Twin explosions on Monday hit the regional headquarters of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party in two cities, adding to escalating tensions in the run up to June 7 legislative elections.
\nSix people were injured in the blast at the office of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in the southern city of Adana caused by a suspect parcel, three of them seriously, a party official told AFP.
\nA bouquet of flowers sent to the party’s office in the nearby city of Mersin also exploded, the official said. Video footage showed several people with bloodied faces.
\nThe HDP’s co-chairman Selahattin Demirtas was due to address a rally in Mersin later in the day but the party said there was no suggestion of him cancelling the event.
\nThe government immediately condemned the attack, with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pledging to bring the perpetrators to justice.
\n“I strongly condemn this attack,” Davutoglu told a rally in the city of Karaman in central Turkey.
\nDavutoglu said he gave a “clear instruction” for a full-scale investigation. But he warned against any smear campaign to discredit his ruling party after some HDP figures blamed the government for the attacks.
\n“We have stood against violence since the very beginning. God willing, we will march into June 7 in peace,” he said.
\nCulture and Tourism Minister Omer Celik announced on Twitter that a special unit involving the police, gendarmerie and the intelligence agency was established to find out culprits of the attacks which he said took an aim at “the HDP, all political parties and Turkey’s election process.”
\nAFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twin explosions on Monday hit the regional headquarters of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party in two cities, adding to escalating tensions in the run up to June 7 legislative elections. Six people were injured in the blast at the office of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in the southern city of Adana caused by a suspect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}