TURKEY: Turkish soldiers patrol border waiting for government to decide about troop deployment to Kurdish rebels.

Turkish forces patrol the Turkey-Iraq border as the country waits to see if the government will send troops into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels. Turkish forces stationed on the Iraqi border continued their patrols on Friday (October 19), as they waited for news of a possible incursion after parliament gave a greenlight to military action on Wednesday. Turkey's parliament resoundedly approved a motion giving the army permission to pursue Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerriillas based in mainly Kurdish northern Iraq, which they use as a launchpad for attacks on Turkey. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has played down expectations of an imminent attack, but the parliamentary vote has effectively given NATO's second biggest army a free rein to cross the mountainous border as and when it sees fit. The United States and other Western allies, as well as Baghdad, have urged Turkey to refrain from military action. A recent sharp rise in PKK killings has put Erdogan under pressure from the army, opposition parties and the public to eliminate some 3,000 rebels believed based in northern Iraq. With the onset of winter, analysts say, Turkey's options will be reduced to air strikes and small commando operations. Military sources based in the southeast of Turkey said 70,000-100,000 troops were now in the border region. The deaths of more than a dozen soldiers this month has shifted the public firmly in favour of a military option in northern Iraq despite the international opposition. Continued PKK activity remains one of the main failures of the ruling AK Party, which won re-election in July. Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey in 1984. Turkey's large-scale incursions in 1995 and 1997, involving an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 troops respectively, failed to dislodge PKK rebels from the Iraqi mountains.

ITN Source | October 19, 2007

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