Turkish police overpower armed man who stormed Istanbul political office
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Version 0 of 1. Turkish police overpowered an armed man who stormed the ruling party’s local branch in Istanbul, broke a top-floor window and shouted slogans, a day after a deadly hostage incident involving a prosecutor. Selim Temurci, the Istanbul chief of the ruling Justice and Development party, told NTV television the armed man raided his party’s branch in the Kartal district, forced employees out and shouted slogans against the party. No one was hurt. Separately, police in the southern city of Antalya detained 19 people suspected of belonging to the banned leftwing group, DHKP-C, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. The agency said the suspects were being interrogated by anti-terrorism police but gave no other detail. Ten other suspects were detained in the cities of Izmir and Eskisehir, the agency said. The incidents come a day after two DHKP-C members held a prosecutor hostage in an Istanbul courthouse, and all three died in a shootout between the hostage-takers and police. It wasn’t immediately clear if the latest incidents were related to Tuesday’s hostage standoff. The prosecutor, Mehmet Selim Kiraz, was investigating the death of a teenager who was hit by a police gas canister fired during nationwide anti-government protests in 2013. The hostage-takers had made five demands, including forcing police held responsible for the teenager’s killing to confess to the death and for them to be tried by “people’s courts”. Meanwhile, the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and other officials joined hundreds attending the funeral of the prosecutor in Istanbul. |