18 killed as Turkish forces clash with Kurdish rebels

A Turkish soldier patrols a road near the Turkish-Iraqi border Turkish military units faced mortars and rocket-propelled grenades launched by Kurdish rebels on Tuesday in southeastern Turkey, sparking clashes in which 10 rebels and eight soldiers died, local authorities said.
The attack happened in Daglica area of Hakkari province, which borders northern Iraq's Kurdish areas. Sixteen Turkish soldiers were also wounded in the attack, the governor's office in Hakkari said. The military's top brass and cabinet ministers rushed to the area to assess the situation as the cabinet convened to discuss the attack.
A group of Kurdish rebels are believed to have crossed into Turkey from their bases in northern Iraq to attack the army post at Yesiltas, local security services said.
The guerrillas began the coordinated attacks with rocket launchers and rifles at around 5am (2am GMT) on the military observation points, the sources said, adding that operations were continuing against the rebels.
The Turkish NTV news channel said ground troops and combat helicopters were pursuing the assailants, according to a Reuters news agency report.
“This mountainous region of Turkey is often the scene of violent clashes between security forces and Kurdish rebels, which escalate their attacks in the summer months,” the report stated, adding:
“Turkish warplanes generally bomb PKK hideouts in retaliations for attacks on troops.”
A similar rebel attack in the same area in late 2007, when 12 Turkish soldiers died, triggered an eight-day incursion by the Turkish military into Iraq in February 2008. Rebels use northern Iraq as a base to launch attacks on Turkish troops.
The rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, is fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey. Tens of thousands have died since it took up arms in 1984.
Several thousand PKK militants are based in mountain hideouts in northern Iraq, from where they regularly launch attacks on state targets in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.
The head of the armed forces General Necdet Ozel rushed to the region, along with the commanders of the ground forces and paramilitary gendarmerie, Turkish media reported.
Tuesday's attack came amid efforts by the government to try to reconcile with the Kurdish minority through granting more cultural rights. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently announced plans to introduce elective Kurdish lessons in schools, after allowing Kurdish language broadcasts on television, Kurdish-language institutes and private Kurdish courses.
Turkey refuses demands by Kurdish activists, rebels and politicians to hold full education in Kurdish, fearing that it could divide the country along ethnic lines.
An estimated 20 percent of Turkey's 75 million people are Kurds.
Faruk Bal, deputy chairman of a nationalist opposition party, told TRT television Tuesday that his party will not join the search for a political solution the conflict because it is against giving any concessions to the rebel group, which is considered a "terrorist organisation" by the United States and the European Union.
"Today's violence shows that whatever you give, they will ask for more as long as they have their weapons in their hands," Bal said.
The 27-nation EU, which Turkey is striving to join, has pushed the Turkish government to grant more rights to the Kurds. But EU countries also have urged Kurdish lawmakers to distance themselves from the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK.
"The PKK should cease every kind of armed action," Selahattin Demirtas, chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, told a meeting of Kurdish lawmakers in Parliament after the attack on Tuesday. "The government should also end military operations."
A senior Kurdish rebel commander, Bahoz Erdal, ruled out a cease-fire or laying down arms in an interview with the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency in remarks published Tuesday.
Amid speculation about further moves to end the conflict, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc raised the possibility at the weekend of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan being put under house arrest if the militants were to lay down their weapons.
However other leading government figures, pointing to nationalist sensitivities over such a radical move, dismissed the idea, and Erdogan said it was only Arinc’s personal view.
Concerns about the PKK insurgency have been exacerbated by the conflict in Syria, which also has a Kurdish minority.
PKK rebels have launched sporadic attacks in recent months near the Syrian border in Hatay province, where thousands of Syrians are housed in refugee camps. One Turkish soldier was killed on Monday night in Hatay in a clash with PKK militants, the governor’s office there said in a statement.