Suspected Kurdish Rebels Kidnap Workers in Southeastern Turkey
DIYARBAKIR
Turkey (Reuters) - Suspected Kurdish militants kidnapped 10 power
company workers in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday as tensions remain
high in the region following unrest that killed at least 35 people.
In a separate incident, a politician from a Kurdish Islamist party was shot dead in the eastern city of Bingol.
Ethnic
Kurds rioted in several southeastern cities this month over what they
perceived as the government's refusal to help Syrian Kurds fighting
Islamic State militants for more than a month in the besieged town of
Kobani.
The
unrest threatens a shaky peace process in which the government is
negotiating an end to a 30-year insurgency with the jailed leader of the
outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who called a ceasefire last
year.
Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State in Kobani are closely affiliated with the PKK.
The
Turkish army was searching for workers from the Dicle Electric Co. who
were investigating illegal transmission on their network near the town
of Silvan when their vehicle was stopped by a group of masked men, a
security source said.
The
source said the assailants could be belong to the PKK, who have in the
past kidnapped soldiers, engineers, journalists and others, sometimes
with the aim of securing a prisoner exchange.
In
Bingol, Fethi Yalcin, 35, was killed outside of his home by
unidentified gunmen who shot him with a rifle from a car. He was a
member of the Islamist Free Cause Party, or Huda Par, security officials
said.
Though
both mainly Kurdish, left-leaning PKK loyalists and Huda Par members
have clashed in the past and again earlier this month.
(Reporting by Seyhmus Cakan; Writing by Ayla Jean Yackley)
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