ERBIL, Kurdistan-Iraq, April 6,
2006, - Hundreds of sympathisers of the separatist Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey protested Thursday in Kurdistan
(northern Iraq) against killings by Turkish security forces during
clashes with Kurds last week.
The demonstrators gathered in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil to
demand the regional parliament take a stand and condemn Ankara over
the actions of the Turkish forces.
"We call on the Kurds of Iraq to support their brothers in Turkey
and their uprising," said a leader of the demonstration, Faiq
Kawlabi.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily rejected
criticism that an excessive use of force was to blame for the loss
of life during Kurdish riots last week.
The military, meanwhile, vowed to finish off the PKK, whose rebels
killed five soldiers and a policeman in the southeast on Wednesday,
after a week of urban violence.
"Our security forces have displayed an attitude of tolerance unseen
in other countries, at the risk of being wounded or killed," Erdogan
said.
The violence which broke out on March 28 in Diyarbakir, the central
city of the southeast, saw hundreds of Kurdish youths torch banks
and public buildings, vandalize shops and attack the police with
firebombs. Security forces opened fire to disperse the crowds.
At least 20 people have been killed in clashes in the southeast and
in Istanbul, in the worst urban unrest in the country for years.
The PKK, branded a terrorist organisation in Turkey and the West,
has been waging an armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the
southeast since 1984. The conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives.
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