STRASBOURG, France, June 24 (Reuters) - Europe's human rights watchdog said on Tuesday that Turkey was responsible for the deaths of two men on the divided island of Cyprus more than a decade ago.

Turkey has denied any role in the killing of Greek Cypriot Anastasios Issac, beaten to death at a protest in 1996, or Solomos Solomou, shot three days later at Issac's funeral while he took down a Turkish flag.

The Council of Europe's court of human rights said in its ruling the two men "were killed by agents of the Turkish state and force was not justified."

It ordered Turkey to pay 340,000 euros ($529,000) in damages to the victims' families. Decisions by the court are non-binding but are passed on to member states' foreign ministers, who in turn ask states to comply.

Issac was killed in a buffer zone separating the island's ethnic Turkish and Greek communities, a barrier partly reopened in April after almost a half a century.

Cyprus has been divided since Turkish forces invaded the Mediterranean island in 1974 in response to a brief Greek-inspired coup, and the island's division has been an obstacle to Turkish ambitions to join the European Union. "