Mercredi 23 novembre 2005 à 17h25
ANKARA, Nov 23 (AFP) — The government removed from office Wednesday the governor of the mainly Kurdish province of Hakkari after deadly riots there sparked calls for his resignation, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Governor Erdogan Gurbuz was shifted to the northern province of Tokat, whose governor Ayhan Nasuhbeyoglu was named to Hakkari, a restive province bordering Iran and Iraq.
During a visit to Hakkari on Monday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was greeted by Kurdish protestors calling on him to sack the governor, who came under fire for mishandling the unrest and accusing Kurdish politicians of directing the riots.
Hakkari was shaken by the bombing, widely believed to have been engineered by the security forces, of a bookstore owned by a former Kurdish guerrilla.
The November 9 attack in the town of Semdinli sparked violent protests and riots that claimed five lives across the province and in other parts of Turkey.
An angry crowd almost lynched the three suspected bombers after the attack.
Two of them turned out to be officers from the gendarmerie -- military troops that police rural areas -- and the third, who reportedly threw the bomb, was identified as a former Kurdish guerrilla turned informer for the security forces.
The incident rattled the government at a time when it is under pressure to demonstrate its commitment to democracy and the rule of law in its bid to join the European Union.
Les informations ci-dessus de l'AFP n'engagent pas la responsabilité de l'Institut kurde de Paris.