 At least 18 people were injured and 70 others detained across Turkey yesterday when police clashed with Kurdish activists at demonstrations marking the capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan six years ago. The most troubled protest was in Diyarbakir where 15 people were hurt. "End the isolation," read banners held by a crowd of some 300 activists, referring to Ocalan's solitary confinement on a prison island in northwestern Turkey since his capture in Kenya on February 15, 1999. Kurdish activists have long been calling for Ocalan's transfer to an ordinary jail, but their appeals have so far fallen on deaf ears in Ankara. | Some of these boyz were blowing innocents up, they get no sympathy from me. |
Police moved on the demonstrators, using the famous Turkish number seven truncheons and tear gas, when they refused to disperse after reading out a Press statement and demanded to also stage a march and a sit-in. The injured included policemen hurt by stones hurled by the crowd. In Istanbul, riot police sprayed pepper gas on a crowd of several hundred people who attempted to march to the Greek consulate to denounce Greece's role in Ocalan's capture. | Bet the police had to think about that one. Spray the crazy demonstrators or let 'em at the Greeks? |
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