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Thousands condemn Kurdish nationalism at
military funeral
10.4.2006
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ANKARA, April 10,
2006 (AFP) - Turkey's political leaders and senior
generals joined a crowd of about 10,000 here Monday
for the funeral of a high-ranking officer killed in
violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the
country.
Lieutenant Colonel Alim Yilmaz and a private were
killed Saturday when their car drove over a landmine
activated by remote control on a rural road in
southeastern Elazig province.
The colonel in command of the regional gendarmerie,
apparently the primary target of the attack, was
also in the vehicle, but escaped with injuries from
the blast, blamed on the separatist Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK).
The attack was the latest episode in almost daily
bloodshed in the region over the past few weeks that
has seen deadly Kurdish riots in urban areas and
increasing clashes between PKK militants and the
army in the countryside.
Senior government ministers, political party leaders
and hundreds of army officers attended Monday's
funeral at the Kocatepe mosque, the biggest in
Ankara.
"Down with the PKK," "The motherland cannot be
divided," the crowd chanted, waving Turkish flags.
An angry mourner shouted at Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, present at the ceremony, to toughen
anti-terror laws, drawing loud applause from the
crowd.
The PKK is blacklisted as a terrorist group by
Ankara, the European Union and the United States.
The recent wave of violence has raised fears of
renewed ethnic conflict at a time when stability is
critical to Turkey's bid to join the EU, with which
it began membership talks in October.
The Kurdish conflict has claimed more than 37,000
lives since 1984, when the PKK took up arms for
self-rule in southeast Turkey.
The region enjoyed relative calm between 1999 and
2004, when the PKK proclaimed a unilateral
ceasefire, and Ankara, eager to boost its EU bid,
enacted a series of reforms to expand Kurdish
cultural freedoms.
The government has vowed to continue fighting the
PKK without backtracking on its democratization
program.
AFP
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