Istanbul (CNN) -- Twenty-four soldiers were killed and 18 injured during an attack early Wednesday morning in southeastern Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Rockets were launched at security forces and military sites in the town of Cukurca, an official with the provincial governor's office and Turkish President Abdullah Gul said.
Gul blamed terrorism when he spoke about the attack during a televised address.
"Our determination is certain. Those who think that democratic improvements in Turkey are achieved as a result of terrorism are making a big mistake," Gul said. "It is our decision to continue the struggle against terrorism without giving any concessions."
He warned that "those who inflict this pain on us will endure pain many times over" themselves.
Erdogan said "wide-scale operations, including hot pursuit as defined by international law" were continuing in the region, as the military seeks those responsible.
Speaking to reporters in Ankara, he said the "Turkish state will breathe down the neck of those who secretly or openly support or aid terrorism."
He added: "Turkey always played an active role in the international fight against terrorism and it expects also the international community and all countries to give support and active cooperation in combating terrorism."
Urging the country's people to show unity, he said the process could be lengthy but that other countries had defeated terrorism in the end.
Erdogan canceled his trip to Kazakhstan, planned for Wednesday, in the wake of the attack.
"We changed our plans after hearing about the very sad incident that happened early this morning ... our heroes were killed during a cowardly attack," said Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc. He earlier said 25 soldiers were killed.
While the government has not specified who it believes is responsible for the attack, it comes amid escalating tensions between the government and elements of the country's Kurdish minority.
Two weeks ago, lawmakers voted to extend authorization for the Turkish military to carry out cross border attacks against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. Turkish police also arrested more than 100 people across the country, suspected of links to rebels with the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.
The Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party issued a written statement Wednesday, saying: "We are calling on both the government and the PKK to urgently stop the war without wasting one more second. Turkey's most urgent need is peace."
The Kurds represent the largest ethnic minority in Turkey. For decades, they were the target of repressive government policies, implemented by officials who sometimes referred to them as "mountain Turks."
Until just a few years ago, it was illegal to speak Kurdish on radio and television in Turkey. Under Erdogan, the government has tried to improve relations by launching a state Kurdish language TV station in 2009.
Some observers have sounded the alarm about escalating tension between Turkey and its Kurdish minority, warning it may re-ignite a conflict that has simmered since 1984 and claimed more than 30,000 lives.
Kanastrous wrote:Maybe if some sort of international flotilla were assembled and sailed to Turkey to draw attention to the plight of the Kurdish people...
I got a good laugh out of that, but really, the two groups are not at all comparable. No-one, for instance, is banning people from transporting building supplies, clothing, and luxury goods to the Kurds; and the Kurds have full voting rights (albeit somewhat curtailed by poverty and a deliberate marginalization by Ankara of parties that support Kurdish interests.)
The conflict between Turks and Kurds since 1980s until now claimed like tens of thousands of lives. That's certainly something bigger than "disgruntled citizens", I'd say, but since Turkey's a NATO member tough luck turning any eyes to that particular problem.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Stas Bush wrote:The conflict between Turks and Kurds since 1980s until now claimed like tens of thousands of lives. That's certainly something bigger than "disgruntled citizens", I'd say, but since Turkey's a NATO member tough luck turning any eyes to that particular problem.
They did get a lot of focus during and in the aftermath of "Operation Iraqi Freedom". Well at least compared to before and now.
Now even though as you point out they have been a liability vs NATO member Turkey they did get some miniscule recognition for all the aid they provided and even got some sort of self rule in the northern tip of Iraq. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Kurdistan
Which is probably why you see the conflict rise again, since now the kurds can get funding and arms from somewhere.
ANKARA, Turkey — About 10,000 elite Turkish soldiers were taking part in a ground offensive against Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey and across the border in Iraq on Thursday, making it the nation's largest attack on the insurgents in more than three years, the military said.
The offensive began Wednesday after Kurdish rebels carried out raids near the Turkey-Iraq border that killed 24 Turkish soldiers and wounded 18, the insurgents' deadliest one-day attacks against the military since the mid-1990s.
The military said in a statement Thursday that 22 battalions, or about 10,000 soldiers, were taking part in the offensive in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, but it did not say how many were in each country.
NTV television said most of the troops were believed to be in Iraq.
It was Turkey's largest such offensive since February 2008, when thousands of ground forces staged a weeklong offensive into Iraq on snow-covered mountains.
The military said the soldiers in the current operation are commandos, special forces and paramilitary special forces — making it an elite force trained in guerrilla warfare. They are being reinforced by F-16 and F-4 warplanes, Super Cobra helicopter gunships and surveillance drones.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to share details of the military's offensive. The military only said the offensive was concentrated in five separate areas it did not identify.
"Our goal is to achieve results with this operation," Erdogan told a nationally televised news conference. "The military is determinedly carrying out this (operation), both from the air and the ground."
The military said the offensive was launched because the rebels had staged Wednesday's deadly simultaneous attacks on eight separate targets, including military and police outposts.
In its first comment since those attacks and the start of Turkey's offensive, Iraq's government on Thursday condemned the rebel attacks and promised to stop them from using Iraqi territory for future attacks against Turkey.
"The Iraqi government stresses again that Iraq will not be a haven or a shelter to any foreign armed and terrorist group," the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website, adding that both Baghdad and the regional Kurdish government in northern Iraq "are committed to secure the borders" to prevent the repetition of such attacks.
A senior Iraqi Kurdish official, Nechirvan Barzani, was in Ankara and expected to be received by Erdogan shortly.
The Kurdish rebel attack outraged many Turks and fueled nationalist sentiment. Thousands of high school students, carrying Turkish flags, marched in the streets of the Turkish capital on Thursday.
"Tooth for tooth, blood for blood, vengeance!" students chanted in support of the military as they marched through the affluent Tunali Hilmi district. At one point, the students stopped traffic to sing the national anthem as some shopkeepers joined them and passers-by stood still in respect.
The Kurdish provinces of northern Iraq are mostly stable and prosperous. But to Turkey, which has a large Kurdish minority, they also are an inspiration and a support base for the Kurdish rebels.
Turkey's Kurdish rebel conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since the insurgents took up arms for autonomy in the country's Kurdish-dominated southeast in 1984.
