ISTANBUL — Syrian security officials have detained 400 people suspected of links to the Kurdish separatist group P.K.K., the state-run Anatolian news agency reported on Thursday.

In a sign of growing cooperation with Turkey, Syrian forces began operations in Damascus and four other cities in a crackdown on members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K., suspected of “being members of a terrorist organization, forcefully collecting money, attempting to divide Syrian land in efforts to form a separate state and inciting ethnic and religious separation among Kurds,” the report said.

Turkish officials said they were waiting for more information on the detentions.

“As far as we heard, Syrian security officials started these operations about two weeks ago,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “At this stage, we need further feedback from Syrian authorities to confirm whether these detentions were directly P.K.K. related.”

Cooperation between Syria and Turkey has improved as Turkey’s relations with Israel have deteriorated since the end of May, when nine Turkish citizens were killed during an Israeli raid on an aid flotilla trying to reach Gaza.

For more than 30 years, the government in Damascus has been accused of allowing P.K.K. rebels to stage attacks into Turkey from Syrian soil. Tensions began easing only after the Syrian authorities expelled the P.K.K. leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1998.

The Syrian operation took place as military officials said that Turkey had killed 12 P.K.K. rebels in eastern Turkey. Two Turkish soldiers and three civilian guards were also killed in the clashes near Siirt, in southeastern Turkey.

P.K.K. violence has been escalating in Turkey, a development that the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims is a reaction to new efforts to expand political and cultural rights for the 12 million Kurds in Turkey.

The government’s initiatives have fallen short of Kurdish demands, which include education in the Kurdish language, constitutional recognition of Kurdish identity and amnesty for P.K.K. rebels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/world/europe/02turkey.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print