ANKARA, Feb 16 (AFP) Police arrested nearly 100 people during demonstrations in
 several Turkish towns marking the second anniversary of the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah
 Ocalan, Anatolia news agency reported Friday.

 Some 60 were held late Thursday after demonstrators hurled stones at police cars, smashing
 their windows in the southern town of Mersin.

 Elsewhere Kurds burned tyres in protest against the death sentence passed on Ocalan, head of
 the banned militant separatist Kurdish organisation, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

 Ocalan was seized by Turkish agents in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in February 1999.

 A Turkish court later sentenced him to death for treason and separatism. His execution was
 suspended pending a European Court of Human Rights ruling on complaints which he lodged
 that Turkey had violated human rights.

 The PKK originally sought the creation of an independent Kurdish state in what is now
 south-eastern Turkey.

 But it downgraded its demands from full independence to ones of cultural rights and freer
 political representation following an appeal by the imprisoned Ocalan to lay down its arms and
 seek a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish conflict.

 The PKK said it was withdrawing from Turkey, thus ending a violent campaign that had claimed
 some 36,500 lives since 1984.

 Since 1999 clashes between Turkish security forces and the PKK have subsided in the
 south-eastern territory, and thousands of Turkish Kurdish rebels have taken refuge in
 neighbouring northern Irak.

 Kurdish militants based in Europe had earlier this week sent messages to fellow activists in
 Turkey calling for 'Intifada-style demonstrations' to mark the anniversary of Ocalan, the leader of
 the separatist (PKK), Anatolia news agency reported.

 The PKK said in a statement that "our people should express their reactions within the
 framework of democratic rules," the pro-Kurdish daily Ozgur Politika said in its Internet edition.

 The seizure of Ocalan in Kenya ended a pursuit of the rebel leader who fled successively to
 Russia, Italy and Greece after Syria expelled him from his long-standing safe haven in
 Damascus in the face of Turkish threats of military action.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com