Turkish Troops Clamp Down on Kurdish Rebels

By Ivan Watson

Published June 12, 2007 at 1:02 PM CDT

Turkish armored personnel carriers patrol a road in southeastern Turkey. The military has declared much of southeast Turkey a "special security zone," a term locals say is the equivalent of martial law.

There were angry scenes at the funerals of Turkish soldiers killed in clashes this week with Kurdish separatists known as the PKK.

Mourners demanded the government take harsher measures against the rebels. Since last spring, the Turkish military has openly called for cross-border operations to pursue PKK fighters that take shelter in the mountains of neighboring Iraq.

In one village, a Kurdish man, who only gives his first name as Mahmut, said the sound of battle is becoming increasingly common.

"There is no day passing without conflict and dying here," he said.

Like other ethnic Kurds in Sirnak, Mahmut describes the Turkish troops deployed there as occupiers that evicted him from his village a decade ago – and never let him return.

Mahmut says the current fighting reminds him of the 1990s when the guerilla war between PKK rebels and the Turkish military was at its worst.