"We announced the consulates were closed to review the security situation and today we can confirm they reopened," the official said. He declined to comment on whether the consulates had been closed because of a specific threat.

The consulates in Turkey were closed at the same time as the U.S. embassy in Qatar, also shut for security reasons.

The moves followed the bombing of a U.S. warship at the port of Aden in Yemen in October.

Police in Turkey are preparing to end a three-day long siege at a jail on the outskirts of Istanbul.

They've already stormed many jails across Turkey to stop nationwide protests by prisoners.

The violence has left more than twenty people dead.

At the Umraniye prison near Istanbul, more than four hundred inmates, many of them members of extreme left-wing groups, are armed with makeshift weapons, including flamethrowers.

They're protesting against government plans to move them to jails with smaller dormitories which are easier to supervise.

But the prisoners say they'll be more vulnerable to attack by violent guards.

The EU has condemned the crackdown

Turkish police are trying to end a three-day siege at a prison on the outskirts of Istanbul, the last jail still controlled by its inmates three days after the authorities moved to quell nationwide revolts.

More than 20 people have died over the past three days as police have raided 20 jails in an attempt to break a hunger-strike by prisoners protesting at plans to move inmates to maximum security prisons.

Police are now preparing to storm Umraniye jail, where more than 400 prisoners are still holding out armed with a variety of makeshift weapons including flame-throwers.

Earlier in the day, more than 150 protesters surrendered at the jail in the city of Canakkale, in eastern Turkey.

The Turkish Government says the transfer of inmates is necessary to break the influence of organised groups within prisons.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who had earlier vetoed the measure on the grounds that it was unfair and divisive, has now bowed to pressure and ratified it.

The amnesty could halve the number of prison inmates, currently estimated at about 75,000.

Critics say it will free common murderers but ignore inmates such as Kurdish guerrillas and Islamist militants who have fallen foul of Turkey's tight political restrictions.

Prisoner ablaze

During Thursday's raid on Canakkale prison, the police used heavy machinery to smash holes in the walls of the prison blocks and force their way in.

They also removed the corpse of a prisoner thrown into the courtyard.

Turkish Justice Minister Kikmet Sami Turk confirmed earlier in Ankara that a female prisoner had died there after being set ablaze by fellow inmates.

More than 100 other hunger-strikers are in hospital with injuries. Hundreds of troops accompanied by bulldozers, fire-engines and armoured cars were still struggling on Thursday to enter the jail at Umraniye. Television pictures showed helicopters circling above and paramilitary police trying to enter through the roofs of the prison blocks. The Interior Ministry said security forces had been met with "flame-throwers made of kitchen gas canisters, petrol bombs, pipebombs and cutting, piercing weapons".

The hunger strikers believe that the new jails - which have one- or three-person cells - will leave them vulnerable to abuse by the prison authorities. Most prisoners are currently kept in dormitory-style cells.

Rights concern

But the European Commission expressed concern over the crackdown.

Turkey's attempt to gain membership of the EU depends on improving its human rights record and democratic institutions.

Human rights groups have also condemned the assault.

Amnesty International called for a full and independent inquiry into the raids.

Militants and their role models in an Istanbul prison

Conflicting accounts have appeared in the Turkish and Kurdish media over why so many people were hurt during the security operation in Istanbul's Bayrampasa prison. The Turkish Health Ministry said in an initial statement that a total of eight people died there, five in the prison itself and three later in hospital. It added that of the 81 prisoners hurt, 66 had been hospitalised. However, one newspaper, Radikal, reported that 14 of the prison's estimated 300 inmates lost their lives.

Bayrampasa housed militants from the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), the Turkish Workers and Peasant Liberation Army (TIKKO), the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party [MLKP] and the Kurdistan Workers' Party [PKK].

The mass-circulation daily Milliyet said that, when they first entered the prison, the security forces could not believe how much it had been altered by the inmates.

"There were doors where the walls were supposed to be and doors had been turned into walls," it said.

Another mass-circulation newspaper, Hurriyet, carried a graphic account of the conditions encountered by the security forces.

It said the eyewitness was a soldier who took part in the operation.

The soldier's tale

"We entered C-Block where the militants were housed," the soldier said.

"We urged them by Tannoy to surrender. The prisoners started shouting slogans and setting their beds, quilts and blankets alight. We repeated our surrender request and the PKK militants surrendered...

