ISTANBUL The Turkish military said Thursday it had accidentally killed at least 35 Turkish cigarette smugglers in airstrikes after mistaking them for separatist fighters in the Kurdish border region with Iraq, infuriating many of Turkey's long-oppressed Kurds. Most of the dead were between 17 and 20.
Political opponents denounced the prime minister, and angry crowds gathered in central Istanbul, hurling stones at shop windows and striking passing cars with bars. The police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse them, Turkish news agencies reported. In several predominantly Kurdish cities in the southeast, security forces also used tear gas, according to local news reports.
A spokesperson for the governing Justice and Development Party said that the strikes had occurred just inside northern Iraq, along a rugged route used by smugglers to transport goods by mule. The route is also travelled by militants from the separatist Kurdish Workers' Party, or the PKK, who launch cross-border attacks from bases in northern Iraq.
"According to some primary information, it was determined that those people killed in the incident that took place outside Turkish borders were not terrorists, but smugglers," said the spokesperson, Huseyin Celik, adding the government was opening an investigation.
"This wasn't intentional," he said. "If there is a mistake, a shortcoming, it won't and shouldn't be covered up."
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