TURKEY/IRAQ: Kurdish rebels kill 17 Turkish soldiers prompting Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to call crisis talks to consider a military strike

Kurdish rebels killed 17 Turkish soldiers and wounded 16 others in an ambush on Sunday (October 21), prompting Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to call crisis talks to consider a military strike against rebel bases in Iraq. The attack, the worst in more than a decade by rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), came four days after Turkey's parliament overwhelmingly approved a motion to allow troops to enter northern Iraq to fight guerrillas hiding there. Senior military and government officials began the crisis talks on Sunday evening at the presidential palace in Ankara under President Abdullah Gul to plot Turkey's response. The United States, Turkey's NATO ally, and Iraq have urged Ankara to refrain from military action, fearing this could destabilise the most peaceful part of Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. Turkey's tougher stance has helped propel global oil prices to record highs over the past week. The PKK has said it might target pipelines carrying Iraqi and Caspian crude cross Turkey. Abdul Rahman Jaderji, a senior official in the PKK in northern Iraq, said the rebels had killed 40 soldiers. The number could not be independently verified. Iraq's government said it was taking important steps to end what it called the "terrorist actions" of the Kurdish rebels. But Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani said his autonomous region would defend itself if Turkish troops invaded. "We are not going to be a party to such conflicts, but if we are directly directed or if Kurdistan region is targeted, then we are going to defend our citizens undoubtedly," Barzani told reporters after meeting Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is also a Kurd. Talabani called on the PKK to cease fighting and to turn itself into a political organisation. "If they insist on continuing fighting, they have to leave Iraq's Kurdistan and not cause us problems and return back to their countries to do whatever they want there," he said. Anti-PKK demonstrators waving Turkish flags clash with police in the Kurdish neighbourhood of Erzurum city. At an anti-PKK rally in Istanbul, protesters set fire to an effigy of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Tensions are running high after Kurdish rebels killed 12 Turkish soldiers on Sunday. Meanwhile hundreds protested in northern Iraq against Turkey's threats of military action. Turkey's military has deployed as many as 100,000 troops, backed by tanks and attack helicopters, along the border. With the death toll among Turkish security forces around 40 for the past month alone, Erdogan's government is under heavy domestic pressure to pursue the PKK into northern Iraq. Turks staged anti-PKK rallies across the country after Sunday's deaths. Opposition politicians urged the government to send troops into Iraq now. Erdogan has appeared reluctant to launch an incursion, and Western diplomats said Turkey was concerned about the security, diplomatic and economic risks of such a move, but the latest rebel attacks may have made a military strike inevitable. Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. The United States, Turkey and European Union class the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

ITN Source | October 22, 2007

Tags:. .flags. .tanks. .protesters. .plot. .clash