PKK supporters attack Turks in Belgium in rallies
A GROUP of PKK sympathizers attacked Turks in rallies in Antwerp, Belgium on Sunday. While riot police intervened in the symphatizers’ attack, four Turkish people were injured, including a police officer.
SUPPORTERS of the PKK terrorist group in Antwerp, Belgium, on Sunday continued carrying out rallies in neighborhoods where mostly Turkish-Belgians live, provoking them with slogans and reported attacks. According to an İhlas News Agency report, a group of PKK sympathizers rallied in a Turkish-Belgian neighborhood and shouted slogans, causing confrontations between the groups. Riot police intervened in the fight between the groups in which 40 Turkish citizens were interrogated and four people were injured, including a police officer.
Antwep Mayor Bard De Wever said that he condemned the events, adding that such incidents put the security and peace of the city in danger. He added that there was a ban imposed on holding rallies or group meetings across the city for a week.
On Friday, a group of PKK supporters who had been touring European cities since Oct. 9 in a bus decorated with terrorist propaganda, drove their vehicle into a Turkish-Belgian neighborhood in Antwerp with a police escort. According to Belgian media and eyewitnesses, the PKK supporters changed their route to provoke and attack people of Turkish origin in the city, leading to eight people being injured at the scene.
Speaking to Daily Sabah, eyewitnesses described the action as “pure provocation” and expressed their frustration with Belgian police for allowing terrorism propaganda in the country. A statement released by the Antwerp police announced that all of the five people injured, including a man who was stabbed, are in good health. Reports of three more injuries came later.
Furthermore, police took 41 people into custody to ensure public order.
The incident took place a week after the youth branch of the PKK in Europe, which has held dozens of demonstrations in European cities over the past month, announced it would carry out revenge attacks on Turkish institutions and establishments with links to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in Europe. The terrorist group claimed that neither “the capitalist modernity of Europe nor any fascist structure” would be able to stop the planned terrorist attacks.
Calling on all PKK supporters to join in attacking “all Turkey-linked institutions,” the group demanded the release of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. “No single institution of the Republic of Turkey should be able to live on. All cities should be turned into a resistance zone.”