A statue of a former militant commander of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who planned the first attacks of its 30-year insurgency against the Turkish authorities has been unveiled in south-east Turkey, reports said Sunday. The statue of Mahsum Korkmaz, who was killed in 1986, was unveiled on Saturday in the village of Yolacti in the Lice district of the majority Kurdish Diyarbakir province in Turkey's south-east.
But the hugely unusual move has infuriated nationalists who denounced it as the unwanted result of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's policy of granting greater rights to Turkey's Kurdish minority.
The statue shows Korkmaz standing on a high triangular plinth dressed in battle gear and holding a rifle by his side, according to pictures published in Turkish media including the Milliyet daily.
It was erected in a newly opened cemetery in Yolacti for slain PKK fighters where Korkmaz is also buried, in a ceremony attended by local politicians, including a representative of the People's Democratic Party (HDP).