Turkey: 7 Kurdish family members killed and racial controversy sparks

Government and opposition in Turkey faced backlash this Saturday over possible racist motivations for a massacre that left 7 dead yesterday, after an armed attack against a Kurdish family in Konya, in the center of the country.

“Seven Kurdish citizens have been brutally massacred in Konya. It is one of the most terrifying examples of racist attacks that have been going on for a long time,” Said Mithat Sancar, chairman of the left-wing HDP party, third party in Parliament, which defends the rights of the country’s Kurdish minority.

“The government’s hate speech and provocation are the main responsible for the massacre,” Sancar added in a speech last night, posted today on the party’s website.

However, the Government has rejected any ideological or ethnic motivation for the crime. “The propaganda that attributes ideological motives to this murder, to this savage massacre, is a provocation, it is a lie”, insisted the communication chief of the Turkish Presidency, Fahrettin Altun.

“There is no indication of an ethnic or ideological motivation”, the Minister of Justice, Abdulhamit Gül, also assured on his Twitter account this morning, promising a thorough investigation of the crime.

The attack took place on Friday afternoon, when 7 members of the Kurdish Dedeoglu family, including three women, were shot dead in a suburb of the city of Konya, in an attack perpetrated by a single person, according to advanced reports. the Minister of the Interior, Süleyman Soylu.

Detained

The Prosecutor’s Office today reported the arrest of ten people suspected of being related to the attack and stressed that the crime is the result of the enmity of two neighboring families that has lasted for 11 years, without showing ideological or ethnic reasons.

Last May, the Dedeoglu family suffered an attack by a large group of people armed with sticks, stones and knives, as a result of which there were several wounded and seven of the assailants were placed in preventive prison.

According to the Turkish daily Evrensel, the Dedeoglu family is the only Kurdish family in the neighborhood, where they have lived for 24 years, dedicated to livestock, and have suffered threats and racist attacks for 15 years from their neighbors.

Fiefdoms between families with armed clashes are not a rare phenomenon in Turkey, but the leftist press denounces that in recent years attacks against Kurdish citizens under racist or ultra-nationalist slogans have multiplied.