Iraqi Kurdistan arrests suspected shooter of Turkish diplomat
Kurdish security member stand guard near a restaurant where Turkish diplomats and Turkish consulate employee were killed in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, July 17, 2019. Photo: AFP
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Iraqi Kurdish authorities announced Saturday they had arrested two suspects involved in the murder of three people, including a Turkish diplomat, in the regional capital Erbil this week.
The diplomat was one of at least two people shot dead on Wednesday when a gunman opened fire in a restaurant where Turkish diplomats were dining.
The autonomous Kurdistan region’s security council first said its counterterrorism unit had arrested “the main perpetrator” Mazloum Dag, a 27-year-old from Turkey’s Kurdish Diyarbakir region.
The council had put out a wanted notice for Dag a day earlier in connection to Wednesday’s killing of Turkish Vice Consul Osman Kose and two Iraqi nationals.
It later announced it had also arrested Mohammad Biskesiz, identifying him as “one of the accomplices of Mazloum Dag”.
It did not specify Biskesiz’s nationality or whether he was apprehended with Dag or separately.
Turkey’s Anadolu state news agency said Dag is the brother of Dersim Dag, a member of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP).
The HDP, the country’s second largest opposition group, is regularly accused by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of links to Turkey’s separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Mazloum Dagh, a suspect in Turkish diplomat killing in Erbil was arrested ny Kurdish security forces, Iraqi Kurdistan, July 20, 2019. Photo: KRSC
The HDP “strongly” condemned the Erbil attack, calling it an “absolutely unacceptable provocation attempt”.
It also slammed the accusation that one of its deputies was “designated as a target because of his brother”, without mentioning any names.
The shooter fled in a car driven by an accomplice, two Kurdish security officials and a witness said.
The attack took place weeks after Turkey launched a new military offensive against Kurdish separatist PKK militants based in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Ankara’s main enemy in Iraqi Kurdistan is the PKK group, which has based fighters in the mountainous border region, north of Erbil, during a decades-long insurgency in Turkish Kurdistan in southeast of the country.
Turkey and the ruling Kurdish party in Erbil, the KDP, have blamed the PKK for other Turkey-related incidents in Iraqi Kurdistan including the storming of a Turkish military camp earlier in 2019.
The spokesman for the armed branch of the PKK denied the group was involved in Erbil’s shooting,.
A PKK official denied its fighters had anything to do with Wednesday’s shooting in Erbil, saying, “We have no information regarding the incident and only heard about it through the media.”
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.
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.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | Reuters
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