Photo: AFP
ANKARA,— Hundreds of people are in custody Sunday in Turkey after police raids on the 20th anniversary of the capture of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, state media reported.
Police detained 735 people accused of having links to or supporting Kurdish militants in 156 operations carried out on Friday, state news agency Anadolu said, quoting the interior ministry.
During the raids, police found guns, rifles, ammunition and explosive material including improvised explosive devices, Anadolu said. But neither the ministry nor the agency said where the raids had taken place.
They subsequently released 226 people, and of those still held, 61 were formally arrested while legal procedures against 448 detained suspects were ongoing, the agency added.
Those detained were believed to be planning mass protests for the anniversary of Ocalan’s capture.
The ministry said some of the suspects were also accused of planning to “create chaos” before the March 31 local elections in Turkey, the agency reported.
Friday was the 20th anniversary of the day when Turkish secret service agents caught Ocalan in Kenya, outside the Greek embassy in Nairobi — on February 15, 1999.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
Ocalan, who was arrested 20 years ago, is serving a life sentence on Imrali island, close to Istanbul.
Kurds see Ocalan, called “leader of the Kurdish people” by his followers and “head of the PKK terrorist organisation and separatist leader” by Turkish officials and media, as a living symbol of the Kurdish cause in Turkey.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
Fighting in the region intensified between Turkish security forces and the PKK after the collapse of a two-year ceasefire in 2015.
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