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Turkey's main Kurdish party accuses
government over deadly rioting
3.4.2006
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ANKARA, April 3,
2006 (AFP) - 11h01 - Turkey's main Kurdish party
lashed out at the government on Monday over the use
of excessive force in response to a week of violence
between Kurdish protestors and police that has
claimed 15 lives.
"We condemn all protests that fall outside
democratic limits, but in a state based on the rule
of law, no weapons can be used against an unarmed
protest," Aysel Tugluk, the co-chairman of the
Democratic Society Party (DTP), told a press
conference here.
"It is the government and the prime minister who are
responsible for all that has happened," she added.
The rioting began last Tuesday in Diyarbakir, the
biggest city of the mainly Kurdish southeast of the
country after the funerals of separatist Kurdish
rebels killed in fighting with the army, before
spreading to the region.
Riot police used firearms to disperse the protestors
as angry youths torched government buildings and
banks, vandalized shops and attacked the police with
petrol bombs and stones.
Among the 15 victims were three children, one of
whom was shot while watching the rioting from the
balcony of his home, Tugluk said.
"Children who had no part in the incidents and who
were watching the events from the balcony or the
park were massacred," she said.
Tugluk expressed concern that the clashes could
deteriorate into ethnic fighting and called on the
government to drop its "policy of violence" and
focus on democratic reforms that would allow it to
make peace with the Kurdish minority.
"Through this policy, the government is shutting off
dialogue and peace and dragging Turkey into darkness
with its anti-terror law and anti-democratic
measures," she charged.
"There is no option other than a political and
democratic solution."
Some 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when
the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Partyu (PKK) picked
up arms for self-rule in southeastern Turkey.
The region had enjoyed relative calm in recent years
as the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1999
and Ankara, under European Union pressure, granted
the Kurds a measure of cultural rights and lifted
emergency rule in the region.
Tensions have been on the rise, however, since June
2004, when the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group
by Turkey, the EU and the United States, called off
the five-year truce.
AFP
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