Turkey asks Iraq, US to hand over Kurdish rebels: report

(AFP) – 11 July 2010

ANKARA — Turkey has asked Iraq, the United States and Iraq’s Kurdish administration to hand over nearly 250 Kurdish rebels operating from rear bases in Iraq, the Hurriyet daily reported Saturday.

The list of 248 includes rebel commanders such as Murat Karayilan, Cemil Bayik and Duran Kalkan, and Ankara wants the handover to be “as soon as possible,” the newspaper said, quoting unnamed senior Turkish officials.

Turkey has also mooted a joint military operation “if necessary,” Hurriyet said.

“The net is tightening,” an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

According to experts, there are some 2,000 Kurdish rebels holed up in northern Iraq from where they stage attacks on Turkish territory.

However, Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for Iraqi Kurdistan’s peshmerga fighters, could not confirm that the list had been handed over.

“These names are not those of people living officially in the (Kurdistan autonomous) region. They live in Turkey where they undertake their criminal activities,” Yawar told AFP.

“The Kurdistan government can’t arrest them because they are not in the region… We are not part of the problem. We want the problem to be solved peacefully,” he said.

Peshmerga are former Kurdish guerrillas who fought against the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein and led a campaign for autonomy for the Iraqi Kurdish minority in northern parts of the country.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — considered a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community — has been waging a 25-year-old campaign for Kurdish self-rule that has claimed some 45,000 lives.

The PKK has significantly escalated attacks against Turkish targets after jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan said in May that he was abandoning efforts for peace with Turkey and the rebels called off a unilateral truce last month.

Three soldiers and 12 PKK militants were killed in clashes Tuesday.

Turkish General Ilker Basbug, the chief of general staff, last week strongly criticised Iraq’s Kurdish administration for failing to take action against PKK rebels.