Demirtas condemns killing of teacher by PKK

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – The imprisoned Co-leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas on Saturday condemned last month’s killing of a Turkish teacher by Kurdish fighters in the mountainous Dersim Province.

In a written statement from the supermax prison where Turkish authorities hold him near the city of Edirne, Demirtas described the killing of teacher Necmettin Yilmaz as “savagery.”

The banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), waging a decades-long guerrilla warfare against the Turkish troops, claimed the murder on June 20 a week after the teacher’s disappearance in Dersim.

The PKK alleged Yilmaz, 23, was sharing critical information with the Turkish army about its fighters’ locations and movement routes in the province where it has a strong presence.

“He was punished on June 16 near the village of Zaxge in Dersim,” read the PKK statement on the group’s website.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government justifies its crackdown on the HDP by alleging it to be a political front for the PKK, a charge Demirtas and other jailed lawmakers deny.

Yilmaz was on his way from southern Sanliurfa Province where he was teaching at a primary school to Gumushane, his hometown in the northern Black Sea region.

Demirtas said there could be no legitimate or moral justification for the killing in his press release, according to Kurdistan 24’s Turkish language service.

“I want to stress that we cannot accept silence on such murders,” added Demirtas, who the Turkish authorities arrested in November 2016.

Yilmaz’s killing also drew condemnation from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), its far-right allies in the Parliament, and the main opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP).

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany