Tensions Rise in Turkey's Kurdish Southeast

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, March 31 -- The death by stray bullet of a 3-year-old boy Friday brought to seven the number of fatalities in the deadliest week of urban unrest to roil Turkey's Kurdish-populated southeast in more than a decade.

The slaying in Batman, 50 miles to the east, followed three days of riots in Diyarbakir, the largest city in a region that had been slowly recovering from 20 years of guerrilla conflict. The fighting, which resumed sporadically two years ago after a pause of five years, takes place largely in remote mountains where Turkish soldiers engage lightly armed Kurdish guerrillas.

But the politics of the conflict play out on the streets of this city, still swollen by refugees from Kurdish villages emptied by fear or bulldozed by a Turkish government intent on depriving guerrillas of any haven. On Friday, interviews with Kurds appeared to reflect a community divided on how to move forward.

In the vibrant center of Diyarbakir, merchants whose shop windows were shattered by rampaging protesters warned that the riots threatened to undo halting progress toward the prosperity that people in Turkey's southeast have long complained of lacking.

"We're not only talking about a loss of three days," said Nedim Koca, manager of Koton, a trendy clothing store damaged in the protests. "Diyarbakir probably lost a couple of years this week."

But on a corner of the city's Baglar district, where displaced families of 20 and more sometimes share an apartment, young men perched on curbs as darkness gathered said the outburst flared from frustration born of continuing discrimination.

"In the last 20 years, nothing on this scale has happened before," said Ali Kaycan, 22, who owns a photography studio. "So there was 20 years to find a solution here. But nothing happened."

The fuse was lit last Saturday, residents said, when Turkish forces killed 14 guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party, known by the Kurdish initials PKK. The group, condemned as a terrorist organization by the State Department and European Union, enjoys support from many Kurds, and the funerals of its fighters routinely double as rallies.

The burials in Diyarbakir on Monday morning were especially tense. A Kurdish satellite television station beamed from Denmark, Roj TV, had called for local businesses to close down out of respect. Militant Kurdish Internet sites said Turkish forces had used chemical weapons. The assertion was unsubstantiated and denied by Turkish officials. But it nonetheless resonated with Kurds, who remembered the chemical attacks that killed 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the Iraqi village of Halabja 18 years ago.

"They used Saddam Hussein's tactics," said Abdullah Sarigul, 20.

Amid chants of "Revenge! Revenge!" the funeral rally of perhaps 10,000 spiraled into a riot, according to witnesses. Two police stations were pelted with stones, as were shops that remained open. Security forces moved in with riot shields and armored vehicles. Three people were killed.

When they were buried on Wednesday, the funerals degenerated into riots as well. A boy of 6 was fatally shot in the chest. The child was buried Friday -- before dawn, at the urging of authorities hoping to break the cycle of violence.