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Turkey: Police raid Kurdish, left and Islamic groups

TURKISH police launched a nationwide crackdown on Kurdish, left-wing and Islamic extremist groups yesterday, killing a campaigner in Istanbul.

Some 5,000 police were involved in the raids ostensibly on suspected members of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) and Islamic State (Isis).

But lawyers and activists said that members of the left-wing Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and others were swept up in the dragnet.

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