Turkey’s Prime Minister will hold a Sunday evening crisis meeting with government and military officials after Kurdish rebels ambushed and killed 12 Turkish soldiers near the Iraqi border early Sunday.
This brings the death toll among Turkish soldiers and security personnel to 40 for the past month alone.
“Our parliament has granted us the authority to act, and within this framework we will do whatever has to be done,” said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, referring to Wednesday’s overwhelming vote by the Turkish parliament to allow military incursions into Iraq to strike back at the PKK.
The PKK, or Kurdish Workers Party, is a Marxist insurgent group fighting for greater autonomy for Turkish Kurds. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
In a separate incident on Sunday, a roadside bomb killed one person and injured eight when it exploded near a minibus in the same region where the soldiers had been killed.
The PKK’s clash with the Turkish soldiers, which also left 23 rebels dead, has intensified public pressure on Mr Erdogan to hit back with military strikes.
Washington and Baghdad have urged restraint, fearing that one of Iraq’s most stable regions will become embroiled in conflict. The US also relies on bases in southern Turkey for the bulk of logistical support for US troops in Iraq.
There are also fears that a Turkish military incursion into Iraq would set a precedent that could be used by a country like Iran to launch similar military actions within Iraq to quell violence along its border.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has promised that his government will work to eliminate the PKK’s bases in northern Iraq, where up to 3,000 Kurdish rebels are believed to be based.
He also said he’d consider allowing limited Turkish air strikes within Iraq.
Meanwhile, Kurdish government leaders in the semi-autonomous northern region of Iraq insist that any such military action would be illegal. They deny providing any assistance or sanctuary to the PKK.
The PKK has warned that it will respond to any cross-border military action by sabotaging the oil pipeline that runs from Kirkuk in Iraq to the Turkish port ofCeyhan on the Mediterranean Sea, which averages a daily output of 500,000 barrels a day, about 0.6% of daily global demand.
The brewing crisis helped propel the price of oil to a historic high of $90 per barrel on Thursday.
