NATO Sec-Gen arrives in Ankara to urge restraint against Iraq-based PKK rebels

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also expressed solidarity with Turkey’s fight against terrorism.
Iraqi Shiite radical Moqtada Sadr this week warned Ankara to stop shelling N. Iraqi villages where Kurdish rebels are hiding out.
Sadr vowed to defend the people of Kurdistan. The Iraqi government made a formal protest Saturday. Sunday, a bomb blast outside a clothing ship in Istanbul wounded 14 people.
debkafile‘s military sources traced the Turkish-Iraq crisis as it evolved over nine days:
On June 6, debkafile‘s military sources reported that several thousand troops had entered N. Iraq, the first wave of a Turkish incursion, with more to come.
The Turkish military called on the people to work together against the rebel PKK Kurdish Workers Party which has stepped up terrorist operations in Turkey.
The General Staff in Ankara Thursday imposed three-month martial law on its border region with Iraq and closed three districts to civilian flights Siirt, Sirnak, where Turkish forces fighting Kurdish PKK rebels are concentrated, and Hakkari.
A major campaign was declared to crush the separatist rebellion touching off fierce battles between the Turkish army and Kurdish PKK rebels. A Turkish Black Hawk was shot down over Iraq and several tanks hit.
The PKK Kurdish Workers Party proved to be armed for a major Turkish operation with anti-tank and shoulder-borne missiles for shooting down Turkish warplanes and helicopters.
Ankara then blacked out the scale of operation against the Kurdish rebels on both sides of the border and the scope of the Turkish incursion of Iraq.
June 7, debkafile‘s military sources reported:
PKK bands, who stole earlier into southeastern Turkey from Iraq and locally, are hitting Turkish concentrations behind the lines and impeding their thrust into Iraqi Kurdistan to destroy rebel hideouts. The Turkish army is therefore fighting on two fronts: in the southeastern Turkish Gabar, Cudi and Bakok mountains and River Cehennem, as well as in northern Iraq.
On June 2, debkafile reported US troops had withdrawn from northern Iraq and passed responsibility for the region’s security to the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga.