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Protester dies in Turkey clashes
Sun Apr 2, 2006 11:41 AM ET

By Daren Butler

KIZILTEPE, Turkey (Reuters) - One protester died after police opened fire to disperse Kurdish demonstrators in southeastern Turkey on Sunday, raising the death toll in six days of street violence to nine, security sources said.

They said Mehmet Sidik Onder, 22, had been shot in the stomach when police started firing in the air to stop a protest march in the town of Kiziltepe, near the Syrian border.

He was part of a crowd that had marched to the family home of another protester, 27-year-old Ahmet Arac, who was shot dead in Kiziltepe on Saturday, they said.

Riots in the mainly Kurdish region erupted on Tuesday after the funerals of 14 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed in clashes with the military last weekend.

The civil unrest has been some of Turkey's worst since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984.

Security sources said additional troops were being deployed to Kiziltepe, a town of about 100,000 people south of the region's largest city, Diyarbakir.

Locals gathered under a canopy to express condolences to relatives of the two men killed in the town.

"The people are very angry and I think the trouble will continue. We are protesting because we want Europe to know what is happening. How can Turkey enter the EU when it is like this?" asked Abdulkadir, a car salesman and friend of Arac.

AUTONOMY AND LIVING STANDARDS

Political analysts and diplomats say the violence reflects local anger over high unemployment, poverty and Ankara's refusal to grant more autonomy to the mainly Kurdish region.

Locals are disappointed that more reforms have not emerged out of Turkey securing an EU go-ahead last October to begin accession talks, and pledges of economic improvements by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Ankara has lifted restrictions on the Kurdish language and culture in recent years, hoping to further its bid to join the EU, but critics say it needs to do much more.

The streets of Kiziltepe were quiet on Sunday afternoon, still littered with the remnants of makeshift barricades set up by protesters. Armored vehicles were parked in front of public buildings and at key crossroads.

Tension has been on the rise in Turkey, a country of 72 million inhabitants with a large Kurdish population, since 2004, when the PKK called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire.

Ankara regards the PKK as a terrorist group responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since it launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey. But many Kurds sympathize with the PKK.

Turkey's main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), has called for an end to the violence but has also asked Ankara to push through more reforms in the southeast.

A few hundred Kurdish protesters, some wearing masks, clashed with riot police in central Istanbul on Sunday, throwing petrol bombs and setting fire to a truck. Several were detained.

Stone-throwing youths have been fighting street battles for days with riot police in Diyarbakir. On Saturday, police and protesters also clashed in Silopi, near the Iraqi border.

Despite the deaths, security forces' response to the riots has been more restrained than in the past, perhaps in an effort to avoid any escalation under the watchful eye of the EU.

The EU has expressed concern about the violence and urged Ankara to do more to combat poverty in the southeast and to boost Kurds' cultural rights.

(Additional reporting by Ercan Ersoy in Istanbul)


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