ISTANBUL, March 27 (AFP) - Senior members of a pro-Kurdish party were among 100 people arrested on Wednesday in a demonstration calling on Ankara to legalize education in the Kurdish language, organisers said.
Around 1,000 protestors marched to a main post office to send a symbolic fax to parliament demanding amendments to the article in the constitution that bans education in Kurdish, a spokesman for the People's Democracy Party (HADEP) told AFP.

Police prevented protestors from entering the post office and detained about 100 people, including the head of HADEP's Istanbul branch and around 15 other party officials, Nizamettin Ozturk said.

Turkey's sizable Kurdish minority has recently organised mass petition campaigns demanding education in their mother tongue, which is also a key criterion which the European Union is demanding that Turkey must meet if it is to succeed in its bid to join the EU.

But the government has ruled out such a reform on fears that it could fan separatist sentiment among Kurds and rekindle a 15-year Kurdish rebellion for self-rule in southeast Turkey, which has recently calmed down.

In a bid to boost the country's EU membership bid, the Turkish parliament on Tuesday passed a package of democratic reforms, which included an amendment paving the way for Kurds to publish material in their own language.

The government is also contemplating television broadcasts in Kurdish.