Mainstream News: More arrests in Turkey

[ozgurluk at xs4all.nl]

Turkey police arrest far-left militants 
08:00 a.m. May 02, 1998 Eastern 

By Osman Senkul 

ISTANBUL, May 2 (Reuters) - Turkish police detained 11 suspected 
far-left militants on Saturday after clashes between leftists and riot 
police at a May Day rally that brought complaints of security force 
violence. 

Anatolian news agency said police rounded up the suspects in the 
western city of Bursa. They are accused of links to the Revolutionary 
People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) urban guerrilla group. 

The agency quoted Bursa assistant police chief Bulent Eliacik as saying 
the group had recently sent a leader to the city from nearby Istanbul to 
organise a guerrilla network. 

Police wielding batons clashed with far-left militants at a large May 
Day rally in Istanbul on Friday. Dozens of demonstrators were hurt, 
most of them beaten by police, and more than 100 were detained. 

About 100 journalists marched through Istanbul on Saturday to protest 
at what they said were police attacks on them during the May Day 
unrest. 

``As always in public order incidents, the police take it out on 
journalists,'' Turgay Olcayto, general secretary of the journalists' 
association, said in a speech. 

He said seven journalists were hurt by far-right ``Grey Wolf'' militants 
and police, despite security officials handing out bright green 
waistcoats to members of the media in advance to make sure they were 
not confused with rioters. 

Reporters on Saturday marched to the Istanbul governor's office where 
they tied the waistcoats to the front gate in protest. 

The U.S.-based Freedom House monitoring group described Turkey in 
a report on the world press on Friday as ``democracy's worst violator of 
press freedom.'' 

Turkey frequently jails journalists for breaking strict laws on freedom 
of expression, although rights workers say the number imprisoned has 
dropped in recent months. 

Newspapers said a leftist badly beaten by police and rightists on the 
fringes of Friday's rally had been taken to hospital seriously hurt but 
the reports could not be confirmed on Saturday. 

Reuters Television filmed the Grey Wolf nationalists, named after a 
legendary she-wolf from Turkic Central Asia, who hung the protester 
from a building as police and other members of a 100-strong crowd beat 
him repeatedly. 

Trouble erupted at the May Day march when police refused militant 
leftist groups permission to enter a square in the city centre where an 
official labour rally was taking place. 

The DHKP-C is the largest of Turkey's many extreme-left factions. It 
was accused of rocket attacks on police buildings in Istanbul last year. 
The group shot dead industrialist Ozdemir Sabanci in 1996. 

More than 5,000 people died in street clashes between leftist groups and 
Grey Wolves in the late 1970s. The fighting prompted a military coup in 
1980. 

-- 
Press Agency Ozgurluk
For justice, democracy and human rights in Turkey and Kurdistan!
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