"We regained control of the cells in C-Block, one after another. But in the section where the terrorists were housed we could hear bombs exploding, and automatic rifle fire.

"Meanwhile the leaders of the organisation were issuing their orders. But the most horrifying thing was that the leaders poured petrol on the militants and set them alight with matches. We were too far from the burning militants to intervene."

The inmate's tale

Birsen Kars, who had been in Bayrampasa for five years, was among those who suffered serious burns during the course of the security operation.

According to Milliyet, she blamed her fellow militants for her condition: "They set six of us women alight", she said.

But the pro-PKK television channel, Medya TV, which broadcasts from Paris, quoted two unnamed female inmates from Bayrampasa as saying six of their colleagues had been "thrown into the fire alive by the Turkish police forces".

"Six people were killed in the fire. Six persons were burned alive. They were burned alive," one of the prisoners told the TV as she was taken to hospital.

Appeal

Kiraz Bicici, a deputy leader of the Istanbul Human Rights Association, told Medya TV that while some prisoners may have committed suicide, most of the casualties had been caused by the excessive use of force by the Turkish authorities.

"There may have been some who committed self immolation. But the real reason for the deaths were the light anti-tank weapons and tear gas bombs. The inmates were burned by them", she said.

Special forces transfer an injured prisoner to hospital

Columnists in many Turkish newspapers have given broad support to the government's decision to launch raids to end the long-running hunger strikes in prisons across the country.

But several commentators questioned the timing of the move and the violence that has surrounded it.

Writing in the liberal newspaper Yeni Asir Mehlika Turkmenoglu described the situation as a "tragi-comedy".

"The government cannot be criticized for conducting this operation but only for doing it so late," she wrote.

"We paid the price yesterday for a government which lacks authority even in its own prisons and for the existence of prison cells where the state's writ had no power for more than nine years.

"A country which cannot guarantee the right to live even in prisons does not deserve any other human right," Ms Turkmenoglu said.

Hornets' nest

Guneri Civaoglu from the mass-circulation daily Milliyet also asked why the government had not acted much earlier and he questioned the methods employed.

"Such an operation was suggested many times by the former ministers of justice and internal affairs, but they could not manage to get a decision backing it... no former government wanted to poke a stick into a hornets' nest," he wrote.

Haluk Sahin from left-wing daily Radikal took the same view.

"Our leaders, who fail even at more simplistic questions, obviously and unfortunately failed at these questions too ... they hesitated too long," he wrote.

Hikmet Bila, writing in the left-wing Cumhuriyet, said the government's decision to act had been expected.

"These hunger strikes which had been going on over two months had the smell of death ... While the prisoners were heading towards death minute by minute, their persistence was tearing at the public conscience. Finally the operation was launched and their protest was brought to a halt".

The fundamentalist daily Turkiye gave its support to the government. "Yesterday's sudden operations gave us the hope that the security forces would finally take the control in hand," Yilmaz Oztuna wrote.

"If they keep it tight from now on, if they don't loosen it, the rule of gangs in prison could come to an end and the state will resume control of its own prisons."

Government patience

Writing in the mass-circulation daily Hurriyet, Ertugrul Ozkok said human rights groups had contributed to the rise in tension by encouraging the action of the hunger strikers and criticising the state.

"The state, which is accustomed to using force, has been showing intense patience over the last 20 days.

"It would be unjust to blame the government for any bloodshed from now on," he said.

In an editorial in the Turkish Daily News, Mehmet Ali Birand said the government would win praise at home for finally taking hold of a situation that was spinning out of control.

"Throughout the country the operation was considered a positive development, and a surge in the stock market was the most interesting indicator of public support."

Human cost

Fatih Altayli in Hurriyet criticised the left-wing organizations whose members are involved in the prison hunger strikes.

"These militants who died in vain in the prisons and those who murdered them viciously should know that they don't have the support of the public. Whatever political opinion they have, the man in the street supports the govenment," he said.

"Can a country be ruled by its prisons? No," he wrote.

Istanbul, Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Inmates in one Turkish prison held out against security forces for a third day, while prisoners at another jail surrendered to authorities. The death toll rose to 21 in raids that began Tuesday.

About 170 prisoners at the Canakkale jail, three hours west of Istanbul, surrendered to security forces this afternoon, the interior ministry said. Three inmates were killed and 16 injured during the operation at Canakkale.

