Turkey Ends Raid on Rebel Kurds in Northern Iraq

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Sunday that Turkish forces had ended an incursion into northern Iraq to strike at separatist Kurdish rebels loyal to jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The operation was designed to further weaken the guerrillas and coincided with an official call on Ocalan’s forces to surrender to Turkish authorities under a planned partial amnesty to be passed by parliament after elections in April.

Thousands of Turkish troops, backed by warplanes and helicopter gunships, poured into the Kurdish-held enclave following the capture of Ocalan in Kenya last week.

Turkey regularly mounts such incursions to hit the Kurdistan Workers Party in the remote mountain bases from which it campaigns for self-rule in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey.

Iraqi authorities demanded that Turkey immediately withdraw its forces from the region, which Baghdad has not controlled since the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Turkey says it has all but defeated the rebels. On Saturday, the Turkish government urged the guerrillas to turn themselves in to benefit from the planned partial amnesty.

Ecevit said there was cross-party support for a law that would give lighter sentences or even immunity to Kurdish rebels who surrendered. The proposal would also include vocational education to ease the guerrillas back into society.