Turkish police round up Kurdish party members

Aides of the chief state prosecutor in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, who ordered the early morning raids by anti-terrorism squads, said 43 people had been detained.

They were members of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which had been the only Kurdish party represented in parliament.

Some accounts from Kurdish sources put the total number detained at 60 to 80, including more than a dozen mayors.

The Constitutional Court banned the DTP on December 11 because of its links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a separatist militant movement designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and United States.

A lawyer for jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was among those held in Diyarbakir and the other southeastern cities of Siirt, Sirnak and Sanliurfa, as well as in Istanbul and Ankara.

The court ban on the DTP sparked days of unrest in the southeast of Turkey, which has applied to join the EU.

The ruling was opposed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who had launched moves to boost Kurdish rights in a bid to end a 25-year-old ethnic conflict that has cost some 40,000 lives.

A spokesman for the European Commission had no comment about the detentions on Thursday. But he reiterated that the EU executive regretted that the DTP had refused to distance itself from the PKK and to condemn terrorism, and that the decision of the Constitutional Court might deprive a significant portion of Turkish voters from representation.

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

After the police raids around 1,000 people gathered peacefully in front of the main office in Diyarbakir of another Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), while party deputies met inside.

Addressing the crowd, the city's mayor Osman Baydemir warned that the Turkish state would be left with no one to hold a dialogue with if the detentions continued. "I state it very obviously: a day will come when you will find no one to shake hands with," he said.

Hundreds of people chanted support for Ocalan and anti-government slogans during protests against the detentions in the towns of Viransehir and Sanliurfa, according to the Firat news agency, a website seen as close to the PKK.

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

The legislators, who had planned to quit, announced last Friday they would join the BDP in order to stay in parliament.

The BDP is one of several Kurdish political parties to have been formed in Turkey. Its predecessors have been shut down.

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