Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a fresh appeal to Iraqi Kurds to take action against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whose militants -- reportedly sneaking from camps in the mountains of northern Iraq -- carried out the bloody attack on the outpost near the frontier Friday.

"There are measures to be taken against the (PKK) hideouts. We are expecting positive action on the ground," Erdogan said in Armutlu, a village near Ankara, where he attended the funeral ceremony of one of the slain soldiers.

Senior officials will meet Thursday to discuss further measures against the PKK, he said.

Erdogan, who cut short an overseas trip and returned home Saturday, joined an estimated crowd of 2,000 at the Armutlu funeral where mourners shouted anti-PKK slogans and demanded the execution of the group's leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence since 1999.

"The martyrs are immortal, the motherland is indivisible," the crowd chanted as soldiers carried the coffin, wrapped in a Turkish flag, on their shoulders.

In southeastern Turkey, where the attack took place, the army moved soldiers and equipment to border regions, Anatolia news agency reported.

Helicopters flew reconnaissance flights over routes used by the PKK and soldiers positioned howitzers in the mountains, it said.

Grief for the victims and anger against the PKK also poured out at the other funeral ceremonies, held in nine provinces, including one in Eskisehir, which was attended by President Abdullah Gul.

"Damn the PKK, the martyrs are immortal," roared the crowd in the southeastern province of Siirt, Anatolia reported.

"Turks and Kurds are brothers," they chanted.

Television stations assessed their numbers at about 10,000.

There were emotional scenes in Diyarbakir, the main city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, where one of the soldiers -- reportedly an ethnic Kurd -- was buried late Saturday as weeping relatives condemned the violence, the CNN-Turk news channel reported.

The PKK rebels attacked the outpost in the border province of Hakkari under cover of heavy weapons fire from neighbouring northern Iraq, killing 15 soldiers.

Twenty-three rebels were killed in the ensuing fighting during which Turkish forces responded with artillery fire and attack helicopters pounded rebel positions.

Artillery units and fighter jets also struck a group of rebels inside Iraq, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the attacked station, the army said Saturday.

The fighting, the bloodiest this year, prompted calls for Ankara to hit back at the militants who use the Kurdish-run autonomous north of Iraq as a springboard for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.

After emergency talks in Ankara late Saturday, the country's civilian and military leaders vowed to destroy the PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The foreign ministry called on Baghdad to catch the attackers and curb the rebels operating out of its territory, while Gul urged his Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani for action against what he called an "international act of terrorism."

"We are investigating how this treacherous attack took place, who facilitated it. These will be followed up on and everyone will be held to account," Gul said.

Friday's attack came just days before the Turkish parliament was set to vote on extending by one year the government's mandate to order military strikes against PKK bases in northern Iraq.

Under a one-year parliamentary authorisation voted last October, the army has carried out several air strikes and a week-long ground incursion against PKK targets, using intelligence passed on by NATO ally Washington.

The current authorisation expires October 17.

The PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed some 44,000 lives.