DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — At 11 p.m. Jan. 13, a powerful explosion jolted the town of Cinar in Turkey’s conflict-torn southeast. The police’s local headquarters and adjacent lodgings were under attack, hit by a truck bomb blamed on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The emergency health service in Diyarbakir, the provincial capital some 30 kilometers (18 miles) away, went on alert, dispatching ambulances to bring the more than 30 wounded to the city hospitals. In the wireless communications, ambulance drivers were instructed to “take the wounded policemen and their families to the Military Hospital.”
The instruction, which this reporter heard, was repeated several times by the operator at the emergency dispatch center. Military hospitals in the southeast have long treated soldiers wounded in clashes with the PKK, but the treatment of police officers in the same hospitals is something new.
