One more Kurdish family reunites with PKK-kidnapped child
"One of Diyarbakir (sit-in protest) mothers, mother Özlem, is uniting with her child today. Hopefully, this will continue, mothers' courage and determination will bring down all terrorist organizations," Turkey's Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced via a social media post on Thursday.
- Türkiye
- Anadolu Agency
- Published Date: 11:04 | 04 November 2021
- Modified Date: 11:41 | 04 November 2021
Another family was reunited Thursday with a child who had been kidnapped by the PKK terror group in southeastern Turkey, according to Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu.
"One of Diyarbakır (sit-in protest) mothers, mother Özlem, is uniting with her child today. Hopefully this will continue, mothers' courage and determination will bring down all terrorist organizations," he wrote on Twitter, noting that it was the 33rd reunification.
The ministry later announced that two PKK affiliates fled the terror group and surrendered to Turkish authorities. One is a child belonging to a family protesting in Diyarbakir, it said.
In Turkey, offenders linked to terror groups, who surrender, are eligible for possible sentence reductions under a repentance law.
The ministry said the terrorists surrendered after fleeing the terror group thanks to persuasion efforts by police and gendarmerie teams, bringing the number of terrorists who have surrendered through persuasion this year to 174.
The surrendered terrorists joined the PKK in 2013 and were active in Iraq and Syria, it added.
Protest in Diyarbakir province outside the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) offices began Sept. 3, 2019, when three mothers said PKK terrorists forcibly recruited their children. The government accuses HDP of having links to the PKK.
In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK-listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and EU-has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.