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Turkey organizing troops, tanks to fight the PKK
Turkey has sent thousands of soldiers backed by tanks to its overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast and the Iraqi border following stepped-up attacks by Turkish Kurdish guerrillas, officials and reports said Friday.Fighting between soldiers and the guerrillas, who are based in northern Iraq, often intensifies in the spring, when the snows melt, clearing mountain passes along the border. Turkey already has some 2,000 soldiers, backed by tanks in northern Iraq to guard against cross border attacks. But a military officer and an intelligence officer said that force was not being increased and Turkey was not considering any incursion into the neighboring country. The Aksam newspaper reported Friday that Turkey has moved some 10,000 soldiers to the border regions, increasing its troop strength to some 50,000. The officers, both speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, confirmed the deployment but would not say how many troops were involved. In the past few months, some 40 rebels, 14 soldiers and four police officers have been killed in clashes in southeastern Turkey. Some 37,000 people have been killed since rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, took up arms in 1984. Turkey has called on the United States to crack down on rebel bases in northern Iraq, but U.S. commanders, struggling to battle Iraqi insurgents elsewhere, have been extremely reticent to fight the rebels who are based in the remote mountain areas one of the few stable parts of the country. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-04-22 |
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