Ahmet Gün, an executive of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), was killed Monday morning by unidentified gunmen in the southeastern province of Şırnak, the Evrensel newspaper reported.
Gün was in a rural town at the time of the attack, the report said. His vehicle was shot several times by the assailants, who killed him on the spot and injured his son, who was also at the scene.
Locals who spoke to the Mezopotamya news agency claimed the attackers were village guards, a local militia recruited by the state from among the population to help fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed separatist organization designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community.
DEM released a statement claiming that the attack was no coincidence, calling for an end to what they described as “dark politics.”
The party, previously known as HEDEP and before that the HDP, has been in the crosshairs of the Turkish government since the breakdown of a truce between the PKK and the state in mid-2015.
Government officials and pro-government media regularly accuse the party of being the political branch of the insurgent group, and the Interior Ministry has replaced dozens of its elected mayors with pro-government trustees in what rights groups have denounced as a clear violation of the Kurdish minority’s political rights.
Most of the ousted mayors, as well as MPs and other high-ranking members of the party, have been prosecuted on terrorism-related charges due to their speeches at events or social media commentary.
Former HDP co-chairs Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş have been incarcerated since late 2016.
Turkish authorities have been ignoring a European Court of Human Rights order for Demirtaş’s release.
Turkey was ranked 117th among 142 countries in the rule of law index published by the World Justice Project (WJP) in October, dropping one rank in comparison to last year.
