Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Tuesday that 282 people were detained, including journalists, opposition politicians and academics, within a broad nationwide sweep of people Turkiye accuses of “terror”.
Meanwhile, Ankara is attempting to resume peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which have been hampered by Turkiye and its Western allies for a decade. These talks started in October when a nationalist political party reached out to PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan, who had been imprisoned.
The raids began five days ago in 51 cities including Istanbul, Ankara and the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir in the southeast, Yerlikaya said on X.
On Tuesday, Turkish authorities issued arrest warrants for 60 people, including members of the main pro-Kurdish DEM party, several left-wing figures and journalists. All were detained over alleged terror ties, the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The Turkish Journalists Union responded, noting that three journalists were among the detained and that they were detained during home searches as opposed to being summoned to the police station for questioning.
On X, the DEM party stated, “It’s obvious that some people are beginning to be awake at night due to the prospect of a solution and peace.”
Since late December, a DEM delegation has twice visited Ocalan and held follow-up talks with Turkiye’s main parliamentary factions. On Sunday, the delegation travelled to Iraq to meet Kurdish representatives.
Fighters from Ocalan’s PKK, which has waged a decades-long rebellion against the Turkish state, operate out of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, where Turkiye also has military bases.
Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), pleaded with Ocalan to stop using violence and request his immediate release from Imrali Island, where he has been imprisoned since 1999.
The call, which is supported by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has renewed hopes for a resolution to the conflict, which has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people.
Source: Aljazeera
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