DIYARBAKIR, Turkey: Police fired water cannon and teargas as they clashed with stone-throwing Kurdish protesters in south-east Turkey on Saturday, while militants elsewhere in the region detonated a bomb which wounded 12 police officers.
Kurdish members of parliament were caught up in the trouble as police and demonstrators battled on the streets of the main south-eastern city of Diyarbakir, where the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) was planning to hold a rally.
The provincial governor had refused the party permission to hold the rally, planned in part to call for the release of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The rally coincided with the first anniversary of a declaration of “democratic autonomy” by Kurdish politicians, and it was also exactly one year after PKK guerrillas killed 13 soldiers in an attack in Diyarbakir.
While the street clashes continued in Diyarbakir, PKK militants detonated a roadside bomb by remote control, wounding 12 police officers after they got out of a vehicle in eastern Turkey, security sources said.
The attack took place outside a police shooting range in the province of Van, which is on the border with Iran. The wounded police were not reported to be in a serious condition.
No further details were immediately available.
More than 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of creating a separate state in mainly Kurdish south-east Turkey.
Turkish police and Kurds clash, bomb wounds 12
