Al Jazeera News :
A prominent pro-Kurdish lawyer and human rights activist has been shot dead in Turkey’s south-eastern city of Diyarbakir.
Tahir Elci was killed in a gun battle between police and unidentified gunmen.
He had been making a statement calling for an end to violence between the Turkish state and the Kurdish rebel group the PKK when he was shot dead.In July violence resumed in the conflict between the army and the PKK after a ceasefire collapsed.
A policeman also died in Saturday’s clash. A curfew has now been imposed in the neighbourhood where Mr Elci was shot.
Mr Elci, who was head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, had previously been detained and received death threats after saying the separatist PKK should not be regarded as a terrorist organisation.
“We do not want guns, clashes and operations here”, Mr Elci was saying before being shot.
“The moment the statement ended, the crowd was sprayed with bullets,” a local official from the pro-Kurdish HDP party, Omer Tastan, told Reuters.
The US embassy in Ankara said it was “shocked” at Mr Elci’s “tragic death”, calling him a “a courageous defender of human rights”.
Dozens of people have been killed since the Turkish state and the PKK resumed fighting in July.
