ANKARA - Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Friday promised a full investigation into airstrikes on the Iraqi border that killed 35 villagers whom the military had mistaken for Kurdish militants - an attack that has infuriated minority Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. The strikes sparked clashes on Friday in Turkey's restive mainly Kurdish southeast and in the autonomous Kurdish northern Iraq region.
In the border village of Gulyazi, thousands of mourners attended funerals after digging deep graves along a steep cliff. The bodies, most of them young villagers who were smuggling cigarettes and diesel, were ferried on tractors or wrapped in carpets lashed to donkeys making their way along snowed tracks.
Breaking his silence over an attack Turkey's largest pro-Kurdish party has labeled a crime against humanity, Erdogan said video recordings of the air raid would be examined and forensic experts would be dispatched to the area. "All necessary steps will be taken," Erdogan told reporters, calling the incident, one of the largest single-day civilian deaths in a decades-long conflict, unfortunate and saddening.
But Erdogan also defended the Turkish military, which has been fighting Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) armed militants since the group took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
The military had said its warplanes launched air strikes after drones spotted what looked like suspected PKK militants.
"Unfortunately, it's not possible to determine who's who from these images taken by drones. These images showed a group of 40 men near the border," Erdogan said, adding the PKK has used smugglers and mules to carry out attacks in the past. "Our F16 jets have bombed the area as a result."
The attack undermined efforts by Erdogan to engage Kurds in talks to write a new constitution expected to address long-held Kurdish grievances. Kurds, a minority that inhabits Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, have become increasingly assertive.
Some 500 protesters gathered on Friday in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region, to protest the killings. Some protesters threw stones and clashed briefly with Kurdish security forces, but there were no reports of casualties. (Reuters)