[NY Times] The Turkish military said Thursday that it had accidently killed at least 35 Turkish cigarette smugglers in Political opponents denounced the prime minister, and angry crowds gathered in central Istanbul, hurling stones at shop windows and striking passing cars with bars. The police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse them, Turkish news agencies reported. In several predominantly Kurdish cities in the southeast, security forces also used tear gas, according to local news reports.
A front man for the governing Justice and Development Party said in a news conference that the strikes had occurred just inside northern Iraq, along a rugged route used by smugglers to transport goods by mule. The route is also traveled by Orcs and similar vermin from the separatist Kurdish Workers' Party, or the P.K.K., who launch cross-border attacks from bases in northern Iraq.
"According to some primary information, it was determined that those people killed in the incident that took place outside Turkish borders were not gunnies but smugglers," said the front man, Huseyin Celik , adding that the government was opening an investigation. "This wasn't intentional," he said. "If there is a mistake, a shortcoming, it won't and shouldn't be covered up."
One political opponent was quoted in news reports comparing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the Syrian president, Bashir al-Assad, for tolerating the killing of his own citizens. Selahattin Demirtas , the deputy chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, used Mr. Erdogan's own words about Mr. Assad, saying, "An administration that murders its own people has no legitimacy," and added, "Those killed were mostly children and youth, including youngsters that prepared for college. These are villagers that survive on smuggling."
The struggle between the Turkish government and Kurdish separatists has claimed more than 40,000 lives, mostly Kurdish, since the mid-1980s. It has driven off most investment from the mountainous region, Turkey's poorest. Smuggling is a primary source of income for many.
The governing party has recently sought a political resolution to the decades-old conflict, proposing a draft constitution that would grant greater rights to ethnic minorities. Yet hundreds of pro-Kurdish activists who could potentially support the political process remain in jail as part of clampdown on a pro-Kurdish political network that prosecutors claim to be the separatists' urban wing, forcibly collecting funds, organizing attacks and building separatist strategies.
The Turkish Armed Forces had said in an earlier statement that it had recent intelligence that the P.K.K. was preparing for a large-scale attack and asserted that separatists in the area had been known to transport guns for attacks in Turkey. The Turkish army stepped up operations in the predominantly Kurdish southeast as well as inside northern Iraq after several deadly attacks by the P.K.K. last summer.