SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Three Kurdish men were stabbed by dozens of Turkish people in Ankara this week, Mezopotamya news agency and Evrensel reported on Monday.
Mezopotamya news agency said 30 people attacked the Kurdish men with “sharp objects” in front of Ankara University Faculty of Law.
Police briefly detained two of the attackers who used “knives and machetes” in the attack, the news agency reported.
They were released by the prosecutor’s office.
“A large nationalist group attacked three Kurdish young men in Ankara yesterday evening,” Evrensel news outlet reported on Monday.
One of the Kurds stabbed while the other two were slightly injured, it said.
“The two attacked us,” one of the Kurds who was injured told Evrensel. “Somehow, we escaped from there, but they caught us after a while.”
“I.K. [one of the attackers] stabbed KY [one of the Kurds] in the left hip,” Evrensel quoted him as saying.
“… A crowd of 20-25 people also came from our direction and attacked us after we ran away to bring police.”
Dogay Abak, lawyer of the three, said the group who knew about their identities attacked the three Kurds twice, including one time in front of a police station in Ankara.
“Despite the fact that the three didn’t respond to them and they walked away, the group of 30 people attacked them twice, including one time in front of the police station.”
Attacks on Kurds frequently occur in Turkey. In August, a Kurdish family was attacked by a group of “300 racist people” in Elmali district, southwest of Antalya.
A Kurdish man and woman from Iranian Kurdistan were also attacked and beaten by a restaurant owner in Turkey in the same month.
On July 30, seven members of a Kurdish family were killed in Konya by armed assailants who tried to burn their house in what rights activists said was a racist attack.
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) 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, HDP’s co-president.
On July 21, a Kurdish farmer was killed in a village in Konya by attackers who shouted, “We don’t want Kurds here.”
In the same month, seven other Kurdish workers were injured by a group of Turks in Derecine village in Turkey’s Sultandagi district, according to Mezopotamya news agency.
In May, another Kurdish family from the Kurdistan Region’s capital, Erbil, was also attacked by a group of Turks in Bozyazi district in Mersin.
Two members of the family including a father and a son were wounded.
In 2019, a group of tourists from the Kurdistan Region carrying a Kurdistan flag scarf was also attacked by locals in the city of Trabzon as they were trying to take pictures.
