People walk by Turkish PM billboard. Demotix/Alexandros Michailidis. All right reserved.Barely three days after an increasingly autocratic government was dealt a severe blow for its arbitrary rule at the June 7 general elections, nothing is certain. Hopes were raised for a more inclusive and representative system to be created, but already Turkey has been forced to live in despair.
While the supporters of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) were celebrating their party’s extraordinary success in overcoming the 10 % threshold to enter parliament for the first time, violence broke out in the predominantly Kurdish south-eastern town of Diyarbakir.
Four people were killed on Tuesday and seven wounded, three of them journalists. A cache of weapons including rifles, pistols, machine guns and ammunition was seized. There were reports of armed gangs patrolling the streets while plain clothes security officials looked on. Pro-government media, ignoring the fact that victims were from both sides, instantly declared the culprit to be the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and their sympathisers, for attacking the rival Islamist Kurds.
