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The leader of the main opposition party was violently attacked by a crowd on Sunday (April 21st) in the capital, Ankara, during the funeral of a soldier killed in fighting against the Kurdish separatists. His party won the municipal elections on March 31 in Ankara and Istanbul, after an aggressive campaign that saw the power to accuse the opposition of allied with "terrorists".
With our correspondent in Istanbul, Anne Andlauer
On a video broadcast by a Turkish news agency, we see Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the head of the Social Democratic CHP , trying to fight his way for several minutes amid a crowd of men who insult, whistle and some try to punch him.
His bodyguards and gendarmes find it difficult to get him into a house, which the crowd attacks with stones and threatens to "burn". The politician will then be exfiltrated aboard an armored vehicle.
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu attended the funeral of one of four soldiers killed on 19 April at the Turkish-Iraqi border by members of the Kurdistan Workers Party , the PKK. A few hours later, he defied his attackers, accusing them of attacking "the unity of Turkey " and promising to continue to surrender to the funeral of soldiers killed in action.
If the political class unanimously condemned this attempted lynching, the opposition believes that power is responsible for the climate of polarization that made it possible. It recalls in particular that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses for more than a year all his opponents - Kemal Kiliçdaroglu in particular - to play the game of "terrorists".
Last year, the prefects were ordered to prevent members of the main opposition party from attending the soldiers' funeral.