THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: A Turkish human rights group is investigating claims by Kurdish activists that Ankara used chemical weapons in an attack on militants in the east of the country last month.
The activists are circulating gruesome pictures of some of the 24 rebels, from the PKK guerrilla group, killed in the Kazan Valley in air raids that began on October 19. Blackened and dismembered, the corpses lie in a morgue in a nearby town with weeping relatives nearby.
Their allegations have forced their way into the open in Turkey, which is usually fiercely nationalist when it comes to accusations of abuse by the Kurds, whose campaign for autonomy is a long-running sore. The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made a public denial of them as a "slander" while on his recent trip to the G20 summit in Cannes.
The activists say the only explanation for the type of burns exhibited is that some chemical agent was used. Their claims has now been raised by MPs from the legal pro-Kurdish party, the BDP, and taken up by the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD). » | Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent | Sunday, November 06, 2011
