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One killed, two injured in Kurdish protests in Turkey
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-21 09:14
One person was killed and two injured when Kurdish demonstrators clashed with
the police in southern Turkey, bringing to five the death toll from violent
protests and riots that erupted earlier this month, local officials told
Anatolia news agency.
The man died in hospital from a gunshot injury, Anatolia reported, without
saying whether the security forces used weapons during the clashes in the
Mediterranean city of Mersin.
Local deputy police chief Suleyman Ekizer blamed the unrest on supporters of
the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), considered a terrorist group by
Ankara, adding that a judicial probe had been launched into the incident.
The clashes broke out when riot police used armoured vehicles to dislodge a
group of protestors chanting pro-PKK slogans who blocked a street using garbage
containers.
Ekizer charged that PKK supporters in the city were using deadly riots in the
mainly Kurdish southeast as a pretext to attack the police.
The death brings to five the number of people killed in violent protests and
riots over the alleged involvement of the security forces in the November 9
bombing of a bookstore owned by a former Kurdish guerrilla in the southeastern
town of Semdinli.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has promised to bring the
perpetrators to justice, flew to the region late Sunday in a surprise decision
following a party meeting, the NTV news channel reported.
Erdogan was expected to visit Semdinli Monday, it said.
An angry crowd almost lynched three suspects after the attack on the
bookstore.
Two of them turned out to be officers from the gendarmerie, an army unit
policing rural areas, while the third -- who reportedly hurled the bomb -- a
former Kurdish guerrilla now working as an informer for the security forces.
The incident rattled the government at a time when it is under pressure to
prove its respect for democracy and the rule of law in its bid to join the
European Union.
Earlier Sunday, clashes also erupted in Istanbul and 12 people were detained,
Anatolia reported.
NTV footage showed protestors hurling stones and sticks at the security
forces and an armored police vehicle briefly catching fire by what was described
as a Molotov cocktail.
The police responded with tear gas and water cannons, Anatolia said, adding
that the crowd chanted in favor of the PKK.
The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984 when
the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist organization also by the EU and the United
States, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast.
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