Tensions high after Kurdish riot in Turkey

Armoured police cars were guarding government offices and authorities were distributing bread in a south-eastern Turkish town today, after a violent Kurdish riot left at least three people dead and 16 injured.

Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated south-east has seen violent street protests for about a week after allegations surfaced that security forces may have been behind a recent bombing targeting a convicted Kurdish guerrilla.

The allegations raised fears that security forces may have been carrying out summary executions – common in the early 1990s in the fight against Kurdish rebels – and prompted the government to launch an investigation.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was chairing a meeting to discuss the tensions in the south-east in Ankara today.

Authorities have charged three sergeants from the paramilitary police and an informant from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, over last Wednesday’s bombing in the town of Semdinli.

The attack sparked outrage and protests which quickly spread to the nearby town of Yuksekova in Hakkari province, bordering Iran and Iraq.

The riots yesterday in Yuksekova left three civilians dead and 16 injured, including seven police officers, said Hakkari Governor Erdogan Gurbuz. It was not clear whether the police fired on the mob, which attempted to lynch two police officers.

Today, shopkeepers shuttered their stores in Yuksekova, Semdinli and the provincial centre of Hakkari in protest, private CNN-Turk television and the Anatolia news agency said. Authorities distributed bread in Yuksekova, where a tense atmosphere prevailed, CNN-Turk said.

The tensions in town centres and escalated fighting between autonomy-seeking Kurdish guerrillas and the Turkish troops in the countryside have troubled the Turkish government, which is under pressure from the European Union to improve human rights and treatment of Kurds in the country’s battered south-east.

Erdogan cut short a visit to Denmark yesterday after learning that journalists from Danish-based Roj TV, which Turkey calls a mouthpiece for Kurdish guerrillas, would attend a news conference he had planned to address.