The pro-Erdoğan Star daily has argued in a news report on Tuesday that Kurdish people are glad their houses were demolished due to being damaged in clashes between Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists in Turkey’s southeast.
The paper claimed a citizen from Cizre district – which was under curfew until this morning – told them, “Thank God that my house is demolished. If we kept staying in that house and if it was not damaged, we would have no honor or future.”
The pro-Erdoğan daily quoted another person from Cizre talking about the curfews, saying, “I don’t want them to ever be lifted, we are better this way. Otherwise, they [PKK terrorists] would bring more of their men from the mountains to make a mess out of what remains of Cizre. Our state should keep this [declaring curfews for anti-terror operations] up.”
A number of dailies and news portals critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government lashed out at the Star daily for being indifferent to the problems people living in Turkey’s southeast face because of the curfews and clashes between PKK terrorists and Turkish security forces.
Since the settlement process launched by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government in 2012 with the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan to end the country’s long-standing Kurdish problem ended in July of last year, nearly 200,000 locals in the Southeast have been forced to leave their homes due to fighting and curfews.
The authorities have been imposing curfews in towns and districts to flush PKK militants from urban areas in Turkey’s mostly Kurdish Southeast since the collapse of a peace process with the PKK in July.