ANKARA, June 18 (Xinhuanet) -- A large group of protestors demonstrated on Saturday outside the Incirlik Airbase in southeastern Turkey, demanding the closure of the airbase, semi-official Anatolia News Agency reported.

    Spokesman for the protestors Mehmet Ates said that the U.S. military is currently using the airbase to carry out a massacre inthe Middle East.

    "The Incirlik Airbase is being used by the US military for its plans concerning the Middle East. Some 88 percent of the Turkish people are against extending the US right to use it as a logistical hub for operations in Iraq. All foreign bases including Incirlik must be closed down," he said.

    The protestors came to the village by buses under tight security of the Turkish gendarmerie forces. Members of Labor Party,Democratic People's Party, Human Rights Association, Health Workers Union and Socialist Platform of the Oppressed participated in the massive demonstration.

    In April, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer approved a government decree extending for a year the right of the US military to use the airbase as a logistical cargo hub for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    US and British warplanes used the Incirlik airbase to patrol the no-fly zone over northern Iraq since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

    The traditionally close ties between the two NATO allies became strained when Turkish parliament refused to allow US troops to launch invasion of Iraq from Turkish territory in 2003.

    Ankara also dissatisfied with US reluctance to take military action against the rebel Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) based in thenorth of Iraq. Enditem