Turkish police injured in clash with militants in southeastern province

ŞIRNAK – Doğan News Agency

Police chief Hakkı Başkaya was injured due to an explosive and hospitalized in Cizre State Hospital. DHA photo

A Turkish police chief was injured in a clash with the so-called police unit of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) today in the southeastern province of Şırnak’s Cizre district.

Security forces launched an operation in the early hours of the day in the neighborhood of Nur, during the operation a crowd gathered and threw molotov cocktails and stones at the police forces.

Police chief Hakkı Başkaya was injured due to an explosive and hospitalized in Cizre State Hospital.

Earlier the PKK’s so-called police unit, “The Patriotic Revolutionist Youth Movement (YDG-H),” had carried out a traffic control in the southeastern province of Şırnak’s Cizre district.

Some media reports showed June 26 photos of a military ceremony held on June 23 by YDG-H delivering diplomas to the members whose faces were covered with scarves.

The group also carried posters representing the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan.

The group then burned car tires on Nusaybin and İdil streets in Cizre and checked the IDs of drivers.

However the so-called urban wing of the PKK, Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) denied that PKK had such units.

“Some young people might have used an initiative here, we are looking into the issue, there is nothing here to exaggerate,” Zeki Şangali, a senior leader of the KCK, was quoted as saying by Nuçe TV, a website known with its close ties with the outlawed PKK.

As Turkey’s “peace process” efforts to end three-decade long clashes in the country between the Turkish Army and the PKK have undergone a slowdown, a group of PKK militants held a ceremony in Cizre declaring their foundation on the basis of the need for “public order” and “self-defense.”

The peace process is now expected to enter the second phase with legal amendments.