Turkey acknowledges killing civilians in Iraq strike, says attack might be ‘blunder’

Turkey’s ruling party admitted Thursday that an air strike that killed 35 people on the Iraq border could have been a blunder, targeting local villagers instead of Kurdish separatist guerrillas.

“According to initial reports, these people were smugglers and not terrorists,” Huseyin Celik, vice-president of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), said according to AFP.

“If it turns out to have been a mistake, a blunder, rest assured that this will not be covered up,” he told reporters, adding that it could have been an “operational accident” by the Turkish military.

“It has been determined from initial reports that these people were smugglers, not terrorists,” Celik said.

“In the name of my party I would like to express our shock and sadness,” he said, while calling on the public to await the results of an investigation.

The high command said warplanes had struck at Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants after an intelligence drone spotted a group of people moving toward its sensitive southeastern border under cover of darkness late Wednesday.

Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BPD) said the planes bombed a group of villagers from the Kurdish area of the southeast who were smuggling sugar and gas across the border.

The attack, which Turkey’s largest pro-Kurdish party called a “crime against humanity,” sparked clashes between hundreds of stone-throwing protesters and police in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s restive, mainly-Kurdish southeast, Reuters reported.

The incident threatens to spoil efforts to forge Turkish-Kurdish consensus for a planned new constitution expected to partly address the issue of rights for the Kurdish minority.

In addition to demonstrations in Diyarbakir, there were smaller protests in Turkey’s largest city Istanbul, where police fired tear gas and water cannon at pro-Kurdish demonstrators.

“We have 30 corpses, all of them are burned. The state knew that these people were smuggling in the region. This kind of incident is unacceptable. They were hit from the air,” said Fehmi Yaman, mayor of Uludere in Sirnak province.

Television images showed a line of corpses covered by blankets on a barren hillside, with a crowd of people gathered around, some with their head in their hands and crying.

Donkeys carried corpses down the hillside to be loaded into vehicles and taken to hospital.

The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said party leaders were heading for the area and that it would hold demonstrations in Istanbul and elsewhere to protest.

“This is a massacre,” BDP Deputy Chairwoman Gultan Kisanak told a news conference in Diyarbakir. “This country’s warplanes bombed a group of 50 of its citizens to destroy them. This is a war crime and a crime against humanity.”

With most Turks favoring a hardline military response against the PKK, the incident is unlikely to hurt the popularity of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who won a third consecutive term in office in a June vote.

The Turkish military said it had learnt the PKK had sent many militants to the Sinat-Haftanin area, where the strikes occurred in northern Iraq, to retaliate after recent militant losses in clashes.

Smuggling is an important source of income for locals in provinces along the Iraqi border, with many villagers involved in bringing fuel, cigarettes and other goods from Iraqi villages. PKK militants also cross the border in these areas.

“There were rumors that the PKK would cross through this region. Images were recorded of a crowd crossing last night, hence an operation was carried out,” a Turkish security official said. “We could not have known whether these people were (PKK) group members or smugglers.”

Security sources said those killed were carrying canisters of diesel on mules and their bodies were found on the Iraqi side of the border. They said the dead were from Uludere on the Turkish side of the border on a regular smuggling route.

The Firat news agency, which has close ties to the PKK, said that 17 people were still believed to be missing. It said those killed were aged around 17-20.

In northern Iraq, PKK spokesman Ahmet Deniz condemned the strike and said F-16 jets had bombed a group of around 50 people taking goods across the border and that 19 people were missing.

The PKK, regarded as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, launches attacks on Turkish forces in southeastern Turkey from hideouts inside the remote Iraqi mountains.

Turkish leaders vowed revenge in October with air and ground strikes after the PKK killed 24 Turkish soldiers in one of the deadliest attacks since the PKK took up arms in 1984 in a conflict in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.