ANKARA: Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party said on Friday it had applied to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Turkish military air strikes on the Iraqi border last month that killed 35 civilians.
Turkish military aircraft struck a group of cigarette and diesel smugglers on Dec. 28. The government said they had mistaken them for militants, and the deaths sparked clashes and protests in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.
The incident threatens to ruin efforts to forge a Turkish-Kurdish consensus for a planned new constitution expected to partly address the issue of rights for the Kurdish minority.
The Turkish government has acknowledged the dead were civilians and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has promised a full investigation into the attacks, which the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) dubbed a "crime against humanity".
Speaking at a news conference in the Turkish parliament, BDP deputy parliamentary group leader Hasip Kaplan said his party had applied to the ICC for it to investigate the incident. The party has already referred the case to the U.N. Human Rights Committee.
Asked why his party had not waited for the results of the Turkish investigation, Kaplan said the BDP wanted to avoid a cover-up.
"If the prime minister of this country tries to cover up this incident from the start ... we will also pursue every path from every place, national or international," Kaplan said.
"Because crimes against humanity are no longer an internal, national problem, they are a problem for all of humanity."
Shortly after the air strikes, Turkey's ruling AK Party said there would be no cover-up if mistakes were made or if there were shortcomings exposed by the incident.
On Tuesday, Erdogan said victims' families would each be awarded 123,000 Turkish lira ($68,600) and said the government was studying the event closely.
The military had said its warplanes launched the air strikes after drones spotted what looked like suspected militants from the separtist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
The group has been fighting for an ethnic Kurdish homeland in a conflict that has claimed the lives of 40,000 people.
But with most Turks favouring a hardline military response against the PKK, the incident is unlikely to hurt the popularity of Erdogan, who won a third term in office in a June vote.