TURKEY’S SOUTHEAST SHOCKED BY KURDISH RIOTS
PanARMENIAN.Net
24.03.2008 16:31 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ More than 100 Kurdish demonstrators and 10 policemen
were injured and more than 160 Kurds detained across southeastern
Turkey on Saturday when police broke up spring festival celebrations,
security sources said.
Turkish police firing water cannons, teargas and wielding batons
clashed with demonstrators in the streets in the cities of Van
and Siirt.
More than 60 Kurdish demonstrators and two policemen were injured in
fighting in Van after security forces tried to disperse a crowd of
nearly 10,000 Kurds celebrating Newroz festival and shouting slogans
supporting the banned separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Tensions are high in Turkey’s mostly Kurdish southeast as military
operations against the PKK have continued after the military launched
an eight-day operation into northern Iraq to wipe out PKK camps there.
The clashes on Saturday began when police tried to break up
festivities, organized by the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party
(DTP). Police said the celebrations were unauthorized.
Turkey’s Kurds have long complained of discrimination, and DTP leaders
want public schools in Turkeys southeast to offer education in the
Kurdish language, which is unrelated to Turkish.
In Siirt, 32 demonstrators and eight police were injured in more
violence after police tried to disperse a group of 3,000 people with
teargas and water cannon.
In Hakkari, near Turkey’s border with Iraq, clashes also erupted
between about 2,000 revelers and police near the city’s government
building.
More than 100 Kurdish demonstrators were detained in the province
of Sanliurfa, near Turkey’s border with Syria, for participating in
another unauthorized Newroz celebration.
Saturday’s Newroz clashes were punctuated by the separate arrests of 16
people in eastern Anatolia for belonging to the PKK, Reuters reports.