ANKARA, March 1 (Reuters) - Turkey's prime minister and top army general clashed over Iraq on Thursday in a growing row that underscores tensions between the government and the powerful military ahead of presidential elections due in May.

During a recent trip to Washington, armed forces' chief Yasar Buyukanit accused Iraqi Kurdish leaders of helping Turkish Kurdish militants hiding in northern Iraq and said Turkey should avoid any contact with them.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government shares the army's concerns that Iraq's Kurds aim to set up an independent state and could fan separatism in Turkey's large Kurdish population.

But Erdogan said in an interview with CNN Turk television broadcast on Thursday that the remarks were the "personal" views of Buyukanit, and asserted his government's right to determine Turkish foreign policy.

"(Buyukanit's words) could never be an institutional statement. If it were, it would sow chaos in our democratic, secular, law-based state," Erdogan said, making clear it is not for the generals to decide who Turkey speaks to.

"The last word, institutionally speaking, lies with the government," Erdogan added.

Later on Thursday however, the military General Staff issued a curt statement saying: "The views expressed by the head of the General Staff are naturally not personal views but those of the General Staff as an institution."

Parliament, where the centre-right AK Party has a big majority, will elect the successor to President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch secularist who retires in May.

The army, which sees itself as the ultimate guardian of Turkey's secular political order, fears Erdogan or another top official of the ruling AK Party will become president and undermine the division between state and religion.

Erdogan has Islamist roots and his wife wears the Muslim headscarf, though he denies any plans to undermine secularism.

Turkey has a complex relationship with the mainly Kurdish north of Iraq and is wary of developments there fanning unrest in its own impoverished, mainly Kurdish southeast.

More than 30,000 people have been killed since the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has bases in Iraq, began its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in 1984.

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