MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) - Amnesty International has denounced Turkey's use of force to quell a protest in the country's southeast, which killed 19 and injured a large number of Kurds, a statement published on the organization's website read.
"It is essential that the Turkish authorities act now to calm tensions with firm but rights-respecting policing and a commitment to investigate promptly the up to 19 deaths and scores of injuries of protesters," Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International's researcher on Turkey, said in the statement published Wednesday.
According to the statement, the protesters were shot at and beaten before they died. It claimed that the Turkish Army and military police joined in to impose order across the region.
"Any use of force by the security forces must be strictly in line with international human rights standards, in particular the principles of necessity and proportionality," the statement added.
The organization stated that the Kurdish protesters supporting the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) have accused Turkey of doing nothing to help Kobani's Kurdish population as the Islamic State (IS) militant group advances on the city.
Kobani is a city in Syria's Aleppo Governorate bordering Turkey, where the Kurdish People's Protection Units took control of in 2012 as a result of the Syrian civil war.
Hundreds of protesters started gathering in Istanbul and Turkey's southeastern provinces Monday in support of Kobani's Kurds and in protest against Turkey's position of noninterference.
The IS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has been fighting the Syrian government since 2012. In June 2014, the group extended its attacks to northern and western Iraq, declaring a caliphate on the territories over which it had control.
