Turkish PM denounces academics calling for end to violence in southeast, urges them to condemn PKK

Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu has slammed hundreds of academics and intellectuals who called on Ankara to end military operations in southeast Turkey, urging them to condemn acts of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) instead.

"It is really very saddening that some of our academics have signed such a declaration while we are fighting terrorism. Every day we are fighting against international terror such as DAESH and against the separatist terrorist organization that kills civilians in dormitories, including a five-month-old baby. We working to secure the life and security of our citizens," Davuto?lu said on Jan. 14, speaking at a technology forum.

He also strongly condemned the overnight truck bomb attack on a police station in the predominantly Kurdish-populated southeastern province of Diyarbak?r on Jan. 13, vowing that Turkey would continue its fight against "every kind of terror."

The prime minister said six people had been killed and 39 wounded in the attack in the small town of Ç?nar in Diyarbak?r. The attack, which local authorities blamed on the PKK militants, came days after a suspected suicide bomber from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul. 

Earlier in the week, 1,128 academics from 89 different universities - including foreign scholars like Noam Chomsky, David Harvey and Immanuel Wallerstein - signed a declaration titled "We won't be a part of this crime," which called on Ankara to end the "massacre and slaughter." 

Labeling the group "poor excuses for intellectuals," President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, in an address to Turkish ambassadors gathered for an annual conference on Jan. 12, lashed out at the signatories and said human rights violations in the...