A court in Turkey has turned down a request by the authorities to ban the pro-Kurdish party, HADEP, from taking part in Sunday's local and general elections.

It was the second time the Prosecutor General, Vural Savas, had sought to impose a ban on the grounds that HADEP has close links with the outlawed separatist movement, the PKK.

More than a-thousand of HADEP's supporters were arrested yesterday to prevent them from staging a rally in south-eastern Turkey, where most of the Kurdish population live.