Türkİye

Latest victim of PKK in Turkey named as 15-year-old boy

Eren Bulbul succumbs to wounds after being shot near home in Trabzon province

12.08.2017 - Update : 13.08.2017
Latest victim of PKK in Turkey named as 15-year-old boy 15-year-old Eren Bulbul martyred during terrorist PKK attack in Turkey's northeastern Trabzon province on Friday.

By Tugba Yardimci and Nurten Aslan

TRABZON, Turkey

The civilian martyred by PKK terrorists in northern Turkey was a 15-year-old boy, the provincial governor’s office said Saturday.

Eren Bulbul died from wounds sustained as he helped gendarmes track PKK terrorists in Macka, a town 22 kilometers (14 miles) south of the Black Sea city of Trabzon, on Friday.

Gendarmerie Master Sgt. Ferhat Gedik, 41, was injured in the same incident and also died.

Funeral prayers for Eren, attended by Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, were said at Macka Central Mosque after which he was due to be buried in Kopruyani neighborhood, the Trabzon governor’s office said.

Locals hung Turkish flags from windows and balconies to mark the teenager’s death and a poster of Eren was hung outside the town hall with the words “Eren Bulbul, Macka will never forget you. Our martyrs rest in peace.”

Deputy Prime Minister Fikri Isik visited the hospital where Eren had been treated to express his condolences to the boy’s family.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), condemned the attack.

“You are so low as to fire a bullet at a 15-year-old boy,” he said in a tweet. “I wish God’s mercy to Eren Bulbul and Ferhat Gedik, who were killed in the attack.”

The PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and EU -- resumed its armed campaign against Turkey in July 2015.

Since then, it has been responsible for the deaths of some 1,200 Turkish security personnel and civilians, including women and children. 

Civilian massacres

The group carried out its first terror attack on Aug. 15, 1984, when it attacked two gendarmerie outposts in the southeastern provinces Hakkari and Siirt.

In January 1987, PKK terrorists attacked a wedding party in the village of Ortabag in the southeastern province of Sirnak, killing eight people including two children and four women.

The following day, 10 people, including two babies, were killed in Gundukorte, a town in Mardin province, by the PKK.

The civilian death toll mounted in the following months and years.

In March 1987, six children were among eight people shot dead in Acikyol, Mardin.

In the notorious Pinarcik massacre, 30 people -- 16 of them children and six women -- were killed in a PKK attack on the village in Mardin.

The next month, simultaneous attacks on two neighboring villages in Mardin – Haraberk and Pecenek -- left 25 dead, including seven children.

September 1987 saw another mass killing at Ciftekavak, a village in Sirnak province, where four children and five women, including two expectant mothers, were killed alongside two men from the same family.

Thirteen men, women and children were killed the following month in Cobandere, Sirnak.

In the 1990s, the PKK began targeting cities and in July 1998 seven people were killed in a bombing at Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar.

More recently, in May last year, 16 people were killed when an explosive-laden vehicle was detonated in the Yenisehir district of Bingol province.


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