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Two dead in violent Kurdish demos in Turkey
2008-03-23
Two demonstrators died Sunday in southeastern Turkey as clashes between the police and Kurdish protestors continued for a third day, government and health officials said. The unrest erupted when celebrations to mark March 21 -- Newroz Day or the Kurdish New Year -- degenerated into demonstrations in favour of Kurdish rebels fighting the government as authorities banned gatherings in some cities. A 20-year-old person died from a bullet wound in the town of Yuksekova, in Hakkari province which borders Iran and Iraq, where riot police clashed with hundreds of protestors who took to the streets in defiance of the ban, hospital sources said. At least another protestor and a policeman were injured, witnesses said. Shouting slogans in favour of the armed separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the demonstrators hurled stones at the security forces, who fired warning shots in the air and used tear gas to disperse the crowd, they said. Television footage showed riot police chasing young men in the streets as armored vehicles sprayed pressurised water. A 35-year-old man, identified as Zeki Erinc, died earlier in a hospital in the eastern city of Van, where he had been taken with a bullet wound after similar clashes there Saturday, doctors said. An official from the Van governor's office confirmed the death, but was unable to provide other details. Around 50 people, among them policemen, were wounded and some 130 others were detained in Saturday's clashes in Van, according to the police. Scores of others were injured and around 200 rounded up in other parts of the country since Friday evening when the disturbances began after initially peaceful celebrations. In Van, the police blamed the unrest on organisers from the Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), who organised more gatherings despite a decision by local authorities to allow the celebrations only on Friday. Two local DTP officials were among those detained in Van Saturday. Another party official was taken into custody in the western city of Izmir, home to a Kurdish migrant community from the southeast, for allegedly calling for a "Newroz rebellion." The police detained several other people and seized Molotov cocktails, media reports said. Thousands of Kurds also gathered for Newroz celebrations in Istanbul on Sunday, dancing, singing and waving flags of green, yellow and red, the traditional Kurdish colours. Some brandished portraits of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and chanted pro-PKK slogans, but no incidents of violence were reported. Newroz is a traditional platform for Turkey's Kurds to demonstrate support for the PKK and demand broader rights. Celebrations have been relatively calm in recent years, but in 1992 about 50 people were killed by the security forces in clashes across the southeast. More recently, in 2002, two men were crushed to death in a police crackdown on violent Newroz demonstrations in the southern city of Mersin. This year's Newroz came in the wake of intensified Turkish military action against the PKK, including a week-long cross-border offensive against rebel hideouts in neighbouring northern Iraq last month. The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in the Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
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