Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Pervin Buldan stated that they recognised the Istanbul attack from the massacres in 2015 and called on all those who fight for democracy, law and justice to take a common stance against efforts to design the election process by polarising society.
Speaking to members of the HDP’s parliamentary group, Buldan condemned the attack that killed six people on Istiklal Avenue. Buldan said, “The government is trying to obscure and hide the facts of the explosion in Taksim.”
Stating that the government has been trying to prevent the public from learning the truth with the social media blackout from the first moment of this atrocity, Buldan said, “We are familiar with these kinds of attacks from the 10 October 2015 Ankara Massacre, the Suruç Massacre, the massacre in our party’s Diyarbakır rally, the wedding massacre in Antep.”
Stating that they are no strangers to efforts to design politics by instilling fear in society, Buldan also said that the HDP is a party that fights for a free and equal life without violence, and conflict, and pays a heavy price for this.
Istanbul had not been hit by such an attack for a long time. However, from the general elections in which the AKP lost its majority for the first time since 2002, when it came to power in 2015, to the elections on November 1, where the AKP regained its majority in the parliament, Turkey has been the scene of many attacks.
Two days before the 7 June 2015 general elections, a bomb attack was carried out during the HDP rally in Diyarbakır. A total of five people were killed and more than 400 were injured in the attack, for which ISIS claimed responsibility.
A total of 34 individuals were killed in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority town of Suruç in the lethal bomb attack as they gathered to travel to Syria’s northeastern town of Kobane, adjacent to the border to Suruç, on 20 July 2015.
An ISIS suicide bomber carried out an attack on a wedding party in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep that killed at least 51 people on 20 August 2016.
A total of 104 people lost their lives and over 500 others were wounded in an attack by ISIS against people demanding peace in the Turkish capital Ankara on 10 October 2015.
