TURKEY: Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ankara and Istanbul in anti-U.S. protests ahead of the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ankara and Istanbul in anti-U.S. protests ahead of the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Troops and military vehicles patrol border for separatist militants. Turkish protesters gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Istanbul on Thursday (November 1) for anti-U.S. protests a day before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to arrive for an official visit. The crowd waved flags and chanted "U.S. murderer get out of the Middle East" as they marched around the embassy's walls. Similar scenes could be seen in Turkey's other major city of Istanbul where people carried giant banners and flags. Turkish nationalist fervour has been rising since the deaths of the 12 soldiers, whose funerals last week turned into huge anti-PKK rallies that have greatly increased pressure on Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government to send troops into northern Iraq. Rice arrives in Ankara on Friday (November 2) for talks with Turkey's leaders, before going to Istanbul for a meeting of Iraq's neighbours and major powers that is also expected to be dominated by tensions between Iraq and Turkey. Turkey will push Rice this week to follow through on promises to help eradicate Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq but experts say the top U.S. diplomat's hands are tied. Turkey has threatened a military incursion into northern Iraq, from where Kurdish rebels have launched attacks, but has so far heeded Washington's call for restraint. Washington fears an incursion by Turkey -- a NATO ally and key conduit for supplies to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan -- would further destabilise an already volatile region. Rice has promised unspecified "concrete action" and is prodding Iraq's government, particularly the Kurdish regional authorities in northern Iraq, to curb the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, by closing its bases and arresting leaders. In Sinark, near the Turkish-Iraqi border, convoys of army vehicles patrolled the area whilst troops scoured the hillsides for landmines, a favoured weapon of the guerrillas. Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops, backed by tanks, artillery, warplanes and combat helicopters along the Iraqi border in preparation for a possible cross-border incursion into northern Iraq where 3,000 rebels are believed to be hiding. 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 and the European Union, like Turkey, brand the PKK as a terrorist group.

ITN Source | November 2, 2007

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