Turkey arrests 70 rebel suspects

Turkish police arrested more than 70 people in simultaneous raids around the country on Tuesday for suspected links to outlawed Kurdish rebels, media reports said. Lawyers for jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan who are members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) were among those arrested, security sources from the southeastern province of Diyarbakir said. Police conducted simultaneous operations in 16 different provinces including Istanbul, Diyarbakir, Ankara and Bursa, media reports said, while the private news channel NTV said more than 70 people had been arrested. Police also raided the office of Ocalan's lawyers in Istanbul, according to an AFP photographer at the scene. The suspects are accused of having links with the KCK, which Turkey claims to be the urban wing of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a rebel group labelled a terrorist outfit by Ankara and much of the international community. Since 2009, some 700 people have been arrested over their alleged links to the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union), according to government figures, although the BDP puts the figure at more than 3,500. Five BDP parliamentarians and two prominent intellectuals - publisher Ragip Zarakolu and academic Busra Ersanli - are in custody on the same charges. The PKK took up arms in Kurdish-majority southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.