Islamist party member killed in eastern Turkey

BİNGÖL – Anadolu Agency

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A 35-year-old man has been attacked and killed in the eastern province of Bingöl, health officials have said.

The victim, Fethi Yalçın, was leaving his home in the Karlıova district of Bingöl in the early hours of Oct. 22 when the armed attack took place.

Yalçın, a member of the Free Cause Party (Hüda-Par), was critically injured in the attack and died at hospital. The assailants who attacked Yalçın, a father of four, were driving in a car during the attack and fled the scene in the same car.

Police have launched an investigation to find the attackers.

The attack came two days after another member of Hüda-Par, Cengiz Tiryaki, died after an armed assault on Oct. 9 in the same district, during demonstrations that had erupted across Turkey.

Tensions in southeastern Turkey have peaked recently, particularly after many Kurdish protesters took to the streets to protest the assault of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane and to denounce the Turkish government’s stance on the matter.

Over 43 people have died in the unrest, mostly in street clashes between supporters of Kurdish political movements and members of Hüda-Par, whose grassroots are closely affiliated with the Turkish radical Islamist movement Hizbullah.