ANKARA, Nov 4: Eight Turkish soldiers captured by Kurdish rebels and held in Iraq were freed and returned to Turkey on Sunday after Ankara threatened to launch a cross-border attack on the militants’ sanctuaries.
The rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is fighting for a separate state in southeastern Turkey, handed the soldiers to Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional government in the early morning, officials said.
“After personal attempts by Kurdistan regional president Massud Barzani, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdistan regional prime minister Nechirvan Barzani, the Turkish soldiers who were detained by the PKK were released this morning,” the Kurdistan Regional Government said in a statement.
They were then flown in a Turkish military plane to the southeastern Turkish town of Diyarbakir, where military chiefs said they had been “reintegrated”into the armed forces.The release came as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was due in Washington to press Ankara’s demands for action against PKK sanctuaries in the autonomous Kurdish north of Iraq.
Turkey has massed an estimated 100,000 troops along the Iraq border and threatened a large-scale incursion against PKK bases in Iraq since the soldiers were captured in an Oct 21 ambush in which 12 other troops were killed.
Turkish officials said the government’s determination to take on the rebels militarily had not been diminished by the release of the prisoners.
“We will continue to fight the battle which we have fought from the start with total determination... on the military, political, diplomatic and economic fronts against the scourge of terrorism,” Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek told the Anatolia news agency.
Ankara has stepped up anti-PKK operations on the Turkish side of the border and says it has killed at least 80 rebels in the aftermath of the October 21 attack.
The Turkish government warned Saturday it retained the option of a military strike inside northern Iraq to attack PKK rebels who have been fighting since 1984 for self-rule in southeastern Turkey.
“All instruments remain on the table for Turkey,” said Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.
To further step up the pressure on Washington, which has urged Ankara to hold back on a military strike, Erdogan left on Saturday to meet US President George Bush.
“Our visit comes at a time when (Turkish-US) relations are undergoing a serious test,” Erdogan told reporters at Istanbul airport.
“We have run out of patience with the terrorist attacks being staged from northern Iraq,” he said, adding that he hoped his Monday meeting with Bush would produce “concrete measures.” Turkey accuses the Iraqi Kurdish leadership of harbouring and aiding the separatist PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and by much of the international community.
Wary of fresh turmoil in Iraq, Washington opposes Turkish unilateral action in a relatively peaceful part of the war-ravaged country.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held talks on Saturday on the sidelines of a multinational conference on Iraq in Istanbul, seeking to avert the threat of a Turkish incursion.Iraqi officials said on Saturday they were setting up new checkpoints in the north to try to restrict the movement of PKK rebels and cut their supply lines.—AFP
