Turkish Police
Clash With Protesters Over Status of Kurdish Party
Amed, Northern Kurdistan, Nov. 25 (Reuters) — The police used water cannon, tear
gas and batons against Kurdish protesters in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan city of
Amed on Sunday in clashes highlighting tensions over prosecutors’ efforts to
shut down a Kurdish political party.
The protesters hurled stones at the police and burned tires after being
prevented from marching through the center of Amed, the largest city in Turkey’s
mainly Kurdish southeast.
The demonstrators shouted slogans in support of the Democratic Society Party,
which prosecutors want closed down, and in favor of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed
leader of rebel fighters with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as
the P.K.K., the initials of its name in Kurdish.
The police detained dozens of people during the clashes.
Earlier, up to 40,000 people attended a Democratic Socialist Party rally in
Diyarbakir, condemning the Turkish government’s threat to send troops into
northern Iraq to crush P.K.K. guerrillas hiding there. The protesters called for
a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue.
“At this rally, we say enough is enough,” said Selahattin Demirtas, a member of
Parliament with the Democratic Socialist Party. “Enough of denying the Kurds.
Enough of trying to solve problems through operations.” Kadri Yildirim, a party
supporter at the rally, said, “We are here to stop bloodshed in this country, to
stop the tears of Turkish and Kurdish mothers, to consolidate peace and
brotherhood.”
Turkey’s Constitutional Court agreed on Friday to examine a call from state
prosecutors to shut down the Democratic Socialist Party because of its calls for
autonomy for the Kurdish southeast and its suspected links to P.K.K. guerrillas.
The party says it rejects violence and wants to secure more political and
cultural rights for Turkey’s large ethnic Kurdish population by purely peaceful,
democratic means. But it has refused the government’s demand that it condemn the
P.K.K. as terrorists.
