Carpet arrests. This is the authoritarian response of the Turkish government, led by the president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, double bombing on Saturday night in Istanbul, where the death toll has risen to 44 people, including about thirty police officers, plus at least 150 injured.
At dawn today, the anti-terrorism unit of the police carried out five blitzes in the major Turkish cities, arresting 118 people. Almost all are members of the pro-Kurdish party HDP, the People's Democratic Party, which won 81 seats in Parliament in the 2015 elections. Among them also the provincial leaders of the Istanbul and Ankara offices, Aysel Guzel and Ankara Ibrahim Binici.
However, the party would seem to have little to do with the attacks, claimed by the Kurdish extremist group Tak, which had ties in the past with the pkk, the Workers' Party, now banned in Turkey, from which however the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons broke away a few years ago.
Erdogan immediately accused the PKK, and then proceeded to arrest members of a democratically elected party accused of links to terrorists, in what appears to have become a classic modus operandi of the Turkish government. Meanwhile, a day of national mourning has been proclaimed. During the commemoration for the dead policemen, President Erdogan spoke of "terrorism that tramples all forms of value and morality: but we will defeat them".
