ANKARA, 9 October 2007 — Turkish officials yesterday pondered fresh measures to tackle the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after recent rebel attacks killed 15 soldiers, stepping up pressure for tougher government action.

Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said after a Cabinet meeting that Ankara was weighing “all possible measures” against the PKK, including a cross-border operation into neighboring northern Iraq, where the rebels have long taken refuge despite repeated Turkish warnings.

Cicek stressed, however, that the consequences of such a move should be considered. “Public opinion is being misled by suggestions that one single measure will resolve the problem... The question is: do the measures you take bring you closer to your objective or take you farther from it,” he said.

President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Army chief Gen. Yasar Buyukanit also met to discuss the issue and a meeting of senior security officials was scheduled for today. The latest soldiers’ deaths, 13 of them in an ambush Sunday in the southeast Sirnak province bordering Iraq, were the worst losses the army has suffered since 1995 in its 23-year fight against the PKK.

The group is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and most of the international community. One soldier was killed in a clash with the rebels Saturday in Baskale, near the Iranian border, and another early yesterday in a remote-controlled land mine explosion in Diyarbakir province.

The attacks followed the killing of 12 people, mostly civilians but including anti-PKK Kurdish “Village Guard” militiamen, in an ambush on a minibus in Sirnak on Sept. 29, blamed on PKK guerillas. The military has long sought authorization to strike against PKK bases in northern Iraq, but the government has demurred under pressure from the United States, which does not want its Iraqi Kurdish allies, who run the region, forced into confrontation with the Turkish army.

Ankara says the PKK enjoys free movement in northern Iraq and obtains weapons and explosives there for attacks across the border. It has accused Iraqi Kurds of tolerating and even supporting the rebels. Turkey and Iraq signed an accord last month to combat the PKK, but failed to agree on a clause allowing Turkish troops to engage in “hot pursuit” against rebels fleeing into Iraqi territory, as they did regularly in the 1990s.

Public exasperation with mounting Kurdish attacks and the inability to cope with them has widely contributed to rising nationalist sentiment in Turkey, echoed Monday in the mass-selling newspaper Hurriyet. “The border (with Iraq) will be crossed and they (the PKK) will be held to account,” the daily headlined.

Violence in southeastern Turkey, where the PKK launched an armed insurgency for self-rule in 1984, has cost more than 37,000 lives so far. The Turkish Army often steps up operations in the mountainous area at the end of summer to prevent PKK rebels from heading back to their bases in northern Iraq to see out the winter.

On Saturday, the army said it created 27 new temporary security zones, reinforcing an existing plan to deter rebel movement in the Sirnak, Siirt and Hakkari provinces, all close to the Iraqi border.

The Turkish authorities say the increase in PKK violence stems from its dwindling support in the region due to pro-Kurdish reforms undertaken by the government as part of its efforts to join the European Union.