Erdogan received Gen. Ozel at the Prime Ministry in the afternoon for their weekly meeting. No official statement was made after the meeting, but the killing of 35 people in the military airstrike is known to have dominated the agenda of the meeting.
Turkish warplanes mistakenly killed 35 smugglers and other villagers in an operation that targeted Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) bases in Iraq Wednesday night.
The government acknowledged that the victims were smugglers, not terrorists. The military issued a statement that said the warplanes had targeted the group based on intelligence that had suggested a group of armed terrorists would be heading towards the Turkish border to stage attacks on the military. The victims were from the villages of Ortasu, Gulyazı and Ortabag in the Uludere district of the southeastern province of Sırnak.