TURKEY:Helicopter gunships bombed Kurdish rebel positions in southeast Turkey yesterday and the government flexed its military muscle with big national day parades and flypasts in major cities.
Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops, backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft along the Iraqi border in readiness for a possible large-scale incursion to hunt down 3,000 guerrillas who use the region as a base.
The White House said it was pressing Turkey and Iraq to keep up talks aimed at averting a major cross-border operation.
Witnesses said they saw helicopters firing rockets and bombing suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) positions in the mountains in Turkey's border province of Sirnak yesterday to prevent dozens of PKK rebels from crossing into northern Iraq.
Two soldiers were killed during the Sirnak operation, army sources said. Another soldier was killed in Tunceli province, hundreds of kilometres from the border, by a landmine, a device favoured by the PKK.
As Turkey prepares for a cross-border offensive its military has also launched an extensive operation against suspected PKK positions in several provinces in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
On Sunday, army sources said 20 PKK guerrillas had been killed in the Tunceli campaign involving 8,000 soldiers.
In Ankara warplanes swooped, tanks rolled and troops marched past President Abdullah Gul, prime minister Tayyip Erdogan and senior generals in a display of military might designed to stress Turkish unity and resolve.
Turkey has the second biggest armed forces in NATO.
Istanbul, Turkey's largest city and its business hub, also staged a military parade and flag-waving patriots clapped loudly as tanks drove past. Many carried pictures of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey in 1923.
Nationalist fervour has been rising, and the funerals last week of the 12 soldiers killed by the PKK turned into huge anti-PKK rallies that greatly increased the pressure on the government to send troops into northern Iraq.
Newspapers delivered a strongly patriotic message yesterday.
"Turkey is on the threshold of historic decisions," said the Vatan daily. "We are passing through a critical period. And in these days, as Ataturk showed us many years ago, we need unity and solidarity," it said in a front-page commentary.