Turkey sent a fleet of tanks, troops and armoured vehicles to its shared border with Iraq on Wednesday, raising speculation the military may cross over to attack Kurdish rebels accused of terrorism in Turkey.

Turkish trucks loaded with military equipment are seen heading toward the border with Iraq, near the southeastern city of Nusaybin, on Wednesday.
(Associated Press)

The build-up of Turkish reinforcements along the remote Turkish-Iraqi border has been the subject of a heated debate with its NATO ally, the United States. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been pressuring Washington to destroy bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, but there has so far been no action from the U.S., he said.

"Our patience has run out," Erdogan said Wednesday. "The necessary steps will be taken when needed."

Turkey's special envoy to Iraq, Oguz Celikkol, visited Iraq on Wednesday to reiterate the demands for Iraqi and U.S. forces to crack down on the PKK. The separatist group, which has been designated a terrorist organization by both the U.S. and Turkey, seeks to establish a separate Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey.

Celikkol told CNN-Turk television before the meeting that the PKK "must be eliminated as a problem between Iraq and Turkey," adding that a cross-border Turkish operation was not off the table, but "our expectation is that this issue is resolved before it comes to that point."

The matter of how to deal with the rebels puts the U.S. in a tight position. If U.S. forces — who are stretched thin across Iraq — take action against the PKK, they risk alienating Iraqi Kurds, who are the most pro-American group in the region. If they don't, they risk seeing increased tensions — and possibly worse — between two powerful rivals.

The Turkish government has blamed the PKK for 30,000 deaths since the group took up arms in 1984. Last week, a suspected rebel killed six people in a suicide bomb attack in the Turkish capital of Ankara, and a bomb in the southeast killed six Turkish soldiers.

The Turkish military said it routinely reinforces the border with Iraq in the summer in order to prevent guerrillas from infiltrating.

About 3,800 rebels are believed to be across the border in Iraq and up to 2,300 may be operating inside Turkey, the military said.

With files from the Associated Press