Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed that members of the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), “a team of godless, atheists, nonbelievers” in his words, fired bullets at a mosque in Diyarbakır province.
“They fired at the Kurşunlu Mosque. Who? A team of godless, atheists, nonbelievers called the HDP. They didn’t stop to consider that it was a mosque,” Erdoğan said on a TV program on Monday evening.
In 2014 the Kurşunlu Mosque in Diyarbakır’s Sur district was damaged in the armed conflict between the Turkish army and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists.
Although the majority of the Turkish media had reported that the PKK had torched the mosque, the now-closed Kurdish Özgür Gündem daily claimed that the mosque was destroyed by security forces.
The mosque was reopened on March 7, three weeks before local elections in Turkey.
President Erdoğan and his party usually equate the PKK with the HDP, although the latter is a legitimate party represented in the Turkish parliament.