US President George W. Bush on Sunday praised Turkey's stabilising role as a secular Muslim democracy in a turbulent region but some 20,000 demonstrators marched in anger against his policies in Iraq.
Bush, meeting Turkish leaders in Ankara ahead of a Nato summit on Monday and Tuesday, said Nato'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.
Bush, capping improved ties with Ankara after the two allies fell out last year over Iraq, came under pressure from Erdogan to curb the separatist aspirations of Iraqi Kurds and crack down on Turkish Kurdish guerrillas operating out of northern Iraq.
Bush's warm words for Turkey in meetings with Erdogan and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer were ignored by some 20,000 protesters rallying in Turkey's business hub Istanbul.
Foreign groups joined trades unionists, leftist parties and Islamic groups on the Asian side of Turkey's biggest city, across the Bosphorus strait from the summit venue, 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."
Bush, who was carefully shielded from noisy protests during a US-European Union summit in Ireland on Saturday, will be behind an unprecedented security curtain during the summit, far from the noisy Turkish demonstrations.
Turkey was hit by four huge 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.
US-Turkish relations chilled last year when parliament refused to let US troops attack Iraq from Turkish soil. Ties have since improved at a high level but Turkish public opinion remains strongly against the US-led invasion.
Washington has a strong strategic interest in Turkey, whose neighbours include Iran and Syria as well as Iraq.
Erdogan had firm words for Bush over Turkish fears that Iraq's Kurdish-dominated north might secede and fuel separatism among Turkey's estimated 12 million Kurdish population.
State-run Anatolian news agency said Erdogan had stressed the importance of Iraq's territorial integrity and said Turkey would not accept one ethnic group oppressing others. It quoted him as saying the rights of northern Iraq's Turkmen minority, who are ethnically related to Turks, had been neglected.
Erdogan also pressed Bush to crack down on Turkish rebel Kurds operating from bases in northern Iraq, Anatolian said.
Turkish forces, facing an upsurge in clashes with Kurdish guerrillas in the south-east after the rebels called off a six-year unilateral cease-fire, 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.
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