Kurds, Islamists Clash at Turkish University
Clashes between sympathizers of the Kurdish rebel movement and Islamists that broke out at a university in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast this week left four people injured on Wednesday, security officials said.
The violence erupted at Dicle University in Diyarbakir city on Monday when the rebel sympathizers confronted others supporting Turkey's largely defunct Hezbollah movement over Islamic brochures the latter were distributing.
Since then, both sides have taken up stones and sticks in running melees. Police sealed off the campus on Tuesday and dispatched a helicopter to rain tear gas down on students in a nearby field in an attempt to disperse the groups.
Classes have been cancelled for the rest of the week and at least 10 students are in custody for inciting the clashes, a police source said on condition of anonymity.
Diyarbakir governor Mustafa Toprak said the fight should not be allowed to upset the "sensitive process," referring to negotiations between Ankara and Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party.
The parties are negotiating steps to a permanent peace that would end the outlawed PKK's insurgency, which in almost three decades has killed 45,000 people.
Turkish university campuses are frequently hotbeds for conflict between student groups affiliated to different political camps.
Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast was particularly prone to fatal scuffles and protests in the 1980s. Student clashes there have noticeably subsided in recent years, in part because of sterner police action.
The area is a base for both the Kurdish rebel movement for the Turkish Hezbollah, which is unrelated to the Lebanese group of the same name.
Source: Agence France Presse
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