Turkey detains nearly 1000 people, including alleged Kurdish militants

Turkish Police Special Forces secure the area near the Interior Ministry after the explosion on Sunday. Pic/AP

Police detained almost a thousand people in raids across Turkey on Tuesday, including dozens with alleged links to Kurdish militants, days after a suicide bomb attack in the Turkish capital. Police detained at least 67 people across Turkey on Tuesday in a sweep targeting people with alleged links to Kurdish militants, days after a suicide bomb attack in the Turkish capital.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said police carried out raids in 16 Turkish provinces, detaining 55 people suspected of being part of the "intelligence structure" of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. At least 12 other suspected PKK members were rounded up in a separate operation in five provinces, Yerlikaya wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Yerlikaya later said that 928 people suspected of holding unlicensed firearms or being connected to firearms smuggling were also arrested during the operation, but he did not immediately make it clear if the suspects arrested for illegal firearms were suspected of connections to the PKK. He added that over 840 firearms were confiscated during the operation.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device near an entrance to the Interior Ministry hours before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was set to address Parliament as it returned from its summer recess. A second would-be bomber was killed in a shootout with police. The PKK claimed responsibility for the attack.

The PKK has led a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is considered a terror organisation by the United States and the European Union. Tens of thousands of people have died since the start of the conflict in 1984.

67
No of alleged Kurdish militants detained

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