As Kurds Protest, Violence Claims 4 More in Turkey

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the NYTimes, April 3, 2006

As Kurds Protest, Violence Claims 4 More in Turkey
By REUTERS

KIZILTEPE, Turkey, April 2 (Reuters)  The police opened fire to disperse
Kurdish demonstrators in southeastern Turkey on Sunday, killing one
protester, security officials said. Three more people died when a gasoline
bomb that the police said appeared to be linked to the Kurdish protests
was thrown into a bus in Istanbul, the officials said. The deaths raised
the toll in six days of street violence to 12. The officials said the
protester, Mehmet Sidik Onder, 22, had been shot in the stomach when the
police started firing in the air to stop a protest march in this city near
the Syrian border.

Mr. Onder was with a group of demonstrators who had marched to the family
home of Ahmet Arac, 27, a protester who was killed Saturday. Riots in the
mainly Kurdish region erupted Tuesday after the funerals of 14 members of
the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party who were killed in clashes with the
military the previous weekend. A few hundred Kurdish protesters clashed
with the riot police in central Istanbul on Sunday, throwing gasoline
bombs and setting fire to a truck.  Three people were killed after a
gasoline bomb was thrown at a bus, The Associated Press reported, citing
police reports.

The civil unrest has been some of Turkey's worst since the Kurdish party
took up arms against the government in 1984. Security officials said
additional troops were being sent to this city of about 100,000 people
south of the region's largest city, Diyarbakir. Political analysts and
diplomats say the violence, the worst in a decade, reflects local anger
over high unemployment, poverty and the central government's refusal to
grant more autonomy to the mainly Kurdish region. Many people in the
region say they are disappointed that they have not seen more changes
despite promises of economic improvements by the governing Justice and
Development Party.

Turkey has lifted restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language and
displays of Kurdish culture in recent years, hoping to further its efforts
to join the European Union, but critics say it needs to do much more.
Tensions have increased in Turkey, which has a large Kurdish population,
since 2004, when the Kurdish party called off a five-year unilateral
cease-fire. The government regards the Kurdish Workers' Party as a
terrorist group responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people
since it began its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast
Turkey. But many Kurds sympathize with the separatist party.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/world/europe/03turkey.html