Military

DATE=11/18/2003

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=TURKEY / KURDS (LONG ONLY)

NUMBER=2-309943

BYLINE=AMBERIN ZAMAN

DATELINE=ANKARA

CONTENT=

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INTRO: Turkish police have stormed Istanbul's main courthouse to end a half-hour seige by Kurdish-rebel sympathizers who held three judges hostage. From Ankara, Amberin Zaman reports no one was injured, the hostages were freed, and police arrested more than 20 people.

TEXT: Kurd protestors had raided the courthouse in central Istanbul chanting slogans in support of imprisoned Kurdish-rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan. The group demanded that Ocalan be freed and that the prison island where he has been held in solitary confinement since his capture in 1999 be shut down.

Ocalan's P-K-K rebel army led a 15-year-long insurgency to create an independent Kurdish state, to be carved mainly out of Turkey, and parts of Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The group declared a unilateral truce and withdrew to bases in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in September 1999 when Ocalan renounced demands for Kurdish statehood.

The P-K-K renamed itself the Kurdish People's Congress earlier this month and said it would pursue its battle for Kurdish rights through peaceful means. But rebel leaders in Northern Iraq announced their armed factions, numbering about five-thousand fighters, would be left to operate independently under a different name.

Clashes between rogue P-K-K elements and Turkish forces have increased in recent months amid fears that the guerrillas will shift their operations to urban and tourist centers in the Western part of the country. (SIGNED)

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