Seven members of a Kurdish family were killed on Friday in central Turkey by armed assailants who tried to burn their house. Rights activists have said the attack was fuelled by racism.
The Dedeoglu family had been seriously injured in another attack in the middle of May by neighbors who warned them that they “will not let Kurds live here” in the region of Konya.
One of the dead members had complained in mid-July that the police and judges had been partial towards the May attackers who had been freed, and said the family feared for their lives.
Turkish authorities denied the incident was linked to long-running tensions in the region and said the deaths were the result of a family dispute.
But the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party said there had been several attacks on Kurds over the years. "The hate speech and provocation of the authorities is the main cause of this massacre," said Mithat Sancar, co-leader of the party.
It was the second deadly attack on Kurds in Konya in July. On July 21, a Kurdish farmer was killed in a village in the region by attackers who shouted: "We don't want Kurds here."
The Kurdistan Workers' Party, which wants an independent Kurdish state, has waged a rebellion against Turkey since 1984 that has left more than 40,000 people dead and has led to harsh government crackdowns.
While Konya has seen periodic episodes of violence during the insurgency, the province has been spared from the fate of other Kurdish-majority southern provinces such as Sirnak and Mardin, where fatalities have spiked during the most recent escalation of violence, which erupted in 2015.
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