöl, one in Hakkari and four in downtown Diyarbakır and its districts.

One post will also be built in the western province of Aydın, the capital city of Ankara, the eastern provinces of Erzurum and Kars, and the southern province of Mersin.

Southeastern Turkey has endured some of its worst violence in two decades after a two-year de facto ceasefire between the security forces and the PKK collapsed in July, reviving a conflict that has killed 40,000 people since 1984. 

As of Jan. 27, authorities widened a curfew in Diyarbakır and hundreds of locals, including children and the elderly, fled curfew-hit areas of Diyarbakır’s Sur district as gunfire and blasts resounded and police helicopters flew overhead, a Reuters witness said. Some people were crying as they carried away possessions. 

In July, when the PKK’s umbrella organization, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), declared that it had ended “ceasefire,” it said Turkey’s building of barracks, dams, and roads for military purposes had violated the truce and warned it would target “all the dams” in the country’s southeast.