Turkish Police Raid Kurdish Party Leader's Home 'by Mistake'
Turkish police hunting an alleged drug smuggler "mistakenly" raided the home of the leader of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, local media reported Tuesday.
Plain clothes police officers showed up at Demirtas's home in the Kurdish-majority southeastern city of Diyarbakir on Saturday, saying they were looking for a man accused of drug smuggling, Hurriyet daily reported.
They were acting on information provided by an anonymous informer, who described the address by saying that the suspect lived in the same building and on the same floor as Demirtas.
But the officer who took the tip-off call got the details wrong, leading the police to launch a raid on Demirtas's home instead.
The officers scuffled with Demirtas's bodyguards when they demanded to search the house, where Demirtas, who ran for president in 2014, lives with his wife and two daughters when in Diyarbakir.
The 42-year-old politician was at home at the time, on a break from campaigning in June 7 general elections.
He explained the mistake to the police, who later left the building, Hurriyet said.
Diyarbakir police department blamed the incident on "the negligence of the telephone operator," who was subsequently suspended.
Demirtas came third in the presidential election, which was won by former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Source: Agence France Presse
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