American Soldiers Arrests Turkish Troops in Iraq

"It's a totally ugly incident, it's something that shouldn't have happened," said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has contacted US Secretary of State Colin Powell over the issue, the prime minister said.

Reports in the Turkish media suggest the special forces troops were detained in the city of Sulaymaniyah on Friday on suspicion of planning an attack on a regional governor.

Around 100 American soldiers are said to have stormed the barracks being used by the Turkish troops, arresting 11 soldiers and six civilians and taking them to the regional capital of Kirkuk.

Resentment


American officials both in Baghdad and Ankara said they had no information about the incident, the Associated Press reports.

Relations between Turkey and the US soured before the American-led war on Iraq when the Turkish parliament refused to allow US forces to be stationed on its territory.

The BBC's Ankara correspondent, Jonny Dymond, says northern Iraq is still perceived by Turkey as part of its sphere of influence.

Several thousand Turkish troops have remained within the region, ostensibly to keep track of the movements of the paramilitary Kurdish group, the PKK, but their presence there is resented by the Kurds who run the area.



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