ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A senior member of a Kurdish conservative party was killed and a colleague injured in a knife attack in Turkey’s city of Adana on Saturday.
Salih Demir, the provincial head of the Free Cause Party (Huda Par), and Sacit Pisgin, the party’s provincial secretary, were stabbed inside the prayer room of the party’s office in Adana. Demir was severely injured and Pisgin was killed.
Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Twitter that the perpetrator of the attack has been detained and a judicial investigation is underway.
It is not immediately clear what was the motive behind the attack, but Huda Par leaders said they believe drug lords in the area were involved. Halef Yilmaz, the party’s vice president, said on Twitter that there is “dirty drug traffic” in Adana and demanded those behind the attack be exposed.
Yilmaz also said that the hands of “so-called politicians and journalists targeting Huda Par are stained with their blood.”
Faruk Dinc, a Huda Par member in the Turkish parliament, said on Twitter that Salih Demir had drawn the ire of drug traffickers through his work saving the youth of the city from what he called a “drug swamp.”
“Sooner or later the secret money barons and militant apparatuses behind the murderers will be revealed,” Dinc said.
Huda Par is a Kurdish conservative party based in the city of Diyarbakir (Amed). It participated in May’s parliamentary election as part of the People’s Alliance led by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and won four seats in the legislature.
After the party announced its alliance with AKP, it came under heavy criticism because of its historic links to Kurdish Hezbollah, a military group in the 1990s that waged a violent war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as well as targeting Turkish police officers. The group has no connection with the Lebanese party.
Huda Par was established in 2012 a decade after Hezbollah ended arm activities in Turkey. The political party sought to challenge the hegemony of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), the predecessor of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the southeast of Turkey. The party advocates for Kurdish rights within the state of Turkey.
