Protesters clash with Turkish police
ISTANBUL: Turkish police detained at least 11 people overnight as anti-government protests following a suicide bombing blamed on Islamic State turned violent in Istanbul and other cities.
Two police officers were found dead, shot in the head, in a house in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa on Wednesday, security sources said.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said in a statement that the two police officers were killed at around 6am ( local time) in the south-eastern town of Ceylanpinar for ‘collaboration with the Daesh (Islamic State) gangs’.
Sources said the officers were found dead with bullet wounds to the head in a house they shared in Ceylanpinar, east of Suruc, site of Monday’s suicide bombing.
Protests erupted in a dozen or so neighbourhoods in Istanbul late on Tuesday, as well as cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, after Monday’s bombing in the Kurdish town of Suruc near the Syrian border, which killed 32 people.
Turkey’s NATO allies have expressed concern about control of the border which in parts runs directly parallel with territories controlled by Islamic State. Some 1.8 million Syrian refugees live on the Turkish side and smuggling is rife.
Many of Turkey’s Kurds and opposition supporters suspect President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party of covertly backing Islamic State against Kurdish fighters in Syria, something the government has repeatedly denied.
“Murderer Islamic State, collaborator Erdogan and AKP” some of the protesters chanted as they marched down a major shopping avenue in Istanbul’s Kadikoy neighhourhood, before police fired tear gas and water cannon when they refused to disperse.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu rejected accusations that Turkey had tacitly supported Islamic State and had unwittingly opened the door to the bombing.