Kurdistan Communities Union

Kurdish PKK fighters have ended a unilateral ceasefire with Turkey that they announced after the earthquake earlier this year, reports AFP.

The announcement, carried by pro-Kurdish media, threatened to lead to a return to the violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the PKK began its fight for an autonomous state in southeastern Turkey in 1984.

Supporters of Pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) at a rally as part of Nowruz (Newroz), or Kurdish New Year, celebrations in Diyarbakir, Turkey, 21 March 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/SEDAT SUNA

The Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), has killed a total of 407 civilians, including 51 children and 43 women, torturing 16 of these since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, according to a report published by the Turkish Interior Ministry, daily Habertürk reported on May 15.

Turkish police raided Belge Publishing House in Istanbul on May 7, seizing 2,000 books, daily Cumhuriyet has reported.

Belge was raided due to alleged links to the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) in the Fatih district's Cağaloğlu neighborhood, according to Cumhuriyet.

The Turkish work permit of British academic Chris Stephenson has been canceled by the Higher Education Board (YÖK), 18 years after he first started working at Istanbul's Bilgi University.

A total of 111 suspects in the main case into the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella group of Kurdish group that includes the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), were given a cumulative total of more than 1,100 years in jail by a Diyarbakır court on March 28. 

Some 442 people were arrested in terror operations conducted in just the last week around Turkey, the Interior Ministry has announced. 

According to the ministry, drugs worth some 11 million Turkish liras were also confiscated in operations that were carried out between Jan. 2 and 9.

Five senior figures of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have been apprehended as part of efforts targeting the activities of the PKK and the outlawed Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the Interior Ministry said on Dec. 30, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported. 

A court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır ordered the arrest of Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) deputy head Aysel Tuğluk late on Dec. 28, two days after her detention in Ankara, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

A total of 1,682 people have been detained in operations conducted against terror organizations across Turkey over the past week, the Interior Ministry stated Dec. 26.