Turkish Jets Strike Kurdish Rebels

ISTANBUL — Turkish warplanes attacked Kurdish rebel camps in northern Iraq on Wednesday, the Turkish military said, acknowledging its second cross-border airstrike this week and its third in recent days.

The warplanes shelled eight locations in the Zap region of northern Iraq, across Turkey’s southeastern border, the army said in a statement. It gave no information on any casualties or injuries.

The latest raid came as Kurdish politicians in the Turkish Parliament renewed calls for a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the Iraqi Kurds, a separatist group called the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K. The Turkish Kurds’ Democratic Society Party was the only group to vote against a measure that passed in October authorizing troops to be sent into northern Iraq to confront the rebels.

Since then, the Turkish military has carried out repeated assaults. The United States, which supports Turkey’s right to self-defense against the Kurdish separatist group, has provided Turkey with intelligence on the rebels’ movements.

The Turks claim that at least 150 P.K.K. fighters were killed in the two earlier raids this month, at least one of which was backed up by shelling by ground forces. However, Kurdish leaders say there were only a handful of casualties, including several civilians. Americans officials in Baghdad on Wednesday declined to comment on the disparities in casualty counts.

Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, an American military spokesman, said that efforts to get accurate information were being made, but were difficult. “We don’t have forces there that are the arbiters of the ground truth,” he said. “The military unit conducting the operation is the Turkish forces and they are in this case the arbiters of ground truth.”

The United States is in a delicate situation since Turkey is a crucial American ally. But the United States does not want to strain relations with the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq and the Iraqi government, which have objected to the Turkish attacks. The P.K.K., which has sought an autonomous state in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast since the 1980s, is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Philip T. Reeker, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Baghdad, reiterated the American position on the Turkish military operation. “We made clear of course that we would be concerned about anything that leads to civilian casualties or destabilization in northern Iraq,” he said. “So we will continue to watch the situation closely, and the U.S., Iraq and Turkey continue to have common interests in seeing that the activities of the P.K.K. are ended.”

According to many Turkish media reports here, the locations attacked by the Turkish military were empty because the rebels retreated deeper into Iraqi territory in anticipation of the raids.

“More than the mathematical results, the psychological results are important in this war of propaganda,” Ali Nihat Ozcan, a political analyst based in Ankara, said. “There is an improvement in Turkish—American relations, which sends a strong message to the P.K.K. and, on the other hand, pleases and relaxes the Turkish public opinion.”

At least three Kurdish political parties have been closed by Turkey’s Constitutional Court since the 1990s, mainly on charges of inciting ethnic separation in the country, which has around 15 million Kurds.

Earlier this year, the public prosecutor brought a motion to close the Democratic Society Party before the Constitutional Court, accusing it of being the P.K.K.’s political wing.

Nurettin Demirtas, the party’s chairman, was recently arrested and is being kept in military jail on charges of forging a medical report to avoid mandatory service with the Turkish military.

The P.K.K., which claims to have around 3,500 rebels active in the Iraqi mountains, has threatened retaliation against the Turkish military on some Kurdish Web sites.

“Maybe during winter an appropriate response is not possible, but they shouldn’t forget that when leaves turn green, the dreams that the Turkish state has been dreaming will turn into a nightmare,” a commander in the mountains was quoted as saying by the Firat News Agency on Monday.

In Istanbul, seven people were injured on Tuesday in a remote neighborhood when a bomb placed in a garbage bin exploded, Istanbul police said. No organization has yet claimed responsibility.

On Monday, about 7.5 pounds of explosives were found in an abandoned bag in Sisli, a busy Istanbul district. The police said they caught the owner of the bag, a young man, but no further information has been made public.

New Year celebrations in Taksim, the busy center of Istanbul, were canceled as a show of respect for military personnel taking part in the operations against the P.K.K, a city municipality statement said Wednesday.

Security measures in urban areas are often intensified during heavy fighting as in the past rebels have crossed the border from Iraq to strike at civilian locations, especially in western Turkey.

Damien Cave contributed reporting from Baghdad.

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