Germany stepped up security yesterday as Kurdish protests continued in a number of cities and politicians debated a proposal to make it easier to deport violent demonstrators to Turkey.
Conservative politicians demanded that the law should be changed to allow those involved in this week's violent protests to be deported from Germany without delay.
The Interior Minister, Mr Otto Schily, agrees that such a step may be necessary but other members of the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens insist that the current law is adequate.
The Greens oppose sending any Kurds back to Turkey on account of Ankara's record of torture and human rights abuses.
Israeli officials visited Berlin yesterday to investigate the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of three Kurdish protesters by guards at Israel's consulate in the city on Wednesday.
The delegation was due to travel on to Bonn where they intended to question German officials about the security failure that allowed the protesters to reach the consulate.
Police prevented a march in Berlin to protest against the shootings yesterday but the city's police chief, Mr Hagen Saberschinsky, warned of the possibility of further clashes.
Thirteen people were detained in Wiesbaden after 300 Kurds occupied the interior ministry of the state of Hessen but police dispersed the crowd with batons and water cannon. Hundreds of protesters gathered in Bremen, Kiel, Chemnitz and Stuttgart, where they briefly occupied the Green party headquarters.
Some Turkish businesses in southern Germany were attacked early yesterday but there has been little tension between Kurds and Turks in Berlin. Germany blames Greece for the circumstances leading up to this week's violence and ministers are furious that Athens failed to inform its EU partners that it was harbouring Mr Abdullah Ocalan in one of its embassies.
EU member-states are obliged to inform their partners about such sensitive security matters, usually through the current EU presidency, which is held by Germany.
Bonn argues that it had a particular right to be kept informed about Mr Ocalan's movements because German internal security was at stake and officials predicted that Greece's conduct would be discussed in uncompromising terms at the next EU summit.
Germany declined to activate an extradition warrant for Mr Ocalan when he was held in Italy last November on the grounds that a trial in Germany would endanger internal peace.
Opposition politicians argue that, by failing to put pressure on Turkey at that time, the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, squandered an opportunity to ensure a fair, internationally supervised trial and unleashed the whirlwind of violence that swept through German cities this week.
The German police insisted yesterday that the protests have not gone out of control and dismissed predictions that the situation could deteriorate into civil war. But they point out that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is the biggest movement of its kind in Germany, with an estimated 10,000 members and 40,000 supporters.
