Sixty students taken into custody at Dicle University

Sixty students were taken into custody and seven others were injured at Dicle University on Wednesday, on the third day of severe clashes between Kurdish and radical Islamist groups.

The incidents in the campus in the main Kurdish city Diyarbak?r first broke out as a result of a quarrel during the Holy Birth Week activities on the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.

A number of police forces and armored vehicles were deployed in the campus since the beginning of incidents which became severer on the second and third day. Besides the intervention with gas bombs and water cannon, police also dropped tear gas on Kurdish students from a helicopter as they were trying to march in the campus to condemn the attack by radical Islamists.

Clashes between two groups escalated as seven students were injured in the conflict, one of them being stabbed and rushed to hospital for operation.
Democratic Society Congress (DTK) co-chair Aysel Tu?luk, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirta?, deputies Nursel Aydo?an and Ayla Akat Ata, Diyarbak?r provincial co-chair Zübeyde Zümrüt as well as representatives of political parties and NGOs also rushed to the campus to prevent the brutal police violence on Kurdish students.

DTK co-chair Aysel Tu?luk said the rector of the university had not answered their demand to come up with a solution to the conflict environment in the campus area. Tu?luk said the Kurdish people and DTK will be standing by Kurdish students targeted by attacks.

Releasing a statement on Wednesday, the university administration announced that lectures have been recessed for three days as of 10 April.

Students at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) also staged a demonstration on 10 April to protest against the heavy police intervention at Dicle University. Clashes broke out between students and police forces as students read a statement condemning the police intervention that included helicopters.

The tensions started at Dicle University over the death of Murat Izol who was chased by Turkish police and ended up somehow in the river. His body only being found 12 days later by a family on a picnic.

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