A Kurdish woman is asked for her identification papers in Istanbul

The pro-Kurdish party Hadep - which organised the celebrations - said it wanted them to highlight "democracy, peace and human rights".

But it said it had come "face to face with Turkey's forbidding, repressive, antidemocratic mentality".

In Istanbul, police used water cannons to disperse small groups of demonstrators who attempted to gather in the suburbs.

Security deployment

More than 100 people are reported to have been detained.

In Diyarbakir, nearly half a million Kurds sang and danced and lit a giant torch - a symbolic burning of the past's impurities.

Abdullah Ocalan has called for a ceasefire

But correspondents say thousands of police, riot squads and soldiers had been deployed on the roads leading to the city.

Organisers said this was a deliberate attempt by the government to stop people attending the festivities.

The festival of Nowruz - the Farsi language word for new year - is celebrated by tens of millions of people from Asia to the Middle East on the first day of spring.

In Turkey, the festival is a mainly Kurdish event.

EU pressure

As such, they are a reminder to the government that it has yet to tackle the thorniest parts of a reform programme aimed at securing a place in the European Union.

While Kurdish politicians nowadays acknowledge the existence of the Kurdish population, the Kurds are not officially recognised as a minority.

The EU - which is a strong critic of Turkey's treatment of its 12 million Kurds - says Turkey must meet certain standards of human rights and freedom of expression before it can become a member.

It is putting pressure on Ankara to allow for broadcasting and education in Kurdish, which are also the immediate demands of the Kurds.

The festival comes as the government is considering allowing the state broadcaster TRT to screen Kurdish language programmes.

In the past, Nowruz has triggered deadly clashes between troops and sympathisers of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The PKK fought a 15-year armed campaign against the government for Kurdish self-rule in the south east of the country.

But fighting dwindled after the group's leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999 issued orders from his Turkish jail for the PKK to give up its armed struggle and find a peaceful resolution.

The PKK says it has abandoned its armed struggle for a Kurdish homeland and now campaigns peacefully for Kurdish cultural rights within Turkey.

Turkey says the unilateral PKK pullout is a ploy ad refused to recognise any ceasefire.