Turkish Kurds and Kurdistan
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Lice is a small and remote town in the eastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir. It has a population of just over ten thousand, most of whom are Kurds. Lice is considered a home to the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) whose military wing has battled with Turkey for Kurdish independence for the best part of thirty years. Last week to mark the 30th anniversary of the group's first attacks on its overlords, local PKK supporters erected a statue of the organisation's founder Musham Korkmaz. The statue enraged Turkish nationalists who saw it as an incitement and a promotion of terrorism; the PKK are considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States as well as Turkey. A court in Lice agreed and ordered the statue's removal and destruction. Security forces were drafted in to carry out the order. They were met by protestors and the situation quickly turned nasty. Demonstrators threw rocks and Molotov cocktails and the army responded by firing bullets into the crowd. According to Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet, a 24-year-old man, Mehdi Taskin, was shot in the head and died. Two others were seriously injured.
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