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| The coffin of Vedat Kutluca, who was killed by Kurdish rebels, is carried by gendarmes [AFP] |
Iraq has pledged to help Turkey in its attempt to tackle fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) who are based in northern Iraq.
Hoshiyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister, signalled Baghdad's broad support for Turkey, after meeting Ali Babacan, his Turkish counterpart.
Government and military officials attended the funeral ceremonies, held in 11 provinces across the country.
There were also demonstrations aginst the PKK in other cities.
As newspapers reported clashes between pro and anti-PKK students and other sporadic acts of violence, Turkish President Abdullah Gul appealed for public calm and restraint.
"However great the destruction caused by terrorism, the struggle against terrorism can be waged by legal means and only by the state," Gul said in a statement.
The government, keen to avoid further inflaming public opinion, imposed a ban on all media broadcasts concerning the deaths of the 12 soldiers, whose pictures and life stories have featured prominently in the newspapers.
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"I think it is pretty difficult to say troops shouldn't [invade] when the Turkish soldiers are being killed, and their villages attacked"
Celtic, Karlstad, Sweden
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RTUK, the state body that oversees television and radio in Turkey, said the ban was necessary because broadcasting news about the deaths "hurts the psychology of society and public order and creates an image of the security forces as weak".
Until the ban, television channels had led news bulletins with footage of grieving wives, mothers, fathers and children.
Iraqi offer
In Baghdad Zebari assured his Turkish counterpart "that the Iraqi government will actively help Turkey to overcome this menace".
"We agreed that the position we should take is a common one to fight terrorism. We will not allow any party, including the PKK, to poison our bilateral relations," Zebari said speaking at a joint news conference with Babacan in the Iraqi capital.
Zebari did not outline what form Iraqi support for Turkey would take.
"We will co-operate with the Turkish government, to solve the border problems and the terrorism that Turkey is facing through direct dialogue," he said.
Babacan said that "politics, dialogue, diplomacy, culture and economy" were the measures to deal with the current conflict.
He is expected to meet Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, and Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, during his visit.
"We do not want to sacrifice our cultural and economic relations with Iraq for the sake of a terror organisation," he said, in reference to the PKK.
However in London Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, said his country will consider trade sanctions against Iraq.
"We may impose some sanctions with respect to some goods we export to Iraq," Erdogan told an investors' conference.
He had earlier said Turkish forces were prepared for military operations against the PKK.
"Right now we are in a waiting stance but Iraq should know we can use the [parliamentary] mandate for a cross-border operation at any time," Erdogan told a joint news conference with Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister.
Brown condemned the PKK attacks on Turkish forces and said he had offered the help of Britain's counter-terrorism unit to Ankara.
Kurdish defence