‘Sandwich’ Strategy Squeezes Kurd Rebels : Warfare: Two-pronged offensive by Turkish army in north and Iraqi Kurds in south takes big bite out of Marxist group.

The big tanks rumbled along the bleak, treeless highlands near the Turkish border with Iraq, sealing off any escape route for Kurdish rebels trapped by the biggest Turkish offensive against them so far in their eight-year insurgency.

A young Turkish lieutenant flagged down a reporter’s car arriving from northern Iraq, eager for news about a pincers movement by Turkey’s newfound allies, Iraqi Kurdish leaders Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani.

“At last we are going to finish off these terrorists,” he declared with a determination echoed by his sergeant, a Turkish Kurd.

The Turkish army has indeed taken a great cut at the Gordian knot of its Kurdish problem with this “sandwich operation,” started from the south Oct. 4 by thousands of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas and from the north Oct. 12 by what became 15,000 Turks backed by scores of tanks, armored vehicles and hundreds of sorties by Turkish warplanes.

Their target--the Marxist separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)--has suffered grave losses, although a PKK spokesman in London’s Hilton Hotel insisted that it “has gained a victory through its heroic resistance.”

The Turks and Iraqi Kurds have captured many of the PKK’s main camps in high mountains up to 10 miles inside Iraq from the Turkish border, from which the PKK used to launch devastating attacks on Turkish army outposts.

The Turkish General Staff said Thursday that the PKK had lost 4,500 fighters from its regular guerrilla army, estimated by diplomats to number between 5,000 and 10,000. Of these 4,500, it said, 40%--about 1,800 fighters--had been killed, compared with 23 Turkish dead.

In the PKK’s sophisticated networks of caves and camps, the army said it had captured more than 3,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 160 machine guns, 300,000 bullets and 200 tons of food, medicine and other equipment.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders and diplomats in Ankara say they believe that only a few hundred PKK fighters have been killed. But the Iraqi Kurds say 2,500 PKK militants have surrendered so far and that more continue to do so.

In an interview with Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper, Gen. Oktay Karasoy warned the Iraqi Kurds “not to get into any negotiations or secret games. In that case, the Turkish armed forces will continue its operation and will not leave.”

In fact, with most of the fighting in northern Iraq over, Turkish generals talk mainly of withdrawing their forces in the next two weeks. The United States has stressed that Turkey has said the troops will go and that there will be no “buffer zone.”

Turkish officials say the army will hand over areas it captured to Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas. But diplomats say Turkey seems sure to keep some forward posts and an active role in organizing its new allies along the border.

“We don’t have any intention of staying there, but it will be a question of guarantees,” said Turkish Defense Minister Nevzat Ayaz, warning that the next step would be a serious assault on the rebels inside Turkey itself.

Turkey is determined to eradicate the PKK, its chief internal problem. More than 5,100 people have been killed since the PKK launched its armed struggle in 1984 for an independent state for the 20 million Kurds of the Middle East.

The difficulty for Turkey is likely to be that years of repression, denial of cultural rights and ethnic awakening have radicalized the Kurds, who are almost a complete majority in the southeast, where half of the country’s 12 million-strong Kurdish minority live.

Most people have guns. Despite the intimidating presence in the southeast of about 200,000 Turkish troops--about half of the Turkish army, the second-largest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--the PKK is still launching bloody attacks. Nine soldiers were killed in one ambush Friday alone.

“The PKK will never submit and will never surrender,” said the group’s spokesman in Britain. There has been evidence unearthed during the latest offensive that the PKK takes this “no-surrender” policy literally, shooting its wounded prisoners to prevent their falling prisoner to the Turks.

Turkish conservative opinion has hardened during the last year to conclude that military action such as that in the latest offensive in the mountains of northern Iraq is the only solution to Turkey’s Kurdish problem.

But some senior Turkish officials and commentators warn that the army has only won a breathing space and that tackling the PKK inside Turkey will be far harder.