ANKARA: Tens of thousands of Kurds gathered across Turkey on Wednesday to celebrate their biggest festival as police stepped up security measures for fear that radicals might use the flashpoint event to stir unrest.

The largest crowd was expected in Diyarbakir, the central city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, where the Nauroz celebrations, marking the arrival of spring and the Kurdish New Year, have been mired in bloodshed in the past.

Nauroz Day has become a platform for the Kurdish minority to demand greater freedoms or demonstrate support for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting for self-rule in the southeast since 1984 and is listed as a a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.

The festivities were organised by Turkey's main Kurdish political movement, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), whose members have increasingly become the target of judicial action for backing the PKK in recent weeks.—AFP