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Death toll rises to 6 in SE Turkey clashes
31.3.2006
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DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey (Reuters) - Six people have been
killed so far in days of clashes between Kurdish
protesters and police in Diyarbakir, the main town
of Turkey's troubled southeast, its mayor said on
Friday.
An eight-year-old child died overnight in hospital.
A man and a child were shot dead on Wednesday and a
second man was crushed under a police armored car.
It was not immediately clear when or how the other
two people died.
"Six people have died, 200 people are wounded,"
Mayor Osman Baydemir told a news conference amid the
worst social unrest in the impoverished region in
decades.
Daily running battles between thousands of
stone-throwing youths and riot police armed with
teargas and guns have turned Diyarbakir, a city of
nearly one million people on the river Tigris, into
a battle zone.
The clashes first erupted on Tuesday after funeral
ceremonies for 14 members of the banned Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) killed by troops last weekend. |
Turkish riot police firing demonstrators on the main
street of Diyarbakir the central city of the mainly
Kurdish southeast (Kurdistan-Turkey).
Photo:AFP |
Many shops, banks and other buildings have been
badly damaged. Cars and trucks have been torched.
Turkish television said many shops and offices had
reopened on Friday, but witnesses reported renewed
clashes between protesters and police in at least
one district of the city.
CNN Turk television said on its Web site that small
protests had also erupted overnight in a district of
Istanbul, Turkey's largest city. Istanbul is far
from the southeast but is home to a large Kurdish
population.
ANGER
Political analysts say they reflect local anger over
high unemployment, poverty and Ankara's refusal to
grant more autonomy to the mainly Kurdish region.
The state Anatolian news agency said police had
arrested 48 people so far after detaining more than
200.
Police spokesman Ismail Caliskan told a news
conference in the Turkish capital Ankara that the
PKK was behind the violence.
"But our security forces have prevented the
incidents from becoming bigger by behaving sensibly.
Nothing can be gained by violence. The rioters'
actions will also prevent democratization in the
region," Caliskan said.
Ankara regards the PKK as a terrorist group
responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000
people since it launched its armed campaign for an
ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. But
many Kurds view the PKK sympathetically.
Mayor Baydemir, viewed with suspicion in Ankara as a
Kurdish separatist, said the government should try
to understand the causes of the Kurdish protesters'
anger.
"(Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan) should come and
share the pain of our families... Our city has never
witnessed such prolonged social anger," Baydemir
said.
State prosecutors have begun an investigation of
comments by Baydemir they believe may have helped
incite the rioters.
Erdogan has appealed for calm and denied opposition
claims that the government has lost control of the
situation.
"Our people should feel at peace, they will be safe.
Security forces will do what is necessary," he said
on Thursday evening after returning to Ankara from a
foreign trip.
Reuters
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