Two killed as protests turn violent in Diyarbakir

DIYARBAKIR (K24) - A march to protest an ongoing curfew in the central, historic Sur district of the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir (Amed) turned violent on Monday as two young men were killed in the ensuing clashes. The march was joined by the co-chair of pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Figen Yuksekdag and other local Kurdish politicians.

The two young men, Siyar Salman (18) and Serdil Cengiz (21) were killed when an initially peaceful march turned violent between Kurdish protestors and Turkish police in the center of the city. Salman and Cengiz died in a nearby hospital after receiving several wounds each.

Hundreds of people gathered in the Yenisehir district of Diyarbekir in the afternoon and wanted to walk to the Sur district to defy a curfew there that was reimposed last Saturday. The pro-Kurdish HDP party on Sunday called for a peaceful demonstration and march to Sur, a call rejected and deemed illegal later in an online statement produced by the Turkish government-appointed governorate of Diyarbakir on its official website.

Soon after the protesters began walking toward the curfew-imposed district, visible tensions between both sides in Yenisehir turned violent when police demanded an end to the "illegal walk" and started shooting into the air attempting to disperse the gathered crowd. In response, some protesters and suspected members of the PKK-affiliated Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDGH) among the protestors threw stones and molotov cocktails at police vehicles and began building makeshift barricades using garbage containers in the streets, a K24 reporter on the ground said.

Turkish police in armoured vehicles responded by shooting into the air and using tear gas and pressurised water canons on the protestors. Dozens of civilians were wounded, and many were detained by police. Clashes continued in the alleys of Yenisehir in the evening.

(Siddiq Eren and Hesen Kako contributed to this report from Diyarbakir)