Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Turkey Wednesday to denounce the government's controversial decision to send troops to Iraq, with police detaining some 60 Kurdish activists.

In Istanbul, protestors chained themselves to the wire fencing of an American high school and shouted "We will not allow our soldiers to be killed" and "We will not be soldiers for the US."

Anti-riot police detained six among the 100-strong group, Anatolia news agency reported.

About 500 people attended a separate demonstration on Taksim central square and a third rally was held outside the offices of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the capital Ankara, dozens of members of trade unions, political parties and civic groups gathered in front of the parliament, where legislators on Tuesday voted for a gov-

ernment motion to dispatch troops to neighbouring Iraq.

"Turkey should take its hands off Iraq," the group chanted.

"Turkey has been dragged by the 8.5-billion-dollar carrot," opposition MP Haluk Koc, who joined the demonstrators, said in reference to the 8.5 billion dollars that Washington agreed to loan Ankara last month in return for its "cooperation" in Iraq.

"Don't send our sons to the Iraqi hell. Don't make them shields for American soldiers," protestors chanted in the northern city of Trabzon, the news agency reported.

In the southern towns of Mersin and Ceyhan, police used truncheons to break up Kurdish demonstrations against the deployment of troops after protestors began chanting slogans in favour of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Forty activists, among them the local head of the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP), Turkey's

main pro-Kurdish movement, were taken into custody in Mersin, while another 23 people were detained in Ceyhan, party spokesmen told AFP.

"We are worried that the decision (to send troops) constitutes the start of a process with an uncertain future. The decision, taken despite opposition from the people, has brought Turkey to the edge of war," DEHAP said in a statement.

Turkish Kurds -- just as their kin in Iraq -- worry that Turkey's military involvement in Iraq could thwart further political gains by the Iraqi Kurds and increase pressure on the United States to clamp down on thousands of Turkish Kurd rebels hiding in the Kurdish-held north of the country.

Turkey and the United States have recently agreed on an "action plan" against the rebels, members of Ocalan's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both Ankara and Washington consider a terrorist group.