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Turkish Police Clash with Kurdish Protestors
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Aug 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Eight demonstrators were injured Friday when Turkish security forces clashed with Kurdish protestors in this mainly Kurdish city in southeast Turkey, officials said.
Police also detained 25 people, said a Turkish police official, who asked not to be named.
At one stage, security forces fired shots in the air, but none of the injured had gunshot wounds.
The clashes, in which 11 soldiers were said to be injured, erupted when police attempted to disperse about 3,000 people gathered in Diyarbakir to board buses for Ankara, where they planned to join a march called by the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HADEP) to mark World Peace Day, September 1st, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Police did not allow them to board buses because authorities in Ankara banned the march.
The protestors then reportedly began chanting slogans in favor of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and allegedly attacked police with sticks and stones.
Security forces fired warning shots in the air and then, protected by plastic shields, slammed into the crowd with truncheons and turned on high-pressure hoses, AFP said.
Diyarbakir police chief Atilla Cinar told Anatolia news agency that the crowd did not obey warnings from police and HADEP officials to stop shouting pro-PKK slogans and hurling stones at security forces.
Ankara police banned the Peace Day march, claiming, "It was deemed likely to lead to serious public disorder and cause unwanted incidents."
HADEP has appealed to a local court to overturn the ban.
HADEP has often drawn the ire of Turkish authorities who allege it is linked to armed PKK elements who waged a 15-year armed campaign against Ankara for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey with the conflict claiming some 36,500 lives.
HADEP denies the charge and says it favors a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question. But, it is still under the threat of a ban for alleged association with the PKK.
Tension and clashes in Turkey's southeast have declined since September 1999, when the PKK declared an end to its armed campaign. It now seeks a peaceful solution to the conflict in line with peace calls from Ocalan, who has been condemned to death.
Turkish police earlier in the week detained 50 people, most of them women, as they attempted to hold a pro-Kurdish demonstration in Istanbul, Anatolia news agency reported August 26th.
The detainees were among over 100 members of "The Mothers' Initiative for Peace", a pro-Kurdish women's group, who had gathered in the Beyoglu district in the European quarter of Istanbul, the report said.
In another crackdown on Kurds, a senior HADEP official was jailed for 39 days for reportedly disseminating "separatist propaganda," his lawyer said.
The conviction of HADEP deputy chairman Ahmet Turan Demir stemmed from remarks he made at a party function in October 1999, in which he likened a prospective settlement of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, lawyer Mehmet Nuri Ozmen told AFP.
He was alleged to have said: "They resolved their problems like this, I mean they split up without a quarrel. The problem here must be resolved in this or any other way."
Demir was originally sentenced to one year in jail. But his term was commuted to 39 days after the court took into account the time he had spent in detention in connection with other cases for which he was acquitted, Ozmen said.
Demir escaped another jail term - of 45 months - for allegedly aiding and abetting Kurdish combatants, thanks to an amnesty law last December.
HADEP members are frequently persecuted for alleged ties to the outlawed PKK and risks being banned in a case still to come before the courts in which it is accused of the alleged association with the PKK.
But the party, which campaigns for Kurdish cultural freedoms, has denied the charges.
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