Turkey Warns Neighbors to Rein In Kurds : Rebellion: Prime minister’s remarks carry an implicit threat of retaliation if Syria, Iran, Iraq and Armenia don’t crack down.

Deeply frustrated by the spreading violence of Kurdish separatists, Turkey warned neighboring Syria, Iran, Iraq and Armenia on Thursday that it might retaliate if they do not clamp down on alleged guerrilla activity on their territory.

“It is time for our neighbors to show they are together with us . . . to see who is our friend. There is no in-between,” said Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller. She added that if Turkey’s neighbors do not cooperate, “we will do what we have to do.”

The implicit threat was part of Ciller’s first statement to the media on her 4-month-old government’s strategy to contain the Kurdish revolt, a battle in which President Clinton promised to cooperate during Ciller’s visit to Washington last month. As she spoke in an Istanbul hotel ballroom, rebel sympathizers showed the reach of their power by launching near-simultaneous attacks on Turkish embassies, banks and offices in several cities in five European countries.

The attacks in Europe, which supported Turkish and U.S. assertions that the Kurdistan Workers Party uses terrorism, underlined the urgency of Ciller’s task. Officials estimate that at least 10,100 troops, civilians and guerrillas have been killed in the 9-year-old conflict, many in fighting in largely Kurdish southeastern Turkey this year.

And a number of foreigners are being held hostage by the Marxist group, including a tourist from New York.

Ciller gave no details of what Turkey might do to its neighbors but claimed that Turkey has evidence that Armenia has now been added to the list of states through which rebels are known to operate.

Turkey is home to about 12 million Kurds, a non-Turkish, Indo-European people also living in adjacent areas of Iran, Iraq and Syria--places where Kurdish unrest is also a frequent phenomenon. In Iran on Thursday, rebel Kurds said they captured 60 soldiers and government agents, including an army major, when they seized a stretch of the Tehran-Baghdad highway near the border with Iraq.

The nations that Ciller cited have cooperated with Turkey against Kurdish rebels in the past, but wariness of Turkey’s growing regional ambitions has strained relations. The Turkish prime minister’s warning to her neighbors was her country’s sharpest yet, but the options for Turkey, a NATO ally, are limited.

An attack on Armenia risks retribution from Russia; previous cross-border raids on Iraq have had mixed results, and talk in the Turkish media of reducing the flow of Euphrates River water to Syria could anger Damascus.

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The second pillar of Ciller’s four-point strategy is a panoply of harsh anti-terrorist laws that reportedly will include sweeping limits on news coverage and restrict human rights. “Once we have them enacted, militants who have been captured by security teams will not be able to go back to their old actions or be released,” she said.

Ciller also discussed the idea of a mobile 10,000-member force of specially trained police and army volunteers to go into the mountains, “where they will live just like the terrorists.” About 6,000 volunteers are already in training, she said, and will be deployed in January.

A fourth stage of Ciller’s new policy would be an economic and social development package worth 1.5 trillion Turkish lira ($1 billion). But Ciller warned, “There can be no investment until and unless security and calm are restored.”

* ANTI-TURKISH VIOLENCE: One person died as violence hit Turkish targets in Europe. A20