Mercredi 23 novembre 2005 à 18h43
ANKARA, Nov 23 (AFP) — The Turkish parliament voted Wednesday to investigate allegations that members of the security forces were involved in a bomb attack in the mainly Kurdish southeast that has sparked deadly riots.
Opposition parties led support to the ruling Justice and Development Party for the three-month inquiry into the November 9 bombing of a bookstore in the town of Semdinli that has rattled the government.
An angry crowd almost lynched three suspects after the attack on the shop, owned by a former Kurdish guerrilla.
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 came as a serious political embarrassment for Ankara 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.
The bombing also raised questions over whether Turkey has been able to purge rogue elements from the security forces, who were accused of committing summary executions, extortion, kidnappings and drug-smuggling during the early 1990s, the peak years of the struggle against Kurdish rebels in the southeast.
Weapons, hand grenades, a sketch of the bombed shop and a list of people, including its owner, were found in a car licensed to the gendarmerie which the crowd seized outside the bookstore, Esat Canan, a deputy from the main opposition People's Republican Party told parliament.
Canan, who happened to be in Semdinli on the day of the attack, said that armed men opened fire on a group of officials, including himself, a prosecutor and a police chief, as they inspected the car.
"We all know of similar incidents in the near past in which crime groups linked to the state were involved," Canan said. "Are we going to be a state based on the rule of law and break taboos or are we going to stay the same?"
The bomb blast claimed one life, while a second person was shot dead in the ensuing confusion.
Another four people were killed in violent protests and riots that erupted across the province of Hakkari, where Semdinli is located, and other parts of Turkey.
Canan charged that the riots were fuelled by a widespread conviction that the incident would be covered up after the authorities arrested only the Kurdish informer and a soldier accused of firing at the crowd while leaving free the other two soldiers at the scene.
Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu promised "to shed light on all aspects of the incident and bring to justice whoever is guilty."
The government, meanwhile, removed from office the Hakkari governor after he came under criticism from locals for mishandling the unrest and accusing Kurdish politicians of directing the riots.
Governor Erdogan Gurbuz was shifted to the northern province of Tokat, whose Governor Ayhan Nasuhbeyoglu was named to Hakkari.
During a visit to Hakkari on Monday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was greeted by Kurdish protestors calling on him to sack the governor.
Turkey's southeast has been the theater of a bloody conflict between the army and the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed group considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the United States.
The conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives since the PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the region in 1984.
Les informations ci-dessus de l'AFP n'engagent pas la responsabilité de l'Institut kurde de Paris.