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The 11 Turkish special forces soldiers detained by US forces in northern Iraq have been released, the Anatolian News Agency reported on Sunday.
The soldiers were released in Baghdad and they will stay in the capital overnight before being sent early Monday to the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, where they had been captured on Friday.
The releasing came after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a telephone call with US Vice President Dick Cheney earlier Sunday and another call between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.
Nearly 100 US soldiers detained 11 Turkish soldiers on Friday in Sulaymaniyah, the fiefdom of the Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
According to Local media, the 11 soldiers were detained in a raid by US forces on suspicion that "certain Turks were planning to commit an attack on the governor of Kirkuk," in northern Iraq.
Turkish soldiers have been in the region to prevent infiltration of members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting a separatist war for autonomy in eastern and southeastern Turkey since 1984.
(Xinhua News Agency July 7, 2003)
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