Erdogan pledges probe as Kurds blame police for bookshop bombing

Turkey's Prime Minister rushed to the largely Kurdish south-east and urged calm yesterday, after weeks of rioting, vowing that his government would investigate charges that security forces, and not Kurdish guerrillas, were behind a recent fatal bombing.

Allegations that undercover police carried out the bombing have sparked street clashes in the south-east and in Kurdish neighbourhoods of Istanbul. Four have died in the violence.

"Hate will not bring anything to us," Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a crowd in Semdinli, a poor mountain town near the Iraqi border where the violence started.

"Our government will follow this issue [the bombing] until the end," the heavily-guarded Erdogan said.

Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party announced that tomorrow parliament would discuss tension in the south-east.

The bombing has raised the spectre of summary executions by the security forces, a common practice in the early 1990s when Kurdish rebels controlled huge swaths of the south-east.

Those allegations are especially difficult now. The European Union agreed to start entry talks with Turkey last month and has been highly critical of the country's human rights record.

At least one sergeant from the paramilitary police has been detained in connection with thebombing.AP