Reşadiye shooting
| Reşadiye shooting | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict | |||||||
Districts of Tokat province | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Turkey | Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Harun Aslanbaş † | Celal Başkale | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 7 | |||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 7 killed, 3 injured | None | ||||||
The Reşadiye shooting was an ambush that took place on December 7, 2009, at Reşadiye, Tokat Province, Turkey. Unidentified gunmen ambushed a Turkish patrol, killing seven soldiers and wounding three others. It was the region's deadliest attack in more than a decade, since the Sazak assault in 1997; and most recent attack in Turkey since April, 2009 when a remote-controlled bomb set by Kurdish militants killed 10 soldiers in the country's southeast. The last major attack in Tokat was in 2001.
The ambush occurred as Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was received in Washington, D.C., by U.S. President Barack Obama and occurred the day before a court was due to consider outlawing Turkey's Democratic Society Party (DTP), the largest Kurdish party in the country. The threat of parliamentary resignations and a potential election lingered in the air. The Turkish army said on their website that they would maintain a presence in the area.