Turkey's Cabinet met yesterday to consider intensifying the country's military drive against Kurdish rebels after guerrillas killed 15 Turkish security personnel in less than a week.
Turkey is expected to beef up already heightened security in its southeast and is likely to increase pressure on the US and Iraq to crack down on bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq. The rebels are headquartered nearby in northern Iraq but US commanders, struggling to battle Iraqi insurgents elsewhere, have been reticent to fight the Kurdish rebels.
It is not clear, however, what other actions Turkey could take. US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have repeatedly cautioned Turkey against any cross-border operation against the rebels, who are based in one of the only stable parts of Iraq. And any serious military action by Turkey is likely to anger members of the EU, who have been pressing Turkey to grant greater cultural rights to minority Kurds.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed outrage on Sunday at the rebel attacks, saying the PKK's violence has become "unbearable."
The High Anti-Terrorism Council met late Sunday and again on yesterday morning to discuss new measures against the guerrillas.
"Until now, we've always been dealing with this with patience. We've always wanted to solve this within democratic lines," Erdogan said on Sunday. "Eight of our children were martyred. They had martyred five of our children in Bingol, too. From now on, these are unbearable."
Erdogan's words were a "signal of a serious crackdown on the PKK," the daily Milliyet said in a headline yesterday.
"Terror alarm in Ankara," read the headline in the daily Radikal.
Officials in the southeast, however, have so far reported no unusual military activity.
The PKK called a unilateral ceasefire after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999, but resumed fighting in 2004, saying that Turkey kept up its military drive and refused to negotiate with the guerrillas, whom it considers to be terrorists. Washington and the EU also regard the PKK as a terrorist group.
As PKK attacks faded, Erdogan's government, facing EU pressure to improve the situation in the southeast, lifted emergency military rule in the region.
The guerrillas, fighting for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast, have recently stepped up attacks. Fifteen Turks were killed in ambushes, roadside bombings and shootings since last Thursday.
"Israel's burning of the Middle East for its kidnapped corporal, even though it is against common sense, creates envy and admiration in the hearts of the Turkish people," Gungor Mengi, chief columnist of daily Vatan, wrote yesterday.
On Saturday, a PKK ambush left seven soldiers and one local village guard dead near the town of Eruh in southeastern Siirt province. A rebel attack on Sunday night killed a police officer in the town of Ozalp, near the Iraqi border.
On Thursday five soldiers were killed when their vehicle hit a land mine. Guerrillas also wounded a police officer in an attack in the town of Gercus on Sunday. The policeman died at hospital yesterday, increasing the death toll to 15. The troops later killed two guerrillas, local authorities said yesterday.
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