THOUSANDS of Turkish troops backed by tanks, planes and helicopter gunships poured into northern Iraq yesterday in an unprecedented combined operation with an Iraqi Kurdish faction against Turkish Kurdish separatist fighters.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that elements of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) had launched an operation in the early hours against units of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an independent state or autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984.
A foreign ministry spokesman, Mr Sermet Atacanli, said: "After a request from the KDP for help, the Turkish armed forces have been providing air and artillery support and Turkish troops have entered northern Iraq.
The Defence Minister, Mr Turhan Tayan, said Turkey was giving what amounted to "humanitarian aid" to the KDP and, as soon as the operation was over, the troops would pull out.
Baghdad straightaway condemned "this new Turkish military aggression against the sovereignty of Iraq and its territorial integrity" and called on Ankara "to withdraw its invading troops from inside Iraqi territory immediately".
Western diplomats in the Turkish capital were sceptical of the government's claims of limited support for a KDP operation. One described the KDP's involvement as a "fig leaf" of cover for a Turkish offensive.
There had been no serious clashes between the KDP and PKK in the region since five months of fighting in 1995. The KDP had also allied briefly with President Saddam Hussein's forces last August to oust a rival Iraqi Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), from the regional capital, Erbil. That led to US bombing raids on southern Iraq and two months of faction fighting before a ceasefire was established.
Tens of thousands of Turkish troops had been massing on the border with Iraq for nearly a month. But the military insisted they wanted to prevent PKK infiltration rather than to cross over.
Sources in the region said as many as 50,000 Turkish troops had crossed the Iraqi border at several points, backed by tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships and F16 fighter bombers. This would make it a bigger operation than that of March 1995, when 35,000 soldiers took part in a sixweek operation against PKK bases in northern Iraq.
The military recently claimed to have severely limited the PKK threat in southeastern Turkey. A 10 year old state of emergency there was eased last November.