Kurds clash with Turks after border airstrikes kill 35 alleged smugglers

Thousands of mourners gathered in south-eastern Turkey yesterday for the funerals of 35 Kurds killed in airstrikes by Turkish military jets after they were wrongly identified as Iraq-based rebels.

Turkish television footage showed mourners rallying after the botched raid on Wednesday that killed a group of alleged smugglers along the border, one of the deadliest episodes in the conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish rebels since hostilities began in 1984.

In a second day of civil unrest, demonstrators threw stones at police who fired tear gas and water cannon in several cities in the mostly Kurdish south-east. Firat, a pro-Kurdish news agency, said 30 people were arrested in Diyarbakir, the region’s biggest city. One person was injured and six arrested in Van, said the state-run Anadolu news agency.

About 500 Iraqi Kurds gathered to denounce the airstrikes at a rally in the city of Irbil in the Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq.

Civilians have often been caught in the crossfire of Turkey’s war, but the latest bloody incident has further soured relations between the government and ethnic Kurds who have long faced discrimination. A government move to improve relations with Kurds by granting them more rights has stalled amid a surge in fighting this year.

Dogan news agency video showed people digging graves on a hill near the south-eastern village of Gulyazi, home of some of the alleged smugglers, and the funeral rites quickly took on a political tone. Thousands of people walked along a mountain path with coffins draped in red, yellow and green, the colours of the rebel PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

One poster showed an image of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed chief of the PKK. Istanbul, which along with the West classes the PKK as a terrorist organisation, has had secret contact with Ocalan at his island prison in its efforts to make peace with the Kurds.

Families at the funerals urged rebels to take revenge and accused Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being a “murderer”.

A sombre Mr Erdogan described the attack near the border village of Ortasu in Sirnak province as “unfortunate” and “saddening,” noting half the dead were under 20. He said two F-16s bombed the area after images provided by drones showed a 40-person group approaching the border from the Iraqi side.

“It was revealed later that they were part of a group smuggling cigarettes, diesel fuel and such,” he claimed.

Usually, according to Mr Erdogan, such smuggling is done by groups of just three to five people. He said at least two recent deadly attacks on military outposts near the Iraq-Turkey border were carried out by guerrillas who smuggled guns across the border on mules.

Four hours of official video footage of the raid will be examined, he said. He also criticised Turkey’s Taraf newspaper, which has published reports of alleged military schemes and misconduct in the past, for a headline that read: “The state bombed its own people.”

“No state would intentionally bomb its people,” he said. “In the past, such things may have occurred but it is not possible for such a thing to occur during our administration.”