Turkish Forces in ‘Hot Pursuit’ After Attack

ISTANBUL  Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that the Turkish military was in "hot pursuit" of attackers near his country's border with Iraq after one of the deadliest insurgent strikes in years on soldiers inside Turkey.Mr. Erdogan spoke at a news conference in Ankara, where senior government officials had gathered for an emergency meeting after the attack. "As of now, wide-reaching operations, including hot pursuit operations, are continuing in the region within the framework of international law," he said. “We will combat terror on one front and, on another front, we will continue our path to destroy the grounds that terror manipulates." 

NTV, a private television network, said Turkish ground forces chasing the attackers entered northern Iraq, where the Kurdish Worker’s Party, a militant separatist group known as the P.K.K., is based. The group has long battled the Turkish government for autonomy in the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Local media also reported Turkish air deployments and artillery fire in the mountainous border area. 

 Twenty-four Turkish soldiers were killed and at least 18 wounded in the attacks, the prime minister's office said. The militant strikes, which started in the early hours Wednesday, mainly in Hakkari Province, lasted for about four hours. They came a day after a blast in Bitlis, another southeastern province, that killed five policemen and three civilians. 

 Using unusually harsh language, President Abdullah Gul in an earlier speech vowed that the country would strike back. He had visited military bases in the region only days before. “Embracing our own people, being affectionate to our people, protecting rights and law of our people is one thing while struggling against terror without compromise is a joint decision of bothour state and the nation,” he said. 

  The top commander in the Turkish army flew to the region to coordinate the operation on Wednesday, local media reported.  The attacks came at a time when the country is drafting a new Constitution with greater rights for ethnic minorities. The effort is widely perceived as designed to end separatist violence that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since the 1980s. 

 “In today’s Turkey when there is a better democracy to respond the Kurdish needs, the P.K.K. terror is no different than Osama Bin Laden’s terror manipulating Islam in the way it manipulates Kurdish ethnicity,” said Ihsan Bal, a security expert at the Ankara-based International Strategic Research Organization. 

The P.K.K. has escalated attacks in recent months in rural and urban areas. The Turkish military has responded with airstrikes and artillery attacks against the group's bases in northern Iraq, killing as many as 160 militants, according to the Turkish military. Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, signaled during an official visit in Ankara last week that the Iraqi army could join military efforts to eliminate P.K.K. bases in Northern Iraq, used as a launchpad for hit-and-run attacks inside Turkey. 

 The Iraqi government, as well as Kurdish officials in the northern Iraq, have previously expressed concern about Turkish military intervention. The United States, along with the European Union and Turkey, list the P.K.K. as a terrorist organization and have shared intelligence with Turkey on the group's movements in northern Iraq since 2007. 

 “As a friend and ally, the United States will continue to stand with the people and government of Turkey in their fight against the P.K.K., which the United States has officially designated as a terrorist organization,” the American ambassador to Ankara, Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., said in a written statement.