General Hilmi Ozkok, the chief of general staff, blamed the riots that broke out in Diyarbakir on March 28 on provocations by militants from the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting the army since 1984.

"The incidents have saddened the entire Turkish nation, but they can never be seen as representing the general attitude of all the people of this region," Ozkok, dressed in a camouflage uniform, told reporters.

"What was done was wrong, but I hope the people will wisely judge the right and wrong things they are being told and act accordingly," he said.

"Despite everything, we love all the people of this region... The armed forces are determined to conduct all tasks they are given, but all of them love their people," he said.

The riots erupted when vengeance-seeking Kurdish youths attacked the police after the funerals of PKK rebels killed in fighting with the army; they quickly spread to other nearby towns.

The week-long unrest, the worst urban violence to hit the region in years, saw hundreds of rioters torch banks and public buildings, vandalize shops and attack the police with firebombs.

Twelve people were killed as security forces opened fire to disperse the mobs, while three women were killed in Istanbul when rioters set a city bus on fire with a Molotov cocktail.

Ozkok visited Diyarbakir as part of a tour to inspect troops in the Kurdish-majority southeast, where a period of relative calm was shattered in June 2004, when the PKK called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire.

The violence has raised fears of renewed ethnic conflict at a time when stability is critical to Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

The government has vowed to continue fighting the PKK which -- along with the EU and the United States -- it considers a terrorist group, but without backtracking on EU-inspired reforms that expanded the cultural freedoms of the Kurdish minority.

The Kurdish conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives since 1984, when the PKK took up arms for self-rule in the southeast.