Kurds Celebrate

Kurds Celebrate Festival in Turkey Agence France Presse

Iraqi Kurdish women dance in celebration of the new year festival of Nowruz in Sulaimaniya, 330 km northeast of Baghdad, on Wednesday. (Reuters) ANKARA, 22 March 2007 — Tens of thousands of Kurds gathered across Turkey yesterday to celebrate their biggest festival as police stepped up security, fearing radicals may profit from the occasion to stir unrest. The Nowruz festivities, which have been mired in bloodshed in the past, led to a few relatively minor incidents between police and demonstrators, resulting in at least nine arrests. The largest crowd — about 100,000 people — gathered in Diyarbakir, the central city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, where militant revelers chanted slogans in favor of Kurdish rebels fighting the government. Police arrested eight people. Three women were slightly injured when demonstrators hurled stones at the police and the security forces fired warning shots in the air, the Anatolia news agency reported. Another person was detained in the southern city of Adana for carrying flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody campaign for self-rule in the southeast since 1984. Brief scuffles between police and demonstrators were reported in nearby Mersin. Nowruz Day marks both the arrival of spring and the Kurdish New Year. It has become a platform for Turkey’s Kurdish minority to demand greater freedoms or demonstrate support for the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community. Another 50,000 people attended the festivities in Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city, lighting traditional bonfires and dancing to Kurdish folk music. “Real democracy or nothing,” they chanted, while a group of youths unfurled a giant portrait of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan before police intervened to take it down. Turkey’s main Kurdish political movement, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), whose members have in recent weeks become increasingly targeted by judicial action over charges of backing the PKK, organized the festivities. In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appealed for peace and unity at official Nowruz ceremonies, held in a bid to prevent the day from being monopolized by Kurdish militants. “Let the seeds of hatred and hostility burn in the bonfires,” Erdogan said. “As long as we do not hurt each other’s feelings, no one can damage our unity.” He then lit a bonfire and several of several ministers jumped over it. Nowruz, which marks the awakening of nature at the March 21 equinox, is also celebrated in Iran, Iraq and other Muslim communities in the Caucasus and Central Asia.