Former main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Istanbul Deputy Binnaz Toprak made an indirect supportive statement about the PKK, claiming that it does not commit massacres in the southeast.
Speaking on a TV program on Wednesday, when she asked another participant about who is responsible for the massacres in the southeast in the last months, the respondent said it was the PKK. Toprak replied: "It is not the PKK."
The CHP has been criticized before for following policies close to those of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and has been accused of collaborating with the pro-PKK party.
CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said in a live TV interview on Tuesday that he visited PKK and Revolutionary People's Liberation Party Front (DHKP-C) terrorists in prison: "We visited sick PKK and DHKP-C members in prison. We made no exception." Although Kılıçdaroğlu said he and his party members visited imprisoned terrorists, he had said earlier that the CHP cannot be mentioned alongside the PKK.
For his comments, he faced protests Wednesday at the funeral ceremony of two officers killed in Tuesday's car bombing in Istanbul.
Prior to the funeral prayer held at Fatih Mosque in Istanbul, several protesters took off the paper on a wreath bearing Kılıçdaroğlu's name and moments later the wreath was taken out of the mosque courtyard.
During a hospital visit in February, Kılıçdaroğlu had said: "Whoever supports the PKK, we regard them as a component of the PKK." Yet, he also called the PKK terrorists digging ditches and setting up barricades in southeastern provinces "friends" once in a statement in December of last year.
