More Than 20 Killed as Turkish Forces, Kurds Clash During New Year Protests

More than 20 Kurds were killed in clashes with Turkish forces during Kurdish New Year demonstrations Saturday, ushering in what diplomats expect to be a year of unprecedented violence in southeast Turkey.

At least one policeman was also killed in clashes that broke out when Kurdish crowds staged nationalist marches in defiance of state bans in the towns of Sirnak and Cizre near Turkey’s frontier with Iraq.

“They have poisoned the holiday. This is terrorism,” said Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel, summoning the Cabinet to respond to what many officials see as a major test for his 5-month-old government.

Tension has been mounting for weeks in Turkey ahead of the traditional Kurdish March 21 celebrations of Nowruz, the first day of spring, treated as an unofficial national day by the 20 million Kurds split among Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus.

Kurdish-related violence in Turkey has now killed more than 50 people in a week, adding to a toll of over 3,500 people killed in the 8-year-old Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fight for a separate state for Turkey’s 12 million Kurds, about one in five of the country’s population.

In one of a number of unprecedented recent incidents, pro-PKK nationalists in Cizre hanged three members of the Kurdish “village guards,” a 30,000-man force that takes guns and pay from the state. Their bodies were found hanging from lampposts in the main street, their mouths stuffed with money.

Unofficial sources, who put Saturday’s death toll at 24, said a mob also lynched a Turkish policeman in the town of Batman, another first.

There were marches, further confrontations and many arrests in major cities of western Turkey, where about half of the Kurdish minority lives, but no further loss of life was reported.

“There is every sign that this year will be the key in whether the Kurdish rebels succeed or fail, and it may be very bloody,” one Western diplomat said.

After months of tactical fallback, the Turkish military has clearly signaled its will to crush this year’s annual spring offensive by the PKK’s estimated 5,000-10,000 guerrillas. The extent of the equipment used by the army during Saturday’s violence showed an unprecedented level of determination.

Main battle tanks cruised the streets of Cizre while Turkish armor ringed the hills around the grimy Euphrates riverside town, one of the last truck stops on the now little-used route from Istanbul to Baghdad.

Heavy machine-gun and rifle fire echoed sporadically through the streets, which the PKK had advertised as the first day of a major uprising. Everyone “should throw themselves into the war and be ready to fight to the last man,” said PKK leaflets distributed in the southeast, where the party has become a major force even in Turkish garrison towns.

The aims of the PKK are not entirely clear, but range from simple legalization within the Turkish system to a demand for a full-blown independent state. It is condemned by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group.

In Cizre on Saturday, commandos and special police teams used tear gas to break up crowds of hundreds of pro-PKK Kurds trying to extend a night of demonstrations that included shooting in the air, exuberant dancing and traditional Kurdish New Year bonfires.

Turkish state television showed the demonstrations, drawing attention to the waving of Kurdish flags, support for PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and the crowds of women and children shouting pro-Kurdish slogans.

State television has never shown such footage before and has rarely referred to either the Kurds or the PKK by name, despite Turkey’s relaxation of its bans on Kurdish culture over the last year.

Some diplomats say this is an attempt to unite Turks against the Kurds. Others attribute it to a more liberal regime fostered by the coalition between the conservative Demirel and his minority Social Democratic partners, who include a radical Kurdish faction, the People’s Labor Party.

Demirel had tried to allow limited celebrations of the New Year and even accepted a bouquet of flowers from the Labor chairman, Fehmi Isiklar.

“Let this be a symbol of Turkish and Kurdish brotherhood,” Isiklar said.

But strong forces still oppose the middle road of compromise. More than 62 Labor sympathizers have been murdered in mysterious circumstances during the past year in cases that human rights activists say may be the work of death squads.