TURKEY AND PERSIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9025, 11 January 1908, Page 5

TURKEY AND PERSIA.

TROOPS ON FRONTIER. Received January 10, 9 a.m. TEHERANT January 9. Thirty-four Turkish battalions are concentrated near the Turkish frontier. (The frontier trouble between Turkey and Persia is one of longstanding. In September joint representations made by Great Britain and Russia.elicited from Turkey a formal undertaking to withdraw Turkish troops from Persian territory. The accounts of the invasion by the Turks are conflicting. The Turkish official version is that the officer commanding a detachment of one hundred men at Mergovar, a disputed frontier town, received intelligence that the Turkish commander, ' Medjis Saltana, with regular toops and 1,400 auxiliaries, was preparing to deliver an attack. The Turkish commander, after receiving" reinforcements of 2,000 infantry and artillery, was attacked by the Persians, whom he repelled with heavy loss. The Persian account is that Medjis Saltana went to Tuli, in the neighbourhood of Mergovar, in order to chastise soma Turkish brigands, and while there received an ultimatum from the Turkish com mander, who advanced into Persian territory with four battalions of regulars, several guns, and 4,000 Kurds, and bombarded the Persian csmp, forcing the Persians to retire. Notwithstanding their lusses the Persians refrained from returning the fire. Subsequently the Turks took possession of several villages, burned them, and carried the young women into slavery).