Turkey: Security forces kill 23 PKK Kurdish militants in two-day crackdown near Syrian border

Turkish security forces have killed 23 fighters from the PKK, the Kurdistan's Worker's Party, over the course of a two-day operation near the country's borders with Iraq and Syria in Cizre and Silopi.

Ankara has introduced a curfew in the Kurdish south-east, deploying 10,000 troops to crackdown on the PKK, which has waged a decades-long war on the Turkish state.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pledged on Tuesday to prevent the PKK "spreading the fire" to Turkey by imposing control in towns, as has been the case in the mountains where the Kurdish separatist were active in the past, Reuters news agency reported.

Tensions between Turkish communities and ethnic Kurds have reignited in Turkey as Kurdish fighters have formed a vanguard in the fight against the Islamic State (Isis). Prior to rise of IS (Daesh) in Syria, a rapprochement had been in the works to resolve 40 years of Turkey-PKK conflict.

However, Turkey's war against Kurds in Syria, and particularly their indifference to the suffering of Kurds in Kobane, has led to a backlash. Politically, the Kurds have abandoned Turkey's ruling AK party returning to the moderate pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party and the PKK.

Kurdish politicians in Turkey have said 200,000 people have been displaced in the in recent months as a result of conflict, saying the Erdogan government is in the course of waging a war against the country's ethnic Kurds.