Pro-Kurdish MPs blocked from marching to Turkish town under curfew

IDIL, Turkey — Turkish security forces stopped a group of pro-Kurdish politicians on Thursday from marching to a town where they say a week-long curfew has triggered a humanitarian crisis and killed 21 civilians.

Cizre, near Turkey's borders with Syria and Iraq, has become the latest flashpoint in two months of deepening violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast. Hundreds have died since Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants and the state resumed hostilities after the collapse of ceasfire in July.

Pro-Kurdish MPs say civilians in the town, under curfew because of the fighting, are in a dire situation, with the dead going unburied and food and water running short.

Interior Minister Selami Altinok said operations by security forces had killed more than 30 militants since last week and led to the seizure of 800kg of explosives.

He said only one civilian had died in the town.

Parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and its co-leader Selahattin Demirtas started a 90km march on Wednesday towards Cizre after security forces halted their convoy, party officials said.

The group, which returned to a nearby town after staging a brief sit-down protest, included European Union Minister Ali Haydar Konca and Development Minister Muslum Dogan, members of an interim Cabinet leading Turkey to a November 1 election.

The HDP has accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party of using the bloodshed to whip up nationalist sentiment ahead of the vote. Both sides have questioned how a fair election can take place in such conditions.

HDP offices have been attacked, and some set ablaze, by nationalist crowds this week.

"What is under way in Cizre, a blockade of the town and a seven-day curfew, is completely illegal," said one of the HDP lawmakers, Saruhan Oluc, adding 100,000 people faced food shortages and the wounded were unable to reach hospital.

"This is a humanitarian crisis."

Altinok said the politicians had been prevented from reaching Cizre for their own safety.

"We evaluated that their arrival in Cizre may cause provocative events, so it's out of the question for them to go there, we will not allow that," he told a news conference.

Death toll

Like Turkey, the United States and European Union consider the PKK -— which launched a separatist insurgency three decades ago — a terrorist organisation. But Western allies have urged Ankara to use "proportionate force" in tackling the militants.

The HDP said eight of the twenty-one civilians who had died in Cizre had been killed since last night alone.

Unable to transport the dead, families were using their freezers to preserve corpses, the Cumhuriyet newspaper said.

HDP lawmaker Sibel Yigitalp, who was in the town, tweeted photographs of a blood-soaked dead mother and her crying infant.

"There is a serious shortage of food, water, access to basic health services, preventative treatment of the wounded and burial of those who have been killed by state security forces," the HDP said in a statement. Phone lines were also being cut and access blocked to the media and observers, it said.

Prosecutors in Diyarbakir, the region's largest city, launched investigations into Demirtas on Wednesday on charges of terrorist propaganda and insulting the president, requesting that his parliamentary immunity be lifted.

Erdogan has repeatedly accused the HDP of militant links.

"If you take the side of terror you run the risk of paying the price," he said on Wednesday. "This political movement has begun to present a completely illegal appearance".

Turkish courts have in the past closed down pro-Kurdish parties on charges of links to the PKK, which launched its separatist insurgency in 1984. More than 40,000 people have since died.