Kurdish protesters clash with Turkish security forces

By Seyhmus Cakan

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Kurdish protesters clashed with security forces in Turkey's southeast on Sunday, ahead of demonstrations planned across the country to pressure the government to carry out reforms.

The main pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, the BDP, has called for marches in at least three major cities, to launch a summer of protests against what it sees as a lack of commitment by Ankara to a peace process with Kurdish militants.

The Kurdish unrest comes after weeks of unrelated anti-government protests in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities in which four people have died and thousands have been injured.

Security forces killed an 18-year-old man and wounded 10 others when they fired on a group protesting against the construction of a gendarmerie outpost in the Kurdish-dominated southeast on Friday.

It was the most violent incident since a March ceasefire called by the Kurdistan Workers Party's (PKK) jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan and threatens to derail the nascent peace process between the rebels and the state.

A few hundred protesters burned tires and closed a main road on Sunday near the Cizre district of Sirnak province, which borders both Syria and Iraq. Some threw firebombs at police who responded with water cannon and teargas, security sources said.

The separate anti-government unrest to the north has largely died down over the past week, but around 10,000 people marched on Istanbul's Taksim Square on Saturday. The protest became partly one of solidarity with the Kurds after Friday's killing.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of anti-government protesters teamed up with a planned gay pride march in Istanbul. Crowds were stopped by riot police from entering Taksim, the centre of previous protests, but the atmosphere appeared peaceful.

KURDISH DEMANDS

Pro-Kurdish marches were expected in the cities of Diyarbakir, Mersin and Adana. Diyarbakir is the main city in the southeast and Mersin and Adana, on the Mediterranean coast, have large Kurdish populations.

Turkey's Kurds have largely stayed away from the anti-government demonstrations which began at the end of May, and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has tried to reassure them that the unrest will not harm the peace process.

The anti-government protests have emerged as the biggest public challenge to Erdogan's 10-year rule. He has dismissed protesters as pawns of Turkey's enemies and has called supporters to back his party in municipal elections next year.

PKK militants began withdrawing from Turkish territory to bases in northern Iraq last month as part of a deal between the state and Ocalan, imprisoned on an island south of Istanbul since 1999, to end a conflict that has killed 40,000 people.

However, the BDP said the withdrawal was continuing successfully and the process had entered a second stage during which Ankara needed to broaden the rights of Kurds, who make up some 20 percent of the 76 million population.

Sunday protests will call for a halt to the construction of military outposts in southeast Turkey, the release of political prisoners, education in Kurdish, lowering of the threshold of 10 percent electoral support required to enter parliament, and the release of Ocalan.

The BDP said it had presented to the government a 25-article proposal on which action needed to be taken urgently.

Erdogan said the process had still not entered the second stage as only 15 percent of PKK fighters had so far left Turkey. The BDP says at least 80 percent of the militants have either left Turkey or are en route to their bases in northern Iraq.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state, but subsequently moderated its goal to autonomy.

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kurdish-protesters-clash-turkish-security-forces-115712949.html

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