Turkish police fired water cannon and tear gas to break up a protest by Kurds overnight in support of jailed Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, witnesses said on Wednesday.

Police detained 11 people after demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails and stones at them in the mainly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir late on Tuesday, security sources said. One police officer was slightly injured.

The protesters, chanting pro-Ocalan slogans, had been on a march in support of a "road map" to solve the Kurdish problem which Ocalan is set to announce on Aug. 15. They overturned rubbish containers in the street in a bid to block traffic.

The clash came ahead of a Wednesday meeting between Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and the leader of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party Ahmet Turk, seen as part of the government's own bid to solve the Kurdish issue.

At the heart of the problem is a 25-year-old conflict between the Turkish state and Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla group, in which more than 40,000 people have died. The conflict has exacerbated the poverty in which the mainly Kurdish southeast is mired.

The government has not made clear what measures it will seek beyond cultural reforms such as Kurdish-language broadcasting, intended to address complaints of discrimination among the 12 million Kurds who make up a sixth of Turkey's population.

Turkey rules out negotiations with or a full amnesty for the PKK, which it labels a terrorist organisation, as does the European Union and the United States.
 

However, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday's talks with a pro-Kurdish party leader had boosted hopes for a government bid to address the decades-old grievances of Turkey's Kurdish minority.

Erdogan did not give details of the contents of the talks or any planned steps to solve the problem but after an hour of talks with Mr Turk, said:

"We are in a process. I believe that with today's meeting hopes for the future have increased".

The DTP faces a court bid to close it over alleged links to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and has in the past generally been kept at arm's length by other parties in parliament.

Easing tensions in southeast Turkey is expected to improve regional security. Thousands of PKK guerrillas are based across the border in northern Iraq.

(Reuters)