ERDOGAN & Kilicdaroglu – reacting angry to removal of flag by Kurdish protester

June 10, 2014 – MESOP – ANKARA,— Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted with fury on Monday to the removal of a Turkish flag from a military base by a Kurdish protester, during a weekend of clashes that left two dead.

Protesters in the Kurdish-dominated southeast, angry over what they see as an overbearing and ever-growing military presence, clashed with Turkish soldiers on Saturday, leading to the deaths of two Kurdish demonstrators. The killings sparked further clashes on Sunday, during which a masked protester climbed a pole at an air base in the southeastern Kurdish city of Diyarbakir (north Kurdistan) and took down a Turkish flag.

“We don’t care if he is a child,” Erdogan said, referring to the protester. “Even if a child dares to take down our sacred flag both him and those who send him there will pay a price.” The prime minister added that he had ordered his interior minister to investigate the incident in Diyarbakir.”We do not behave hurtfully toward symbols of any country,” the jailed leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, said in a statement relayed by pro-Kurdish lawmakers who visited him in his prison cell off Istanbul on Monday.

The event dominated the airwaves in Turkey, drawing condemnation from all sides. “We can never accept such an action,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the country’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said earlier on Monday. President Abdullah Gul also said that “ugly attacks and provocations will never succeed.” In an online statement, the army strongly condemned “the attack against the Turkish flag, the symbol of the glorious Turkish nation”.