Bush praises Muslim Turkey but faces protests

US President George W. Bush yesterday praised Turkey's stabilising role as a secular Muslim democracy in a turbulent region, but thousands of demonstrators marched in anger against his policies in Iraq.

Mr Bush, meeting Turkish leaders ahead of a Nato summit today and tomorrow, said the alliance's only Muslim member should be rewarded with a firm start date for talks to join the European Union, a bloc it has been courting for decades.

"I appreciate very much the example your country has set on how to be a Muslim country, at the same time a country which embraces democracy and rule of law and freedom," he told Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has roots in Islamic politics.

The two countries said they would stand firm in the face of threats by militants in Iraq to behead three Turkish hostages unless Turks stop working with US-led forces there.

Mr Bush, capping improved ties with Ankara after the two fell out over a refusal to let Washington invade Iraq from Turkish soil, was pressured by Mr Erdogan to curb separatist Iraqi Kurds and to crack down on Kurds attacking Turkey from northern Iraq.

The warm greeting for Mr Bush in meetings with Mr Erdogan and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer contrasted sharply with the shouts of some 20,000 protesters in Turkey's business hub Istanbul.

Turkish public opinion remains strongly against the US-led invasion of Iraq. Foreign groups joined trades unionists, leftist parties and Islamists on the Asian side of Istanbul, far from the summit venue across the Bosphorus strait, in the biggest of a series of protests across Turkey against Bush.

"Get lost Bush, get lost Nato," the protesters chanted. "Murderer USA get out of the Middle East."

Ranks of police backed by armoured cars and circling helicopters watched on, but no violence was reported.

Mr Bush, who was carefully shielded from noisy protests during a US-European Union summit in Ireland on Saturday, will remain behind a security curtain unprecedented for Turkey.

Istanbul was hit by four al Qaeda bomb attacks last year that killed more than 60 people, and a rash of small bombings last week blamed on leftist groups has put nerves on edge.

In a last-minute change of plan underscoring security concerns, Mr Bush and his entourage were helicoptered into central Istanbul from the airport, flying low over the water before landing near the city's landmark Haghia Sophia basilica.

Mr Bush said the kidnap of the three Turks and the threat on Saturday to behead them in 72 hours - a period coinciding with the Nato summit - would not cast a pall over the meeting.

Turkey rejected the militants' demands, purportedly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Jama'at al Tawhid and Jihad group which has claimed responsibility for beheading an American and a South Korean, saying it would not bow to terrorists.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Mr Bush and Mr Erdogan had discussed the hostage situation.

"I think it shows the true nature of the Zarqawi network. They are barbaric terrorists who have no respect for the lives of innocent civilians," Mr McClellan told reporters.

Turkey has not sent troops to join US-led forces in Iraq, but many Turks work as contractors for the military there.

Mr Erdogan had firm words for Mr Bush over Turkish fears that Iraq's Kurdish-dominated north might secede and fuel separatism among Turkey's estimated 12 million Kurdish population.

Turkish forces, facing an upsurge in clashes with Kurdish guerillas in the southeast after the rebels called off a six-year unilateral ceasefire, say some 2,000 Kurdish fighters have crossed into Turkey from hideouts in northern Iraq.

More than 30,000 people were killed during secessionist violence in the 1980s and 1990s, but the fighting largely subsided after the 1999 capture of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.