CIZRE, Turkey, 25 October 2007 — Turkish warplanes and troops attacked Kurdish rebels inside Iraq this week, security sources said yesterday, but Ankara wants to hold back from any major incursion for now to give diplomacy a chance.
Turkey moved more troops to the mountainous Iraqi border, keeping up pressure on Baghdad to honor promises to crack down on an estimated 3,000 rebels of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who use northern Iraq as a base.
Security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a series of sorties between Sunday and Tuesday evening in which Turkish warplanes flew 20 km into Iraq and some 300 ground troops advanced about 10 km.
“Further hot pursuit raids into northern Iraq can be expected, though none have taken place so far today (Wednesday),” a military official said. State-run Anatolia news agency said Turkish warplanes and helicopters had bombed PKK positions in southeast Turkey yesterday.
The sorties into Iraq killed 34 PKK rebels and all the Turkish troops involved in the operations are now back in Turkey, the official said.
But Abdul Rahman Jaderji, a PKK spokesman in northern Iraq, told Reuters there had been no direct fighting between the two sides since clashes on Sunday in which 12 Turkish soldiers died.
Baghdad has pledged to act against the rebels. A Turkish official yesterday quoted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as saying Iraq might hand over PKK militants to Turkey, but Talabani denied this.
“We have said many times that the PKK leadership does not exist in Kurdish cities but are living with thousands of their fighters in the Qandil mountains, so it is not possible for us to arrest and hand them over to Turkey,” he said in a statement.
The Turkish official described a planned visit by an Iraqi delegation to Ankara today as a “final chance” for diplomacy. At Turkey’s request, the team will be headed by Iraqi Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim. It will also include Iraqi National Security Minister Shirwan Al-Waeli.
Washington and Baghdad fear a major Turkish incursion into northern Iraq could destabilize the whole region. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is under heavy public pressure to take tough action, especially since Sunday’s deaths.
“If I look at the Turkish government as it has acted up till now I think the Turkish government is showing restraint — remarkable restraint under present circumstances,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters at a meeting of the alliance’s defense ministers.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday that she had told Erdogan on Sunday that she took the situation “extremely seriously.”
“Iraq should not be a place where terrorism can hurt Turkey,” she said. “We have a list of things that we believe, if they are undertaken, will help to deal with this situation,” she added, citing Iraq’s pledge to close PKK offices there.
Ankara is skeptical about Baghdad’s ability to crack down on the PKK in northern Iraq, a mainly Kurdish region where the central government has little clout. The publication of photographs said to show eight Turkish soldiers captured by the PKK has added to pressure on Ankara to act.
