PKK celebrates anniversary in Saudi city, may anger Turkey

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Supporters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) living in Saudi Arabia celebrated the group's 38th anniversary in the Muslim holy city of Medina over the weekend, a development that could trigger a Turkish reaction.

Some one hundred people, including families, participated in the Saturday event as could be seen in a video released by the PKK-affiliated Hawar news agency.

The group, mostly Kurds from the central al-Madinah and al-Qassim Regions began the event by singing the Kurdish national anthem, Ey Reqîb, the agency said.

Speeches were later made including one by, Mihemed Xasi Cezayiri, a member the Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM) an Ocalan-inspired coalition that rules the Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).

Partisan banners, the group's Turkish-jailed leader, and founder Abdullah Ocalan's posters, as well as the pictures of Kurdish fighters fallen in PKK and the US-backed People's Protection Units (YPG) ranks, were on display in the photos published.

Yeni Akit, a pro-government Islamist newspaper in Turkey, labeled the event "as a flagrant step by the atheist terror group" and said Foreign Ministry was to demand an explanation from Saudi authorities.

PKK was founded on November 17, 1978, in the Kurdish province of Diyarbakir.

It has been fighting Turkey in a decades-long guerrilla warfare over government repression of Kurdish cultural rights and denial of political status.

Turkey and its NATO ally US designate the PKK a terrorist group.

Kurdistan24 could not determine the view of Turkey's key Sunni ally in the Middle East Saudi Arabia on the PKK.

Editing by Ava Homa