Tensions remained high in the city of Ercis as the dead protester, Mehmet Deniz, was buried on Thursday. Mourners hurled stones at security forces, who fired shots in the air to disperse the crowd, Anatolia news agency reported.

Fourteen police were injured in the original clashes late Wednesday, one of them seriously, and 101 people were detained, Van police chief Mehmet Salih Kesmez told Anatolia.

Deniz died in hospital overnight after being hit in the head with a stone, a senior police official in the nearby city of Van told AFP by telephone.

The man was injured in Ercis on Wednesday after a festival organised by the Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) degenerated into a demonstration in favour of separatist Kurdish rebels, the official said on the condition of anonymity.

Police used tear gas and fired shots in the air as demonstrators chanted slogans in favour of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and hurled stones at security forces, according to media reports.

The police official rejected as "pure lies" DTP allegations that the man was beaten to death by security forces.

A DTP statement claimed 10 police officers beat Deniz, 58, in the hospital yard, hitting him on the head with truncheons, adding that they also physically prevented medical staff from treating the man.

It was the second deadly Kurdish demonstration in Turkey this year after a teenager died in disputed circumstances in the southeastern town of Cizre last month.

Kurds have held a series of pro-PKK protests since the Turkish army began targeting rebel camps in northern Iraq in December, including five air raids and a week-long ground incursion that ended last week.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.