"Once we were friends," Murat Karayilan told an Israeli reporter, adding though that since Israel and Turkey began forging closer military ties in the 1980s, "you have been considered here to be among those who systematically assist in our oppression and eradication."

The Haaretz daily printed excerpts of the interview, which was conducted at a PKK base in northern Iraq and is to be broadcast in full by Israel's privately-owned Channel 2 television.

Karayilan said he would have expected Israel to identify with the Kurds.

"After all, you, who have experienced the Holocaust, massacres, expulsions and persecutions, now see our people, the Kurdish people, experiencing the same fate," he said.

"Everyone in the area -- Syrians, Turks and Iranians -- wants and is trying to destroy us, and you, of all people, are the ones providing them with the weapons to destroy us.

"I wonder if Israelis are at all aware of the use that is made of the weapons and training they provide to Turkey," he said.

Turkish army chief General Ilker Basbug confirmed in June that troops had begun using Israel's Heron unmanned aircraft to monitor Kurdish rebel movements in neighbouring Iraq.

Turkish media had speculated that the drones were idle because Israeli operators left Turkey amid a crisis in relations between the two countries over Israel's May 31 raid on Gaza-bound aid ships in which nine Turks were killed.

A PKK spokesman said at the time that the army chief's announcement showed the extent of Turkey's dependence on Israel and the United States to prosecute its 26-year-old war with the rebels.

The rebel group is blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by both the European Union and the United States.