Int. Women's day/Turkey: Turk police teargas pro-Kurdish demonstrati

[ozgurluk at xs4all.nl]

Turk police teargas pro-Kurdish demonstration 
10:13 a.m. Mar 08, 1998 Eastern 

ISTANBUL, March 8 (Reuters) - Police used batons and teargas on
Sunday to disperse hundreds of people attending a Women's Day
demonstration in Istanbul backed by Turkey's main Kurdish party. 

Large numbers of police and demonstrators were injured in the
clash in the central Taksim square, Anatolian news agency said.
Arrests were made, but it was not clear how many. 

``This is an illegal demonstration,'' a police officer using a
loud-hailer told the crowd of some 600 from behind lines of riot
police and armoured cars. A helicopter hovered overhead. 

``There are some provocateurs among you who are using
Women's Day to start trouble with the police,'' he said. 

The demonstrators, many of them wearing the traditional Kurdish
colours of red, green and yellow, threw sticks and stones when riot
police charged and fired teargas canisters. The demonstrators
dropped banners and flags supporting the People's Democratic
Party (HADEP), Turkey's main Kurdish political group, and ran
into side streets, pursued by police who began house-to-house
searches in the lanes of the area. 

A crowd of demonstrators smashed car windows and threw stones
at a nearby police station. 

``Long live March 8,'' read one banner in Turkish and Kurdish.
``Stop torture in detention,'' said another in Turkish. 

Elsewhere in Istanbul, a larger meeting for Women's Day passed
without incident. 

Police turned back a convoy of six buses carrying women from
Ankara and Istanbul to a Women's Day march in Diyarbakir,
capital city of the mainly-Kurdish southeast, at the border of
Diyarbakir province, a security forces official told Reuters. 

A march in the city took place under close police watch and
dispersed peacefully, witnesses said. 

A Turkish prosecutor last month charged seven senior HADEP
members, including party leader Murat Bozlak, with having links
to separatist Kurdish rebels. The seven face a maximum of 15 years
in jail. 

Turkey refuses to grant minority rights to its approximately 10
million Kurds, drawing criticism from Western countries
concerned by human rights abuses. 

Most complaints of rights abuses stem from a 13-year-old conflict
between security forces and Kurdish rebels fighting for self-rule in
the southeast. More than 27,000 have died. ^REUTERS@ 
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