ISTANBUL Turkish authorities have detained 740 people for suspected links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) over the last three days, state media reported on Saturday citing an Interior Ministry source.
Authorities carried out 36 raids during the three-day period, seizing equipment, documents and more than a dozen guns, state-run Anadolu Agency said.
Turkey faces multiple security threats, including Kurdish militants and Islamic State, both of whom have been blamed for bomb attack in the last year.
The autonomy-seeking PKK is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and Europe. It first took up arms against the government in 1984. Since then more than 40,000 people, most of them Kurds, have been killed in the violence.
Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast has been scorched by renewed fighting after a two-and-a-half year ceasefire between the government and the PKK broke down in 2015.
(Reporting by David Dolan; Editing by Stephen Powell)
