Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to hold telephone discussions yesterday with US Vice President Dick Cheney about Turkish soldiers detained in Iraq by US forces, the Turkish government spokesman said early yesterday after a crisis meeting.
Some of the Turkish soldiers detained in northern Iraq reportedly had been released, Erdogan said Saturday of the incident which has provoked a row between Turkey and its NATO ally the US.
But Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul shortly afterwards contradicted this, saying they were being held in Baghdad.
"Some of the soldiers were freed, some are still being held, efforts are continuing" to have the others freed, Erdogan said of the soldiers, who were arrested Friday on suspicion of planning an attack on a Kurdish governor in the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
In the middle of the night, Erdogan held a crisis meeting in the capital Ankara with his military adviser General Koksal Karabay, number two in the foreign ministry Ugur Ziyal and Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, who is also the government spokesman.
"The prime minister will have a conversation at 4:45pm with Dick Cheney concerning our 11 officers and NCOs," Cicek said after the meeting.
"We hope [after the Erdogan-Cheney talks] that there will be no more unacceptable events like this," he added.
Cicek said the Turkish side had informed the American authorities of the "sensitivity" of the affair on Turkish public opinion.
There were conflicting reports of the men's fate.
Gul denied that any of the military personnel had been released, saying they were in the Iraqi capital. He was quoting from a telephone conversation he had with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to the Turkish television news channel NTV.
The seizure of the personnel has provoked a diplomatic row between Turkey and the US, with Turkey threatening unspecified retaliation for the alleged detentions, which as of early Sunday had not been confirmed officially by the US.
Earlier, Erdogan said that it was unclear whether the Turkish troops had been detained by US forces or local Kurdish militias.
Turkey warned it was contemplating retaliation after three officers and eight non-commissioned officers were arrested on Friday in Sulaymaniyah, fiefdom of the Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Hurriyet newspaper reported.
The arrests were carried out on the grounds that "certain Turks were planning to commit an attack on the governor of Kirkuk," Hurriyet said.
About 100 US soldiers stormed the local offices of the Turkish special forces after cutting the telephone lines. The soldiers and six employees were taken to the nearby city of Kirkuk, the daily said.
Ankara could retaliate by increasing its military presence in the region, closing its airspace to US planes flying missions in and out of Iraq, or terminating US access to the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, NTV said.
Erdogan reacted furiously to the US raid, and was reported saying: "This is a repugnant incident that should never have happened."
He accused the US of "behavior unworthy of two allied countries in a coalition," according to Anatolia news agency.
Some reports said that the Habur border post, the sole checkpoint between Turkey and Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, was shut early Saturday.
Official complaints were fast in coming, from Turkish government and military officials, though Gul earlier quoted Powell as saying "the American government is not aware of the event."
Turkish media speculated that the arrests were a clear indication of American unease about Turkey's military presence in the region.
The two US-allied Iraqi Kurdish groups controlling northern Iraq -- Talabani's PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed by Massoud Barzani -- have kept control of much of the region and safeguarded the autonomy they have enjoyed since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
But Turkey is wary of potential Kurdish desires for full independence, which could spark similar aims among its own Kurdish population, and has deployed troops on the Iraq side of the border.
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