Kurdish rebels free 8 Turkish soldiers

ISTANBUL (Turkey)—Kurdish rebels released eight Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq on Sunday two weeks after they were captured in a deadly ambush that intensified pressure on the Turkish government to attack the guerrillas in Iraq.
The release comes on the eve of a meeting between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Bush in Washington to agree on measures against the rebels, and avert a cross-border offensive into a relatively stable part of Iraq.
But Turkey was unlikely to soften its demands for tough action against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party rebels, known as the PKK. Turkey has ruled out talks with the PKK, and has dismissed past overtures by the rebels as attempts to improve their image or undercut Turkish military and political pressure.
The eight Turkish soldiers were handed over to Iraqi officials, who then delivered them to U.S. military personnel for transfer to Turkish authorities, according to the U.S. State Department. They arrived in Turkey later Sunday. The PKK is believed to have several mountain hideouts along the Iraq-Turkey border.
Turkey wants Washington to take specific measures to stop the group from using the ungoverned border region as a staging area for attacks in its decades-long war for political autonomy for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack applauded the efforts of the Iraqi government to win the release of the soldiers and urged “continued, deepened, and immediate cooperation between Iraq and Turkey in combatting the PKK.”
“We reiterate our condemnation of the PKK as a terrorist organization, and call upon the PKK to cease its terrorist actions and unconditionally lay down its arms,” he said.
Fatma Kurtulan, one of three Turkish Kurd lawmakers who traveled to northern Iraq to help negotiate the soldiers’ release, told The Associated Press it was an emotional scene when the men were freed Sunday morning.
“I couldn’t hold my tears,” she said by telephone. “They were very happy. They all told us how well they were treated... They thanked us over and over.”
The soldiers were seized in an Oct. 21 ambush inside Turkish territory that left 12 other soldiers dead.
The PKK had said the soldiers were held in line with the Geneva Conventions’ guidelines on the treatment of prisoners of war, underlining the rebels’ efforts to gain legitimacy on an international stage. That campaign faltered years ago when the United States and other Western countries declared it a terrorist organization.
The soldiers’ release came after a weekend summit in Istanbul, where Turkish and American diplomats urged Iraqi officials to rein in Kurdish rebels.
“I am really happy, of course, I don’t know what to say,” said Fehmi Salman, minutes after talking with his soldier son Fuat Basoda by telephone from a Turkish air base in southeastern Diyarbakir province. “I’m happy that my son is free.”
Fuad Hussein, a spokesman for the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, told reporters that Kurdish officials had pressed the PKK to release the soldiers, describing the move as a “humanitarian issue.”
“From the start, the leadership of Kurdistan tried to free the soldiers not because of any pressure or request by others, but because of faith that this operation must come to an end with the soldiers returning back safely to their homes and country,” he told reporters in Irbil, Iraq.
The ambush occurred four days after the Turkish Parliament authorized the government to deploy troops across the border in Iraq, following escalating fighting between the PKK and Turkish military.
Rebel assaults against Turkish positions over the last month have left 47 dead, including 35 soldiers, according to government and media reports.
Nearly 40,000 people have died since the rebels launched their first armed attack against a military unit in 1984.—Agencies