Kurdish-Related Violence Escalates in Turkey

Fierce clashes erupted Saturday night outside a southeastern Turkish town near the Syrian border, and police in Istanbul stormed a political party office to seize Kurds who took hostages.

Security officials said the fighting just south of Cizre began after border guards detected Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas with thermal imaging equipment.

“We could hear heavy machine-gun fire and see tracer bullets and flares for about 40 minutes,” Ralph Nicholson of the television news agency Visnews told Reuters.

It was the latest reported round of Kurdish-related violence in Turkey’s southeast, where at least 85 people have died since last weekend’s Nowruz spring festival.

In Istanbul, Turkish police stormed an office of Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel’s ruling party Saturday and captured 14 hostage-taking Kurds. The semiofficial Anatolian news agency said there were no casualties.

The Kurds had seized two branch committee members of Demirel’s True Path Party.

Also in Istanbul on Saturday, lethal amounts of cyanide were found in water tanks during an inspection at an air force compound, Anatolian said. Military officials blamed Kurdish rebels.

In Ankara on Saturday, Demirel accused Syria of harboring Kurdish separatists and warned that Turkey’s patience was being stretched by the infiltration of the Kurdish rebels from Syrian soil.

He also said Turkey would seal its 200-mile border with Iraq to stop infiltrations by PKK guerrillas. Turkey has launched seven air strikes on PKK targets in northern Iraq since August.

Demirel also said Germany seemed to be condoning terrorism.

Germany halted arms supplies to Turkey on Thursday, saying it had evidence security forces had used German-donated armored vehicles to quell Kurdish unrest.