Office of Turkish Cypriot daily ‘Afrika attacked by angry protesters

The office of Turkish Cypriot daily ‘Afrika’, was on Monday under siege as staffs were forced to barricade their doors as angry protestors hurled stones, water bottles and eggs at the building.

The crowds which gathered outside the newspaper office in Lefkosa at 9:00am on Friday were angered by a headline published by ‘Afrika’ on Sunday, accusing Turkey of launching another invasion in Syria.

According to a report on Sunday, Turkish ground troops crossed the border into the Syrian enclave of Afrin in an operation against the Syrian Kurdish armed group YPG.

While this was ongoing, several other groups also attacked the newspaper office yelling their support for Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Three of the protesters, who had climbed onto the newspaper’s balcony was seen tearing off letters from the sign of the newspaper.

Protesters also set fire to the offending front page of the newspaper. 

Police were on ground for security measures.

Turkey considers Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the YPG, “terrorist groups” with ties to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long fight inside Turkey.