One hundred and thirty Turkish Kurds completed the fourth day of an indefinite hunger strike in the Cyprus capital, Nicosia, yesterday. They are protesting at the detention of their leader, Mr Abdullah Ocalan, in Rome. One of the strikers camping out in two plastic marquees in the central Eleftheria (Freedom) Square in Nicosia said they would continue to refuse food until Mr Ocalan was granted asylum as a political refugee.
Beneath a limp red and yellow Kurdish flag a dozen tired and hungry men crouched in the watery autumnal sun with their backs against the warm rough stone blocks of the d'Avila Bastion in the 16th-century Venetian walls of the old city.
Others listened to Kurdish music in the shade of the marquees.
Scores of Greek-Cypriot secondary school students flocked to the square at noon in solidarity with the Kurds against Turkey, their common enemy. While the Kurds demand autonomy in eastern Turkey, Greek-Cypriots call for the withdrawal of 35,000 Turkish troops from northern Cyprus and the reunification of the island, divided since 1974.
The highly articulate spokeswoman of the National Liberation Front of Kurdistan (ERNK), Ms Nucan Derya, an attractive young woman with honey-gold hair, said Mr Ocalan's arrival in Italy was a "planned action" aimed at achieving the "internationalisation of the Kurdish cause". He went to Rome "to get to the heart of Europe", she stated. "This is the high point of our campaign to gain recognition."
Mr Ocalan, the ERNK president, arrived at Rome's Fiumicino Airport last week on a flight from Russia and was promptly arrested on suspicion of travelling on a forged passport. He had been forced to leave Damascus - his base of many years - for Moscow last month after Turkey massed troops on the frontier and threatened to invade or bomb Syria and Lebanon if the militants were not expelled.
Although Ankara is exerting maximum pressure on Rome to secure Mr Ocalan's extradition, the ERNK is "confident" that he will not be sent to Turkey. "This would lead to protests everywhere from Europe's 2.5 million Kurds," Ms Derya asserted. Even if Turkey abolished the death penalty, his safety could not be assured in Turkish prisons or a fair trial secured in Turkish courts.
It is no coincidence that he arrived in Italy after a left-wing government took power. "We have friends in the ruling party and in the Greens, and elsewhere in Europe, including Russia. But in Russia our friends are in the Duma [parliament], not the government," she remarked, to explain his departure.
The 14-year struggle for Kurdish autonomy would continue in Mr Ocalan's absence from the region, she said. "If he is locked up there will be attacks on all Turkish sites. There will be more bloodshed. Our people will not accept to lose their president as well as their children and their homes."
During the insurrection some 30,000 people have been killed, 8,000 Kurdish villages have been destroyed and millions of Kurds displaced.
In July Mr Ocalan repeated an offer, made annually over the past five years, to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Ankara. But the government and army rejected the proposal and stepped up the military campaign, which is costing $1 billion a year. Last month Turkey sent a force of 25,000 men into northern Iraq, where it maintains a permanent presence of several thousand men.
AFP adds from Istanbul:
Violent incidents related to the continued detention in Italy of Mr Ocalan happened across Turkey yesterday.
In Istanbul pro-Kurdish activists clashed with Turkish nationalists in a pitched street battle in the city's main shopping street. Several people were arrested and at least one person was injured.
Further away in the predominantly Kurdish south-east, a suicide bomber, presumed to be a member of Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerillas, blew himself up outside a police post. Four other people, including two policemen, were injured.