One killed, two injured in Kurdish protests in Turkey
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-21 09:14

One person was killed and two injured when Kurdish demonstrators clashed with the police in southern Turkey, bringing to five the death toll from violent protests and riots that erupted earlier this month, local officials told Anatolia news agency.

The man died in hospital from a gunshot injury, Anatolia reported, without saying whether the security forces used weapons during the clashes in the Mediterranean city of Mersin.

Local deputy police chief Suleyman Ekizer blamed the unrest on supporters of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), considered a terrorist group by Ankara, adding that a judicial probe had been launched into the incident.

The clashes broke out when riot police used armoured vehicles to dislodge a group of protestors chanting pro-PKK slogans who blocked a street using garbage containers.

Ekizer charged that PKK supporters in the city were using deadly riots in the mainly Kurdish southeast as a pretext to attack the police.

The death brings to five the number of people killed in violent protests and riots over the alleged involvement of the security forces in the November 9 bombing of a bookstore owned by a former Kurdish guerrilla in the southeastern town of Semdinli.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has promised to bring the perpetrators to justice, flew to the region late Sunday in a surprise decision following a party meeting, the NTV news channel reported.

Erdogan was expected to visit Semdinli Monday, it said.

An angry crowd almost lynched three suspects after the attack on the bookstore.

Two of them turned out to be officers from the gendarmerie, an army unit policing rural areas, while the third -- who reportedly hurled the bomb -- a former Kurdish guerrilla now working as an informer for the security forces.

The incident rattled the government at a time when it is under pressure to prove its respect for democracy and the rule of law in its bid to join the European Union.

Earlier Sunday, clashes also erupted in Istanbul and 12 people were detained, Anatolia reported.

NTV footage showed protestors hurling stones and sticks at the security forces and an armored police vehicle briefly catching fire by what was described as a Molotov cocktail.

The police responded with tear gas and water cannons, Anatolia said, adding that the crowd chanted in favor of the PKK.

The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984 when the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist organization also by the EU and the United States, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast.