Orhan Mercan (34), the deputy chairman of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Diyarbakır’s Lice district, was killed in an armed attack on Friday night.
Police suspect the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as the perpetrator of the attack. According to İsmail Demir, an AKP official in Diyarbakır, the slain politician had been threatened by the PKK to quit politics in the AKP.
Mercan was the father of four.
The PKK has been designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States. There has been an armed conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish Southeast since the early 1980s.