Turkey was preparing to send troops and tanks into northern Iraq yesterday as the Government came under intense pressure to avenge the deaths of Turkish soldiers in attacks by Kurdish rebels.

Risking a major diplomatic row with Washington and the European Union, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, said that he had ordered preparations for a possible military strike and might seek parliament’s approval as early as today.

Turkish combat aircraft and helicopter gunships attacked suspected Kurdish rebel positions near Iraq and police detained 20 Kurds with suspected rebel links at a border crossing. A Turkish policeman was killed and seven people wounded when a police vehicle was the target of a bomb attack in the southeast of the country.

Yesterday’s frenzied activity came only days after the killing of 13 government troops in an ambush that outraged the country and marked the latest in a spate of intensified attacks by the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

At a meeting on the attacks this week, chaired by Mr Erdogan, senior Turkish civilian and military authorities decided to consider “every kind of legal, political and economic measure, including an incursion across the border”.

Parliament would still have to authorise any military action and the final decision rests with the Government. The weekend ambush and the killing of another two soldiers in a separate attack have ignited the fuse of nationalistic anger in Turkey.

Turkey has repeatedly threatened an incursion to eradicate the PKK’s northern Iraqi bases unless the United States and Iraqi authorities clamp down first.

Until now, though, Mr Erdogan has appeared reluctant to pursue an act that could result in a military quagmire and cause serious diplomatic problems. The authorities in Washington and Iraq, already struggling to control insurgent violence, are unwilling to condone anything that could cause unrest in the country’s most stable region. Turkey would also probably prefer to do without the complication of a military operation while it is seeking to kickstart membership talks with the European Union.

The public outrage has become intense. News of the latest attacks was imparted on blackened front pages, while the funerals for the soldiers were spread across several pages, which showed a collage of coffins draped with red flags, tearful mothers , and angry mourners clenching their fists. “The day we say goodbye to our martyrs the Government has given the military a blank cheque for a cross-border operation,” wrote Hurriyet, the mass-selling daily newspaper, above the pictures.

As talk of the operation increased, the Turkish stock market, afraid of the consequences of military action, abruptly stopped in its tracks after reaching record highs last week.

A few lone voices called for calm: “Yes, our hearts are bursting with sorrow, but cool-headed leaders should prevent Turkey from falling into a terrorist trap,” said the veteran columnist Hasan Cemal, urging a combination of military action and political reforms to tackle terrorism. “Above all, we should stay away from going into northern Iraq.”

The PKK has been fighting for more than 20 years in southeast Turkey in a war that has claimed nearly 40,000 lives. Large-scale incursions by Turkey into northern Iraq in 1995 and 1997, involving an estimated 35,000 and 50,000 troops respectively, failed to dislodge the rebels.

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