Kurdish rebels have stepped up attacks in Turkey following the imposition of a death sentence on their leader Abdullah Ocalan. The rebel attacks have killed one person and injured more than 30 in bomb attacks since Sunday.
Meanwhile the Turkish army, which says it is close to a military victory over Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), said yesterday it had sent thousands of troops into north Iraq and Turkey's south-eastern mountains in pursuit of the rebels.
A suspected rebel suicide bomber wearing a black religious veil killed herself and injured 14 others yesterday when she detonated explosives she was carrying outside a police station in the southern city of Adana, Anatolian news agency said. Witnesses said the woman had made a victory sign before the explosion. Three civilians were among the injured.
Officials also said guerrillas had planted a bomb in a rubbish bin in an Istanbul park that killed one person and injured more than 20 late on Sunday.
The Istanbul Governor, Mr Erol Cakir, said the attack was in retaliation for Ocalan's sentence. The governor later held an emergency security meeting with senior police and army officials to discuss security measures.
Istanbul, Turkey's commercial centre, bore the brunt of a PKK campaign after Ocalan's capture in February. Masked raiders lobbed petrol bombs almost daily at buses, cafes and shops, and 13 people died when petrol bombs set fire to a department store.
After Ocalan was sentenced last week, the PKK threatened violence nationwide, emphasising strategic economic targets.
As if to confirm those fears, the PKK was quoted by the German-based DEM news agency as claiming responsibility for a machinegun attack last week in the eastern town of Elazig which the PKK said was aimed at a training centre for far-right Turkish nationalists. Turkish security forces said a cafe had been attacked and that four people had died, while DEM said five had died.
The attack was the first since Ocalan was convicted for leading the PKK's armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in south-east Turkey. The insurgency has cost nearly 30,000 lives.
Meanwhile, Ocalan's lawyers filed a formal request for the court of appeals to reconsider the death sentence. It was unclear whether the court would take up the case before an impending recess. If the verdict is upheld, parliament and then the president must decide whether or not to endorse it.
Police said they had defused another bomb on Saturday in Istanbul's Beyoglu district, an entertainment and business area.
They said it was of the same type as the one which had exploded in the park, and that if it had gone off it would have destroyed the building and killed many people.
Security officials in the mainly Kurdish south-east said a mass army offensive into north Iraq, where the rebels use bases to launch attacks into south-east Turkey, had begun on Friday. Turkish troops were aided by peshmerga fighters belonging to Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), an Iraqi Kurdish faction allied with Ankara, a Turkish official said.
Officials also said a large operation within Turkey on Mount Cudi, a rebel stronghold, was continuing.
In three other incidents, landmines planted by PKK guerrillas in the mainly Kurdish southeast, killed a driver and wounded 13 people.