ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish authorities detained an Australian woman at Istanbul Airport last week for alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Turkish security source said on Tuesday.
Cigdem Aslan was apprehended at the airport on Sept. 15 as she prepared to board a flight to Australia, the source said.
Following her arrest, she appeared in an Istanbul court on Sept. 18 and was jailed pending trial for alleged “involvement in PKK propaganda in Australia and participation in events organised by groups aligned with the militant organisation.”
Australia has said it is providing assistance to a woman in Turkey but it did not provide any more details.
The PKK, designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and European Union, began a separatist insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984. It has since moderated its goals to seeking greater Kurdish rights and limited autonomy in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which is now focused in northern Iraq.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara and Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Daren Butler and Christina Fincher)
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