KurdistanObserver.com

Turkish Military Besieges The Kurdish City Of Amed

AFP & AP

Amed, (Northern Kurdistan), March 30, 2006  - A boy was fighting for his life in hospital Thursday after being wounded by gunfire in a third straight day of deadly Kurdish riots in southeastern Turkey, medical sources said.

He was injured after some 10,000 people took to the streets of Diyarbakir, the main city of the mainly Kurdish region, for the funerals of three people killed earlier in some of the worst street battles there for years.

Prosecutors in the city of Diyarbakir have opened an inquiry into allegations that pro-Kurdish politicians there have backed the Kurdish insurrection, a legal source said Thursday.

Those being investigated include Osman Baydemir, the mayor of the city and a member of the main pro-Kurdish organisation, the Party for a Democratic Society (DTP), who earlier this week told young rioters he respected their "courage" but asked them to stop defying the law.

Two provincial leaders Ahmet Cengiz and Murat Avci are also being investigated.

The crowd pelted the police with stones after a religious ceremony for the victims, prompting security forces to respond with tear gas and warning shots in the air.

Witnesses said a boy, aged around eight, was hit in the chest by a bullet. Meidcal sources said his life was in danger.

At least another person was seriously injured, an AFP correspondent said.

Dozens of riot police, backed by armored vehicles, deployed near the mosque where the funeral ceremony was performed, while commandos armed with automatic rifles and wearing black ski masks kept watch in the streets.

The dead included a demonstrator, a nine-year-old boy hit by a bullet while watching the trouble from a roof and a man killed in a traffic accident while running from the melee.

Hundreds of Kurdish youths went on the rampage in Diyarbakir on Tuesday and Wednesday, attacking police with stones and petrol bombs and vandalizing shops and public buildings.

Around 250 people, half of them police, were injured and 200 demonstrators detained in the two days of rioting, officials said.

The violence spilled over Thursday to the nearby town of Batman, where the rioters fire-bombed a bank and ransacked the office of a far-right nationalist party, the Anatolia news agency said.

Television footage showed black smoke billowing from a building as riot police fired pepper gas at protestors hurling stones and petrol bombs.

Clashes also took place in an Istanbul suburb late Wednesday.

In Diyarbakir, the mourners brandished flags of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought Ankara since 1984, chanted slogans in favor of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and stoned journalists.

Shop owners kept their businesses closed, fearing vandalism and reprisals from Kurdish militants who often put pressure on locals to close down shops as a show of defiance against state authority.

Tuesday's violence erupted after the funerals of four of 14 PKK rebels who had been killed fighting the army over the weekend.

Kurdish politicians have blamed the riots on Ankara's failure to meet their demands for greater freedoms.

Senior military, police and civilian authorities said in a statement after an anti-terrorism meeting Thursday that they had decided to take “all necessary measures within the limits of laws and democracy to struggle with separatism and terrorism, and implement them with absolute determination.”

In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged citizens “not to pay attention to the provocations and propaganda of the terrorist organizations.”

“Nobody should dare to harm our internal peace,” Erdogan said. “Turkey will continue to improve its democracy, human rights and freedoms, and cannot be subjugated by these harmful attempts.”

There has been a resurgence of violence since June 2004, when the rebels declared an end to a cease-fire, accusing Turkey of not responding in kind and refusing rebel calls for dialogue.

“If someone is expecting us to bargain, they are waiting in vain,” Erdogan told reporters. “We can't tolerate any illegal action.”

Keen to boost its bid to join the European Union, Ankara has made a series of gestures to the Kurds, including allowing Kurdish-language broadcasts and private language courses, but activists want broader rights.