Kurdish unrest stirs again in Turkey

Relative calm has returned to this city in Turkey's southeast after three days of violent clashes between Kurds and Turkish security forces. But the underlying tensions have not gone anywhere. [Editor's note: The original version misspelled Schleifer's name.]

"We want to make peace with the government, but when we say we are Kurds and want the law to recognize that, they say to us that there are no Kurds and there is no Kurdish problem," says a local student who took part in the clashes and is afraid to be identified.

The student says the Turkish government's harsh response to the protests - which spread to several other cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast and even to Istanbul, resulting in the death of 16, including a 6-year-old, and the arrest of hundreds - has him thinking about going off to join the guerrillas of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"There are a lot, a lot, of other young people in Diyarbakir who are thinking the same way," he says.

It may be the talk of a still-emotional young man, but his words give a glimpse of the growing tension in this volatile region, where more than 30,000 people lost their lives in the fight between the PKK and the Turkish military during the 1980s and '90s. The protests that shook Diyarbakir and some of the other cities in the southeast were the worst the area has seen in more than a decade and indicate the rise of a new generation of angry young Kurds ready to face off against the Turkish authorities.

The events, combined with a recent increase in clashes between the PKK and security forces and a string of bombings in Istanbul and other cities blamed on the organization, have resulted in a dangerous mix that is raising concerns that the region could again spiral into the kind of violence it witnessed during the dark days of the conflict.

"The [protests] were, in a way, expected by us," says Firat Anli, a district mayor in Diyarbakir. "They were the result of the political and social problems in the region not being resolved, and it resulted in this explosive earthquake."

"The young people are poor," he adds. "They are children of displaced families from villages who are having trouble adapting to life in the city, and public services are having trouble reaching them. They have a lot of rage against the system and it's very difficult to control that."

Suffering from high unemployment and a dearth of investment, southeast Turkey continues to lag behind the rest of the country in almost every economic indicator. And while recent years have seen increased cultural rights for the Kurds as well as democratic reforms, many in the region feel the changes have not gone far enough.

The European Union - one of the drivers of these reform efforts here - has expressed "concern" about how the renewed violence will be handled. "We urge the Turkish government to address in a comprehensive manner, and not only from a security point of view, the problems of this region and of its people," said Markos Kyprianou, the EU health commissioner.

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