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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s security forces have interrogated a Turkish far-right politician after suspecting that he spoke on the phone with the main suspect of the recent deadly blast in Istanbul before the explosion took place, reported an opposition news outlet on Tuesday. The government has blamed Kurdish forces in Syria for the incident.
A TNT explosion killed six people and injured 81 others in Istanbul’s famous Taksim thoroughfare on Sunday. A 23-year-old Syrian woman, Ahlam Albashir, was detained by the security forces as the main suspect. Turkish police have also detained 48 other suspects in the last two days.
Turkish authorities have blamed the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) which controls northeast Syria (Rojava) but the group has denied any responsibilities.
The Turkish opposition news outlet, T24, reported on Tuesday that Mehmet Emin Ilhan, senior official from the Turkish far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), has been interrogated by police for allegedly speaking on the phone with Albashir more than once before she placed the TNT in the overcrowded street.
Ilhan confirmed to T24 that he had been summoned by police and he has given a testimony in relation to the incident. Asked about the phone calls with the main suspect of the blast, he replied, “They, the terrorist organization, tried to play a trick on me,” referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). He refused to elaborate as “I am not available now and I do not want to talk.”
Ilhan later said in a press conference that someone had registered a line under his name after obtaining a photocopy of his ID in 2019. He denied any control of the line with which the phone call with the Syrian woman was made.
PKK is an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. Ankara considers it a terrorist organization and claims that the YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the PKK.
Before Ilhan’s alleged phone call with Albashir was reported, MHP Leader Devlet Bahceli targeted the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which he claims is the political wing of the PKK, saying “We cannot tolerate that the HDP, which recruits members for the terrorist organization… takes a place in Turkish politics and democracy for a second.”
HDP has repeatedly denied any organic links to the PKK but it says it respects the ideology of PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
MHP is a de facto ruling party, enjoying a strong alliance with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Pervin Buldan, co-chair of the HDP, said during a party meeting on Tuesday that Bahceli did not just target her party but millions of people who voted for the party in the latest elections.
Adem Taskaya, deputy leader of the far-right Victory Party said on the first day of attack in a tweet that a Kurdish lawyer was the woman who appeared on CCTV.
“The person who carried out the heinous attack in Taksim is Jiyan Tosun who is a PKK lawyer,” he claimed. But after Turkish authorities identified the woman in the CCTV as Ahlam Albashir, Taskaya deleted the tweet.
Tosun has filed a lawsuit against Taskaya.
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