Turk parliament extends mandate on strikes in Iraq

Four dead, 15 injured in attack on police bus in city of Diyarbakir

Pro-Kurdish DTP party supporters shout slogans during a demonstration against a possible Turkish operation against the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, in Istanbul yesterday. Turkey yesterday extended the mandate for operations in the area.

ANKARA (AFP) – Turkey’s parliament yesterday extended the government’s mandate to order strikes against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq as an attack on a police bus in the country’s southeast killed four people.

The assault came just days after rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) killed 17 soldiers in a daytime attack on a military outpost near the border with Iraq.

Of the 529 lawmakers present in the 550-seat chamber, 511 backed the motion giving the government another yearlong mandate for cross-border operations against PKK hideouts in northern Iraq. Only 18 lawmakers voted against the motion.

As parliament was in session, suspected PKK assailants opened fire on a bus carrying employees of the police academy in Diyarbakir, the main city in the Kurdish-populated southeast, killing the driver and three police officers.

Fifteen other police officers were injured in the attack, the local governor’s office said.

The bloodshed is likely to increase nationwide outrage triggered by Friday’s attack which saw Kurdistan Workers’ Party rebels try to take out an outpost in the border province of Hakkari, under cover of heavy weapons fire from northern Iraq. The ensuing clashes killed 23 militants, the army said.

Security operations intensified inside Turkey after the assault and four militants were killed in Sirnak province late Tuesday, while a wounded soldier died in the hospital in Diyarbakir, officials said yesterday.

Speaking ahead of the parliamentary vote, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed Turkey’s right to self-defense and said Ankara would launch a cross-border incursion if necessary to rout the rebels.

Such an operation will be carried out “if need be, at the right time and under the right conditions with a view to obtaining the right result,” Erdogan said Tuesday.

Erdogan yesterday said officials would discuss calls to set up a military buffer zone inside northern Iraq along the border to stop rebel infiltrations. But he signaled his reluctance about the move, proposed by a nationalist opposition party.

“We will discuss this with the armed forces and if it is really necessary, we will take this step,” Erdogan told reporters.

Turkey’s civilian and military leaders are set to meet today to discuss further measures against the rebel group.

The army last week also said a buffer zone would be difficult to maintain because it would require a large number of troops and pose logistical hardships to sustain them.

Under the current mandate that expires October 17, the Turkish army has carried out several air strikes in northern Iraq as well as a weeklong ground incursion in February.

The operations were backed by intelligence from the United States, which is nevertheless worried that a large-scale Turkish intervention could destabilize Iraq’s relatively calm north.