Turkey: President Calls Bombing ‘Crime Against Humanity’
By VOA
Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul has called a fatal bomb attack on the town of Gaziantep a “crime against humanity” and lamented the deaths of the nine victims, including four children.
Gul said in a statement Tuesday that he shares the pain of the families who lost loved ones. He said he condemns those responsible for the car bomb that exploded near a police station in southeastern Turkey, near the country’s border with Syria.
In addition to the nine deaths, 69 other people were wounded.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to travel to the town on Wednesday.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.
Rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are active in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast.
More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have been killed since the PKK took up arms in 1984 to demand autonomy.
Such Turkish arrogance! The first official international use of the concept of crime against humanity dates back to May 24, 1915, where the governments of France, Great Britain and Russia issued a joint declaration condemning the deportation and systematic extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, “In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte [government of the Ottoman Empire] that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.” Turks got away with this genocide and built their republic on the bones of a million and a half Armenians.