Turkey held a emergency meeting on border security at Cankaya Presidential Palace in Ankara on Sunday under the leadership of President Abdullah Gul, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

 

The meeting came as the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) has increased its attacks on government troops in southeastern Turkey.

 

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier in the day that the meeting will decide next steps against the PKK terrorist attacks.

 

Prime Minister Erdogan, Chief of General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek, Interior Minister Besir Atalay, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin, Force Commanders and some other high-ranking officials are attending the emergency meeting.

 

Earlier on Sunday, the PKK launched an attack in Daglica region of Yuksekove town in Hakkari province in southeastern Turkey near the Iraqi border, killing 12 government soldiers and wounding 16 others.

 

The Turkish military said in a statement on Sunday afternoon that its troops had killed 32 militants of the PKK in clashes following the earlier PKK attack against its soldiers.

 

Turkish parliament has approved a motion backing the cross-border military operations targeting the PKK based in northern Iraq.

 

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

 

(Xinhua News Agency October 22, 2007)