Security forces have regained control of 19 prisons. Some 450 prisoners at Umraniye jail in Istanbul are still holding out, eluding capture by using passageways to move into other prison blocks shortly before each raid.

``The reason the remaining operations are taking so long is because the security forces do not want any casualties,'' said Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk.

The raids were aimed at ending a hunger strike by about 1,300 prisoners. The inmates, led by left-wing groups, are protesting plans to move them into new jails, saying the change to smaller cells from the current dormitory system would leave them open to violence and abuse by prison authorities.

``If the operation was an effort to preserve life ... it was terrible failure,'' Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

The government moved in on the 60th day of the protest after doctors warned that some of the hunger strikers might die.

Many of the prisoners have now been moved to the cell-type prisons they were trying to avoid, because the raids have destroyed some of the older prisons.

Gaining Control

As a result of the raids, the government has reasserted its authority over prisons that had been out of control for as long as a decade. In the Bayrampasa jail in Istanbul, where 12 inmates died this week, wardens weren't able to enter some wards, and Prisoners used cell phones and fax machines to send press releases claiming responsibility for the murders of businessmen.

Inmates have used smuggled rifles to carry out executions, later releasing video tapes of the ``trials'' where other prisoners were condemned to death.

Most of the prisoners died after setting themselves on fire, with 94 inmates wounded during the raids, the government said. Two soldiers were killed when prisoners opened fire, and four others were wounded in the effort to bring the prisons under control, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Turkish officials said most of the 800 hunger-strikers hospitalized were in good condition because they had taken sugared water and vitamin pills during their fasts. They blamed doctors who examined the strikers before the raids for exaggerating their conditions. Doctors denied the accusation.

``We've re-examined the strikers in hospitals and see serious damages that are remnants of a hunger-strike,'' said Umit Ergun, head of the Ankara Doctors' Association. Some strikers are still resisting medical assistance and continuing their strike, Ergun said.

Text of report in English by the Turkish news agency Anatolia

Istanbul, 23rd October: Trial of 51 suspects who are members of illegal Islamic Great Eastern Raiders Front (IBDA-C) started on Monday [23rd October] at Bakirkoy High Criminal Court No 3 in Istanbul.

The suspects requested additional time to prepare their defence.

The court delegation accepted the request and adjourned the hearing.

The indictment prepared by the Bakirkoy Republican Chief Prosecutor's Office, said that the suspects had staged a protest at the Metris prison in Istanbul on 24th January 2000 against gendarmerie teams who were trying to take Erdis to the Istanbul State Security Court (DGM) for a court session.

The indictment sought imprisonment terms from 14 years to 21 years to suspects Salih Izzet Erdis, Ali Osman Zor, Unsal Zor, Saban Cavdar, Omer Kama, Etem Koylu, Hasan Kapar, Alaattin Baki Aytemiz, Sadettin Ustaosmanoglu, Huseyin Yesilyurt, Cemil Sahin, Salih Sevim, Hayrettin Soykan, Ibrahim Tatli, Mehmet Fazil Aslanturk and Sabahattin Arslan on charges of "starting an uprising against prison authorities" and "starting a fire intentionally".

The indictment sought imprisonment terms from seven and a half years to 10 and a half years to suspects Osman Hakan Hira, Mehmet Akif Turan, Muhammet Mustafa Asik, Gursel Avci, Osman Temiz, Zeynel Abidin Danalioglu, Ibrahim Kapucu, Mustafa Sahin, Necdet Kocatas, Burak Cileli, Mustafa Fisenkci, Serdar Kaplan, Mehmet Sismanoglu, Bahattin Ustaosmanoglu, Yilmaz Sahin, Mehmet Ali Bayram, Mustafa Gunaydin, Fatih Turgut, Sinal Orhan, Mustafa Sismanoglu, Ekrem Demirci, Mustafa Sabah, Ibrahim Demirci, Yahya Yildirim, Turan Bartin, Sukru Sak, Hayrullah Mizrak, Metin Torsun, Murat Cilhan, Mehmet Yavuz Ucum, Gokhan Altunsoy, Fatih Ayhan, Fatih Turgut, Tugay Hukum and Abdulselam Tutal on charges of "starting an uprising against prison authorities" and "starting a fire intentionally".

Source: Anatolia news agency, Ankara, in English 1557 gmt 23 Oct 00

/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.