Police had used tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters seeking to march towards the Sur district, which is now under a security lockdown.
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The Sur district of the southeastern province of Diyarbakır has seen some of the most severe fighting in the region, with clashes and frequent days-long curfews imposed in the district since late July.
Three Turkish police officers were killed Tuesday in a roadside bomb attack on their vehicle blamed on Kurdish rebels, security sources said, amid a new upsurge in violence in Turkey’s troubled southeast. “The directionless attacks and shelling by the security forces amounts to an all-out attack on the Kurdish people by a government that wants to blockade neighborhoods”, he said in a statement containing questions submitted to Parliament for Interior Minister Efkan Ala on Thursday.
Since then more than 180 members of the security forces have been martyred and around 1,700 PKK terrorists killed.
In describing the campaign on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vowed to transform what he called the Kurdish “ring of fire into places of peace, stability and freedom”.
“Security operations are being conducted”, he said.
The towns of Cizre and Silopi were under tight security, with police armored vehicles stationed at the entrances to both, witnesses said.
They said the Habur border gate to Iraq, located some 18 km (11 miles) south of Silopi, was closed overnight as a result of the curfew and closure of the main highway through the town.
Meanwhile, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a new report on Turkey that the urban battles have “given the conflict a new, unpredictable momentum”, and further urged Turkey and the PKK to return to the negotiating table.
“Russia’s military elements have been acting for some time as if there is a perceived threat from Turkey, which is an exaggerated situation and has nothing to do with reality”, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said at a briefing.
“The terrorists will be wiped out from these districts”.
Peace talks between its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan and the state ground to a halt early this year.
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The PKK launched a formal insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, initially fighting for Kurdish independence although it now presses more for greater autonomy and rights for the country’s largest ethnic minority.
