At least seven police were killed and dozens of others wounded when a car bomb was detonated against a convoy full of riot police and military special forces in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir today, just one day before a planned visit by President Erdogan.
The bomb was detonated by remote control, and is being blamed on the Kurdish PKK. Diyarbakir is the main Kurdish city in Turkey, and has been the subject of several military crackdowns in recent months.
Erdogan, who is just wrapping up his US visit, told the Brookings Institute that the bombing would in no way impact his government’s determination to defeat the Kurdish separatist movement, though he did not say if it would impact his planned Diyarbakir visit.
Turkey has been at war with the PKK off and on since the 1980s, a war which resumed in July when Erdogan abandoned an existing ceasefire. Since then, he has claimed over 5,000 “Kurdish terrorists” to have been killed in attacks against both southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.