Kurdistan Observer

Kurdish leader Urges End Of Riots, Calls On Ankara For Reform

DIYARBAKIR, (Northern Kurdistan), April 2, 2006 (AFP) The leader of Turkey's main Kurdish party urged Sunday an end to deadly Kurdish riots in the southeast and called on Ankara to come up with far-reaching reforms to make permanent peace with its largest minority.

"I urge all our people to stay away from violence," Ahmet Turk, the co-chairman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), said in an interview with CNN-Turk television. "Violence causes only more violence."

Several DTP officials have been accused of fanning the unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast, where angry youths torched government buildings and banks, vandalized shops and attacked the police with petrol bombs and stones.

The violence has resulted in eight deaths.

Turk admitted his party did not have full control over the local population as many remained under the influence of the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been encouraging the violence.

He said the riots, which erupted Tuesday in Diyarbakir after the funerals of PKK rebels killed in fighting with the army, were the reflection of entangled political, social and economic problems that have plagued the southeast, Turkey's most underdeveloped region, for decades.

"Those people do not have education, health services... they are hungry and deprived. How can one control such masses?" he asked.

Turk called on the government to come up with a comprehensive program for the southeast that would include the improvement of Kurdish cultural and political rights, economic and social development and a general amnesty for the PKK.

"How can you resolve the problem only with the stick, with repression and silencing? We want this mentality to change," he said. "The (Kurdish) people believe they are still regarded as a kind of quasi-citizens."