America warned Turkey to show restraint in the face of mounting public anger over attacks by Kurdish terrorists, hours after Ankara gave the country’s military permission to conduct cross-border operations in Iraq.
Diplomats scrambled to force Turkey to abandon plans to strike PKK terrorists moving between bases inside Iraq.
“I am not sure that unilateral incursions are the way to go, the way to resolve the issue,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
“We have counselled them both in public and private for many, many months (on) the idea that it is important to work cooperatively to resolve this issue,” Fifteen Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with the PKK this week.
As the television gave saturation coverage to the young paratroops obituaries, the government finally succumbed to a military pressure to greenlight incursions.
A spokesman for the US National Security Council, Gordon Johndroe attempted to reassure Turkey that America was putting pressure on the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to clamp down on terrorist groups.
“The United States is committed to working with both Turkey and Iraq to combat the PKK,” Mr Johndroe said.
“We know the attacks by Kurdish outlier groups are not in the interest of either Turkey or Iraq,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, said the military could hunt down Kurdish terrorists south of its border.
A statement said: “The order has been given for every kind of measure, including if needed a cross-border operation.”
A private Turkish television channel, NTV last night reported the government would seek parliamentary approval for a full-scale operation.
As a Nato member Turkey would be challenging its senior alliance partner, the United States which guards Iraq’s external borders.
The US military doesn’t maintain a combat force in the self-governing Kurdish regions of Iraq.
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