The clashes erupted when protesters gathered at a cemetery outside the town of Lice in the Diyarbakir region of southeastern Turkey to prevent soldiers from removing the statue of Mahsum Korkmaz, a founder of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), witnesses said.

The statue of Korkmaz, a top PKK commander who planned the first attacks of its 30-year insurgency seeking self-rule in Turkey, was unveiled on Saturday but nationalists it as glorifying "terrorism" and a court swiftly ordered its demolition.

Security forces, backed by helicopters and armoured vehicles, launched an early morning operation to dismantle the statue.

Tensions quickly turned violent, with Turkish soldiers firing live bullets and tear gas and protesters -- mainly children -- responding with stones, witnesses told AFP.

A demonstrator in his 20s died of gunshot wounds to the head, security sources and witnesses said. Those injured are in a serious condition.

The statue was eventually removed, leaving just the its triangular plinth standing, but sporadic clashes continued in and around the cemetery.

The protesters included members of the PKK youth branch, the private Cihan agency reported.

Authorities closed the highway linking Lice to neighbouring provinces and established security checkpoints to prevent more protesters from arriving in the town, Cihan said.

- 'Challenge to our rights' -

The statue of Korkmaz, which shows him dressed for battle and with a rifle by his side, was unveiled on Saturday to mark the 30th anniversary of the first PKK attacks against the Turkish authorities.

The attacks in the southeastern towns of Eruh and Semdinli on August 15, 1984 were co-planned by Korkmaz who has been feted as a martyr by Kurds since being shot dead in 1986.

The statue's unveiling sparked outrage among Turkish nationalists who denounced it as the unwanted result of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's policy of granting greater rights to the Kurdish minority.

The head of Turkey's ultra-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahceli, called the statue a "very clear and dirty challenge to our moral and historic rights".

Two days after the unveiling, a court in Lice ordered the statue's demolition after complaints it was promoting terrorism.

Turkey is seeking to restart stalled peace talks with the PKK to end a conflict that claimed an estimated 40,000 lives.

Erdogan, who was elected president this month, launched clandestine negotiations with jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 2012 but the talks stalled in September last year when the rebels accused the government of failing to deliver on reform.

However, hopes have been raised in recent weeks of a new breakthrough.

Turkish lawmakers last month adopted a bill aimed at advancing negotiations with the PKK, which is blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.

During his victory speech, Erdogan said the peace process would continue and that he would push to enshrine key demands of the Kurds in the constitution.

In a statement from his cell on the prison island of Imrali, Ocalan said Saturday that Turkey was on the verge of "historic developments" after the election and that the 30-year conflict was "coming to an end".

Despite its blacklisting as terror group, the PKK has joined forces with other Kurdish fighting units in the US-backed operation to halt the advance of Islamic militants in Iraq.

The Kurds, one of the world's largest stateless peoples, are spread over an area including Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. There are estimated to be 15-20 million Kurds in Turkey, its largest ethnic minority.