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Turkey firmly rules out dialogue with the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, but is granting more cultural and political rights to Kurds in the hope of reducing support for rebels in the poor southeast. But the escalation of violence seriously threatens to derail the reconciliation process, with each attack fueling nationalism and deepening anger on both sides. Police on Tuesday detained dozens of members of a pro-Kurdish party for alleged ties to the rebels in Istanbul and prosecutors launched an investigation into a pro-Kurdish lawmaker, Bengi Yildiz, for publicly calling on the Kurdish people not to send their sons to the fighting, Anatolia said. It is a crime in Turkey to make statements urging people to avoid compulsory military service. The military said on Tuesday that two Kurdish rebels were killed in an overnight clash in the northern province of Gumushane
-- far away from the traditional theater of fighting in the country's southeast. Five other rebels were killed late Monday when they attacked a military unit in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, the military said. One soldier was killed and five other people, including three civilians, were wounded in that attack, it added. The PKK has used northern Iraq as a springboard to stage hit-and-run attacks on Turkish targets in its decades-long campaign for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast. The Turkish military says around 4,000 rebels are based just across the border in Iraq and that about 2,500 operate inside Turkey. Turkish warplanes often have bombed Kurdish rebel hideouts there, and troops have crossed the border to hunt the rebels down.
[Associated
Press;
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