Seven people have been killed in clashes with security forces in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east, officials have said, as authorities declared curfews across the region.
The clashes are the latest in months of violence following the collapse of a ceasefire between the government and the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) in July. Since then, Ankara has imposed round-the-clock curfews in many areas.
Two people were killed as police clashed with crowds protesting against a security crackdown in the city of Diyarbakır, a hospital official and witnesses said.
Further south, five Kurdish militants were killed in Mardin province’s Dargeçit district, another area under curfew, security officials said. It was not clear exactly when they were killed.
Armoured police vehicles roamed Diyarbakır’s streets, firing water cannon and teargas as hundreds gathered for a march called by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) to protest a two-week curfew in the city’s Sur district.
Armoured vehicles sped around and protesters threw stones at police. Shopkeepers shuttered their stores before the protest, which the government said was banned. Few buses were operating, rubbish was not collected and most students did not go to school.
Youths with scarves masking their faces tried to block streets with piles of bricks and burning wood before police pursued them into side steets.
In Şırnak province, the governor imposed a curfew in two towns near the borders with Syria and Iraq from Monday night, a day after teachers were seen leaving the area on the orders of education authorities.
Locals, anticipating that the teachers were being recalled before a curfew, formed queues at bakeries and shops to buy food, witnesses said. Several thousand teachers are based in the towns. The two towns of Cizre and Silopi were under tight security, with police armoured vehicles stationed at the entrances to both, witnesses said.
“A curfew is declared to neutralise separatist terror group members, remove explosives-laden barricades and ditches ... and secure public order,” the Şırnak governor’s office said in a statement. It said the curfew would begin at 11pm.
A curfew was also imposed on Monday in the town of Nusaybin, on the Syrian border, to restore order “in response to increasing terror incidents”, authorities announced.
According to data compiled by the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, 52 curfews have been imposed since mid-August across seven Turkish provinces in the region, affecting areas where some 1.3 million people live.
The PKK militant group launched its insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and EU.