Protester dies in fresh clashes in Turkey

KIZILTEPE, Turkey - Turkish police fired into the air to disperse a protest march in mainly-Kurdish southeast Turkey on Sunday and one person was killed, officials said, in a weekend that saw unrest in several cities.

Security sources said additional troops were being deployed to Kiziltepe, a town of about 100,000 people south of the region's main city of Diyarbakir. In Ankara, parliament called a special session for Tuesday to discuss the violence.

The southeast has suffered its worst riots in many years since Tuesday's funeral of 14 armed separatists killed in clashes with the army. Tensions reflect popular discontent over local conditions and resurgence of a Kurdish guerrilla campaign.

Police said Mehmet Sidik Onder, 22, received a bullet wound to the stomach after police fired in the air to stop a march in Kiziltepe, near the Syrian border. The protesters were heading for the home of another man shot dead in the town on Saturday.

Witnesses said the police fired at the man, the ninth to die in a wave of unrest that could stir serious strains in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party and stoke tensions with the influential military. Events are watched closely by the European Union Turkey seeks to join.

A few hundred Kurdish protesters, some wearing masks, clashed with riot police in Istanbul on Sunday, throwing petrol bombs and setting fire to a truck. Police said a man died when he was hit by a bus escaping a petrol bomb attack.

Youths have been fighting street battles for days with police in the region's main city, Diyarbakir. On Saturday, there were clashes in Silopi, near the Iraqi border.

Locals gathered under a canopy in Kiziltepe 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.

Erdogan has promised firm action to thwart those he says seek to divide Turkey. Security forces, however, have shown far more restraint than would have been the case before his reforming centre-right government took power four years ago.

State-run Anatolian news agency said a total of 565 protesters were detained and 247 of them formally arrested on Sunday, bringing to 445 the total number of arrests in two days.

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

Locals are disappointed 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 Erdogan.

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. Armoured 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 guerrilla Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) called off a five-year unilateral cease-fire.

Ankara, like the EU and Washington, 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 1984. But many Kurds sympathise 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.

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.

- REUTERS