Turkey plans $12 billion infusion for Kurdish region

The initiative is designed to drain support for the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party by improving the lives of the impoverished Kurdish minority, Erdogan said in an interview.

As part of the push, the government will dedicate a state television channel to Kurdish language broadcasting, a measure that Kurds in Turkey have sought for years.

Kurds speak Kurdish, but the Turkish state has imposed severe restrictions on speaking it, arguing that allowing that freedom would strengthen their desire to form a separate state.

"Everyone who has entered Iraq until now will stay for a while and go away, but we will stay," said Erdogan, speaking in his official residence in Ankara, Turkey's capital.

"We have relatives in northern Iraq. And people living there have relatives in our southeastern region. With whom will we have good relations other than with ourselves?"

Turkey, a NATO member and a strong American ally, is a vibrant Muslim democracy that is unique in the Middle East. It has fought the militant group, known as the PKK, in Turkey and Iraq for years to prevent it from establishing a separate Kurdish state.

That fight has put it at odds with the United States, whose strongest allies in the war in Iraq are Kurds. But after an ambush of Turkish troops last fall, the Bush administration agreed to let Turkey strike at the group inside Iraq, and even offered intelligence.

"I can openly and freely say that this short process has been done with the total understanding of Turkey, the United States and the central government of Iraq," Erdogan said.

"But the fight against terrorism is not only this," he added. "It also has a socio- economic part, a psychological part, a cultural part."