Turkish police round up pro-Kurdish party members

Police detained dozens of Turkey's banned pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) members, including several mayors, during raids on Thursday in the southeast of the country. The early morning sweep was ordered by the chief state prosecutor in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.                                           

His officials told Reuters that 42 DTP members were held in the operation aimed at breaking the urban network of the militant, separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).                                           

The Constitutional Court banned the DTP on Dec. 11 because of its ties with the PKK, a guerrilla group designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the European Union and United States.

A lawyer of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan those held during the raids conducted by police anti-terrorism teams in the southeastern cities of Diyarbakir, Siirt, Sirnak and Sanliurfa, as well as Istanbul and Ankara. The court ban on the DTP sparked days of unrest in the southeast of the European Union aspirant country.

The ruling was also opposed by prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, who had launched an initiative to improve Kurdish rights aimed at ending a 25-year-old ethnic conflict that has cost some 40,000 lives.                                           

The European Commission also criticised the court decision to ban the only Kurdish party represented in parliament, but reproached the DTP for keeping links with the PKK.

On Tuesday, a state prosecutor opened an inquiry targeting Ahmet Turk, the chairman of the DTP over comments that Ocalan had sent word through his lawyers advising the party's legislators to stay in parliament following the court ban.                                          

The legislators who had planned to quit, announced last Friday they would join another Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), in order to keep their parliamentary seats. The BDP is the seventh Kurdish political party to be formed in Turkey. Its six predecessors have been shut down.                                          

Kurds, who are estimated to make up about 20 percent of Turkey''s population of 71 million people, were for decades forbidden to use their language and many have long complained of discrimination.