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More than 100 detained in Turkish crackdown on
Kurdish party
30.7.2006
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DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey, July 30, 2006 (AFP) ,-- Turkish
police on Sunday detained some 130 people at a
meeting organised by the country's main Kurdish
party on the grounds that the function was linked to
armed Kurdish rebels, security sources said.
Police said the meeting in the southeastern city of
Sanliurfa was held in the name of the "terrorist
organisation", the official term used by Turkish
authorities to describe the Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK).
The Democratic Society Party (DTP) said the
meeting's only aim was to hold a debate on the
city's problems.
The detainees are expected to appear in court after
testifying to police and some of them could end up
facing criminal charges, the sources said.
Kurdish politicians in Turkey are routinely regarded
with suspicion and often seen as instruments of the
PKK, which has been fighting a bloody campaign
against the Ankara government since 1984 aimed at
winning self-rule for the Kurds.
The DTP was set up in November with a pledge to try
to resolve the Kurdish conflict through peaceful
means, but it has so far failed to acheive any
progress, with PKK violence mounting in the
southeast.
It has come under fire for sympathizing with the PKK,
which is blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey,
the European Union and the United States, and dozens
of its members face prosecution for supporting the
rebels.
Last month, a Turkish prosecutor launched an
investigation into whether the DTP's first
convention amounted to propaganda for the PKK, after
participants waved Kurdish flags and brandished
posters of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK's jailed leader.
AFP
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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