Turkey has detained a Swedish citizen over suspected links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, AFP reported.
The 46-year-old man of Turkish origin is accused of being a regional leader of the PKK in Sweden, the state-run Anadolu news agency said late Tuesday.
The agency said the man, identified only by the initials H. B., had also taken a photograph in front of an image of PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is serving a life sentence on an island off Istanbul.
The Swedish citizen was detained as part of an operation coordinated by the Diyarbakır prosecutor working with the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and security forces after he had allegedly come to Turkey for secret meetings with PKK-linked individuals.
The PKK has been waging an insurgency in Turkey since 1984. Fighting intensified in 2015 after the collapse of a two-year ceasefire.
The PKK is also blacklisted as a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies.