November 4, 2016 | Quoted by Oren Dorell, Jane Onyanga-Omara and Kim Hjelmagaard - USA Today
Lawmakers arrested in Turkey; car bomb kills 9
A huge car bomb killed at least nine people in the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast region Friday, shortly after authorities detained a dozen Kurdish lawmakers in relation to a terrorism investigation.
The violence and the arrests come as Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been increasingly criticized by his NATO allies in Europe for veering toward authoritarianism and away from the democratic values they share.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said up to 100 people were also wounded in the Diyarbakir bombing, the Associated Press reported. Yildirim said two police officers, a technician and five civilians were among those killed.
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“The arrests are just the last step in five days of non-stop repression” against Turkey's Kurdish minority and their leaders, who represent the third-largest voting block in parliament, said Aykan Erdemir, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy.
Erdemir was referring to a series of actions ordered by Erdogan starting Oct. 29, when he issued two emergency decrees.
Together with Friday's detentions, the decrees and other actions are seen as “a civilian coup,” Erdemir said. “People are seeing this akin to the 1980 coup and the July 15 aborted coup in the sense that this is an illegitimate grasp of people’s democratic will.”
Erdogan is playing with fire, he said.
“The more the Kurdish electorate is disenfranchised, the more Kurdish youth could turn to violence and extremism,” Erdemir said. “Turkey's Kurds as of today no longer see any legitimate avenue for political participation.”
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