Heavy police presence surrounds Kurdish city in uprising

[Aslan]

Diyarbakir, Turkey (CNN) -- Smoke billowed over the ancient stone walls of Diyarbakir, as residents of this predominantly Kurdish city staged a citywide strike.
Police armored vehicles patrolled streets strewn with garbage and burning tires left by Kurdish children, who threatened to hurl rocks at passing cars.
Nearly every shop in this provincial capital was shuttered and the atmosphere was tense, with riot police and special forces officers standing guard beside armored vehicles deployed at major intersections.
There was a huge police presence in front of a municipal building where at least 22 Kurdish politicians, including several lawmakers from the main Kurdish nationalist party and the elected mayor of Diyarbakir, have been staging a hunger strike.
"Either there will be a solution or there will be chaos," said Gulten Kisanak, a lawmaker from the predominantly Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party who was on day seven of her hunger strike.
"We don't have another 10 years [to fight]. The Kurds are at a fork in the road," she said.
The options Turkey's largest ethnic minority face, she added, are either to negotiate an end to the 30-year struggle or give up on being a part of the Turkish Republic.
The parliament members have joined a much larger mass hunger strike that started and spread through the Turkish penal system more than a month ago. More than 680 Kurdish inmates have now limited their diets to water, sugar, tea and salt.
Those on the hunger strike have issued several demands: Authorize Kurdish language education in schools, allow defendants to speak Kurdish while representing themselves in court and release Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party from the prison on an island in the Marmara Sea where he now sits in solitary confinement.
The problem is many Turks consider Ocalan the country's No. 1 terrorist. The movement he helped found decades ago has been fighting a guerilla war against the Turkish state for 30 years, a conflict that has claimed more than 30,000 lives. Turkey, as well as the European Union and the United States, formally label the Kurdistan Workers Party a terrorist organization.
On Saturday, the governor of Diyarbakir blamed the hunger strike and the street protests on the party.
"The legal and civilian extensions of the terrorist organization are increasing the tensions on the streets," Mustafa Toprak, Diyarbakir governor, said in an interview with CNN.
He said police reinforcements had been brought into Diyarbakir to deal with what was said to be a two-day strike. He also said more than 100 people had been detained this week, as Kurds have organized nightly protests in Diyarbakir and other cities and towns throughout the largely Kurdish southeast.
"Eighty percent of the police in Turkey are now in Diyarbakir," said a Kurdish man on a busy downtown street, pointing toward the armored vehicles and riot police posted just a few meters away.
"If more than five people gather on a street, they come to arrest us," said another man, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution.
Demonstrators appear to have adopted an unusual tactic to deal with the security forces.
Throughout the Kurdish region of Turkey, the overwhelming majority of demonstrators seen burning tires and overturning garbage bins were children younger than 15. Boys as young as 7 and 8 were seen torching barricades that had been dragged out to block city streets.
"Children are not terrorists," said Toprak, the Diyarbakir governor. "But the things they are doing, if they were committed by adults, would be considered terrorist acts."
According to a recent report by the nonprofit conflict mediation organization International Crisis Group, Turkish authorities have arrested more than 7,000 Kurdish activists on suspicion of terrorist activities in the past several years.
Kisanak, one of the Kurdish parliament members on hunger strike, said she and her 34 fellow lawmakers from the Kurdish BDP party were battling more than 750 legal cases against them in court, which could lead to more than 3,000 years in prison.
As barricades burned in the streets outside, Kisanak and her fellow hunger strikers gathered in a reception room decorated with a giant poster of Ocalan.
"We are willing to die," Kisanak vowed. And she repeated her demand for the release of Ocalan, a Kurdish leader she described as "a man of peace."