Jan 25, 2002
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Police in southeast Turkey detained nearly 70 people demonstrating Friday on the first anniversary of the disappearance of two Kurdish party activists, security officials said.

Security officers used batons to disperse a crowd of about 300 members of the Kurdish People's Democracy Party, or HADEP, in the mainly Kurdish regional capital Diyarbakir, witnesses said. Smaller protests were held in the towns of Batman, Van and Siirt.

Protesters demanded information on the whereabouts of local HADEP officials Serdar Tanis and Ebubekir Deniz, who have not been seen since police took them into custody on Jan. 25, 2001, in the southeastern town of Silopi.

Police said they released Tanis and Deniz unharmed last year. Authorities later said the men had escaped to PKK camps in northern Iraq.

HADEP is Turkey's only legal Kurdish party but faces possible closure on charges it maintains ties with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has waged an armed struggle for self-rule in the southeast that has claimed more than 30,000 lives, most of whom are Kurdish.

"Pressure on our party and detentions are intensifying," HADEP deputy leader Ahmet Turk told protesters in Diyarbakir.

Police have launched a crackdown this month on a campaign to bring Kurdish-language education to Turkish schools. More than 100 students and activists have been detained after signing petitions to introduce Kurdish into curricula.

Lawmakers recently rescinded a ban on Kurdish broadcasts and publications in a bid to meet European Union criteria, but Turkish remains the only official language for public institutions.

Authorities fear granting wider cultural rights to the country's 12 million Kurds could lead to the breakup of Turkish territory.

Disappearances and killings of Kurdish and other political activists in the southeast were rife in the mid-1990s as conflict waged between PKK guerrillas and Turkish soldiers.

The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.

Violence has dropped off sharply since the 1999 capture of PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan, sentenced to death by Turkey for treason and awaiting a European Court of Human Rights ruling on the sentence.