Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Tehran on Monday, Brigadier General Hossein Ashtari said the closure of the country's northwestern borders has been ordered by the Supreme National Security Council.
"Its (the SNSC's) officials should be asked about the reason (of the closure), but it seems that the reason behind the temporary closure is the problems that have occurred in recent days at the western borders, particularly in Turkey," the commander explained.
Iran's decision to close land border with Turkey comes at a time of heightened tensions between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) forces and the Turkish troops, after the collapse of a two-year cease-fire and Turkey's resumption of air raids on PKK targets in northern Iraq.
In 2013, Turkey vowed to grant its Kurdish minority greater rights and autonomy in exchange for a cease-fire after a three-decade insurgency by the PKK that killed more than 40,000.
Officials in Ankara said the crackdown against the PKK, which also included hundreds of arrests across Turkey, was in response to increased violence by the group over the past month.
Ankara launched raids against the group on July 24 after its members killed two police officers in retaliation for a suicide attack against Kurdish activists in the southeastern town of Suruc last month by a Turkish citizen suspected of ties to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group. The PKK accused Turkish authorities of facilitating the attack.
These developments now seem to have prompted the Iranian officials to keep a wary eye on the tensions in Turkey.
Last Monday, an explosion hit the Iran-Turkey natural gas pipeline in the eastern Turkish province of Agri, resulting in a six-day halt to the export of gas to Turkey.
Also on July 30, a remote-controlled mine was detonated on a railroad line east of Turkey, causing damage to a train travelling from Ankara to Tehran.
Iran's Rail Transportation Company (Raja) announced on Friday that it has cancelled its train services to the neighboring country and would not dispatch any train to Ankara until Turkish authorities make official comments.
In the latest incident on August 2, Kurdish forces carried out a suicide attack on a military police station in eastern Turkey, killing two soldiers and wounding 31 others, the local authorities said.
In an overnight assault, PKK members rammed a tractor loaded with two tons of explosives into the station, in the Dogubeyazit District of Agri Province, close to Turkey's border with Iran, the governors office said in a statement.
By Tasnim News Agency
