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| The Grand Turk |
| Shops torched in anti-terror protests in central Turkey were targeted: Owners |
| 2015-10-24 |
| [Hurriyet] A number of local business owners of the stores torched in the Central Anatolian province of Kirsehir during nationwide anti-terror protests in early September have said the perpetrators who carried out the attacks against the shops had specified their targets in advance, daily Hurriyet has reported. The perpetrators walked the streets of Kirsehir for about seven hours with a list of the stores they had specified to set ablaze, said Sait Akilli, a bookstore owner whose shop was one of some 32 shops, as well as the Peoples' Democratic Party's (HDP) building, set alight in Kirsehir. "It was a deliberate act. They burned shops on the list, walking the streets. The targets were those of Kurdish origin," Akilli said. "They wanted to burn us alive. Four other people were along with me. We rushed upstairs." Akilli said 28 residents of the apartment building right above Akilli's bookstore were stuck inside the building surrounded by flames and they were only rescued by police forces and firefighters at the last minute. HDP Kirsehir provincial head Demet Resuloglu said there was no response from police after she reported a group was gathering in front of the party's building. "I called the police over the phone after the group gathered [outside the HDP building in Kirsehir]. I asked them to take measures, saying there was going to be an attack [on the building], but no measures were taken," Resuloglu said. "We thought we were going to die," said Sezai Özturk, a waiter at the Diyarbakir Dessert House, who was trapped along with four others inside the shop at the time of the attack. Özturk said the perpetrators attacked from outside the front door. "They smashed the front glass of the shop. We had to go downstairs to the basement. Then police came and took us out ten minutes before the perpetrators set our shop ablaze," he said, questioning how police forces were not able to prevent the torching of their shop but we able to remove Özturk and his friends alive from the attack. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 Kristallnacht for the Kurds |
| Posted by: anon1 2015-10-24 08:41 |