DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — At 11 p.m. Jan. 13, a powerful explosion jolted the town of Cinar in Turkey’s conflict-torn southeast. The police’s local headquarters and adjacent lodgings were under attack, hit by a truck bomb blamed on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The emergency health service in Diyarbakir, the provincial capital some 30 kilometers (18 miles) away, went on alert, dispatching ambulances to bring the more than 30 wounded to the city hospitals. In the wireless communications, ambulance drivers were instructed to “take the wounded policemen and their families to the Military Hospital.”

The instruction, which this reporter heard, was repeated several times by the operator at the emergency dispatch center. Military hospitals in the southeast have long treated soldiers wounded in clashes with the PKK, but the treatment of police officers in the same hospitals is something new.

According to local officials, the policemen injured in the Cinar blast were taken to the Military Hospital because it was the closest. Yet, the treatment of policemen at the Military Hospital has become a general practice in the past several months as urban clashes between the security forces and militants of the PKK’s youth wing, the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), drag on.

Officials say the roads leading to civilian hospitals are often risky, passing through conflict zones inside the city, whereas the vicinity around the Military Hospital is more secure. Yet, recent events suggest this may not be the sole reason. With the rekindled conflict further polarizing Turkey, some members of the security forces seem to no longer trust civilian hospitals in the region, whose staff is mainly Kurdish.