TURKISH police launched a nationwide crackdown on Kurdish, left-wing and Islamic extremist groups yesterday, killing a campaigner in Istanbul.

Some 5,000 police were involved in the raids ostensibly on suspected members of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) and Islamic State (Isis).

But lawyers and activists said that members of the left-wing Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and others were swept up in the dragnet.

DHKP-C member Gunay Ozarslan was killed at a house in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul during a police raid.

The People’s Law Bureau held sit-in protests outside Ms Ozarslan’s home after police refused to allow them to inspect the scene of her killing, leading them to suspect she had been killed in cold blood.

A British citizen, Stephen Kaczynksi, has been on hunger strike in a Turkish prison for a month after being arrested in Istanbul on April 2.