Kurdish rebels kill 7 in attack on Turkish military base

[Crvena zvezda]

[If the Turks launch a major war NATO couldn't do anything against one of its own members.]

Kurdish rebels kill 7 in attack on Turkish military base

ANKARA: Kurdish rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost Monday, killing seven soldiers in a bold attack that heightened tension at a time when Ankara has threatened military action against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

The army sent helicopter gunships and reinforcements to Tunceli Province in southeastern Turkey after guerrillas rammed a vehicle into the military post and opened fire with automatic weapons and rockets, local media reported.

Soldiers returned fire, killing the vehicle driver, the military said.

The attack came as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told European Union officials visiting Ankara that "we have every right to take measures against terrorist activities directed at us from northern Iraq."

But Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, which holds the EU presidency, said he "did not get the impression that Turkey would stage an incursion."

Abdul-Rahman al-Chadarchi, a spokesman for the Kurdish rebel group PKK, said by telephone that there had been artillery shelling from Turkey into Iraqi territory at dawn, and that there had been simultaneous shelling from the Turkish and Iranian sides on Sunday night.

"There were no casualties. Most of the shells landed in empty areas, valleys and farms. Turkish helicopters are conducting surveillance flights over Iraqi border lands," Chadarchi said.
The report could not immediately be confirmed.

The leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, confirmed shelling by Turkish troops on Kurdish areas early Sunday but said there had been no Turkish incursion.

The pro-Kurdish Firat press agency, citing Iraqi Kurdish sources, said Monday that Turkish artillery had targeted an area close to the border town of Zakho. On Sunday, the press agency, which is based in Belgium, said the troops had shelled the Hakurk area, farther east.

The Turkish authorities, who have called the Firat agency a mouthpiece of the PKK, were not immediately available to comment.

Kurdish guerrillas have long had camps in the Hakurk area, 15 kilometers, or 9 miles, from the Turkish border.

Turkish troops have occasionally launched brief raids in pursuit of guerrillas in northern Iraq and have sometimes shelled suspected rebel positions across the border. The Turkish authorities rarely acknowledge such military operations, which were more frequent before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Turkey has been building up its military forces on the Iraqi border in recent weeks.

The European Union said Monday it expected Turkey's next government to step up political and human rights reforms and to ensure that they were fully implemented, not just signed into law, Reuters reported from Anakra.

Turkey will hold parliamentary elections on July 22, months ahead of schedule, due to a political crisis in which the Islamist-rooted government is facing off against the country's secular elite, which includes army generals and top judges.

Nationalists critical of the EU are expected to perform well in the polls amid waning Turkish public support for membership, though the governing AK party is still tipped to win most seats.

"It is important to have a new government that is able to reinforce the reform process and is able to bring Turkey still closer to the European Union," the EU enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, said at a news conference after talks with Turkish officials.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul vowed that reforms would continue.

"This is not the Turkey of the 1960s and 1970s. We are an accession country," he said. Political crises may occur, he added, but "the reform process will continue at full vigor."

Turkey began accession talks in October 2005, but the EU says reforms have slowed in the past two years amid rows over Cyprus, human rights, judicial reform and other sensitive issues.

Some attributed the slow pace of implementation to resistance from a conservative establishment highly suspicious of the EU.

Turkish public support for membership has fallen amid a perception that the EU does not really want to admit a large, relatively poor, overwhelmingly Muslim, country of 74 million.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany are opposed to Turkish membership.