Police detained almost a thousand people in raids across Turkey on Tuesday, including dozens with alleged links to Kurdish militants and an opposition news anchor, days after a suicide bomb attack in the Turkish capital.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said police carried out raids in 16 Turkish provinces, detaining 55 people suspected of being part of the “intelligence structure” of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. At least 12 other suspected PKK members were rounded up in a separate operation in five provinces, Yerlikaya wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The PKK claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, according to a news website close to the group. The group has led a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is considered a terror organization by the United States and the European Union. Tens of thousands of people have died since the start of the conflict in 1984.
A 73-year-old news anchor was also detained Tuesday after questioning details of the official account of the attack on opposition broadcaster Halk TV.
Aysenur Arslan was detained in her home after prosecutors accused her of “terrorist propaganda” and “praising criminal activity” for comments made during her television program on Monday morning.
Press freedoms in Turkey have eroded during President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ’s tenure, according to international monitors.
Much of the media has oriented itself to support Erdogan, while the few broadcasters that regularly criticize his policies are hit with fines or blackouts by the Turkish media watchdog RTUK. Turkey ranked 149th out of 180 countries in press freedom index of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in 2022.
The interior minister later said that an additional 928 people suspected of holding unlicensed firearms or being connected to firearms smuggling were arrested during the operation, but he did not immediately make it clear if the suspects arrested for illegal firearms were suspected of connections to the PKK.
He added that over 840 firearms were confiscated during the operation.
