One Million Landmines 'Still Buried in Turkey'
Turkey is littered with more than one million landmines that kill or severely injure one person every three days, a local lobby group said Friday.
Muteber Ogreten, head of A Turkey Without Landmines, said only one percent of mined areas had been cleared since 1998 and called on the government to act on promises to rid the country of the weapons by early next year.
"Each mine is a loss of life. We don't want more casualties," she told Agence France Presse.
The mines were laid in the Kurdish majority southeast during the Turkish state's fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The Istanbul-based NGO issued its report as the government is trying to revive a stalled peace process with the PKK, which took up arms for self-rule in southeastern Turkey in 1984.
Turkey, which in 2004 became a party to the Ottawa Treaty aimed at eliminating anti-personnel mines, was supposed to clear its territory of the ordnance by March next year.
But the lobby group said Turkey was seeking another eight years to complete the demining.
There are still 3,520 affected areas in Turkey, which has spent five million lira (1.8 million euros, $2.4 million) on clearing landmines since 2004 and destroyed over three million stockpiled mines, according to the report.
Over the past 12 years, 975 people have been killed in landmine explosions, Turkish press reports say.
The PKK declared a ceasefire in March but Kurdish rebels announced in September they were suspending a planned pullout of fighters, accusing Ankara of failing to keep its promises of reform.
Source: Agence France Presse
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