(Recasts, adds second death, president's statement)

By Seyhmus Cakan

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Two Turkish soldiers died on Monday from Kurdish rebel landmine explosions, bringing the death toll among troops over the past 24 hours to 15 and piling pressure on Ankara to take tough action.

The increased attacks on security personnel in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey have reignited talk of a Turkish military incursion into neighbouring northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels who use the region as a base.

President Abdullah Gul vowed "powerful measures" against terrorism in a statement issued after talks with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and the chief of the military General Staff.

Erdogan will chair the government's anti-terrorism panel on Tuesday. But analysts say Ankara remains under heavy pressure from its NATO ally the United States not to send troops into northern Iraq, the only relatively stable part of that country.

One Turkish non-commissioned officer was killed and three other soldiers injured in a landmine explosion in Diyarbakir province on Monday, just a day after Kurdish rebels shot dead 13 troops in Sirnak province near the Iraqi border.

Separately, another soldier died of wounds sustained during an earlier landmine incident in Sirnak.

Remotely controlled landmines are a favoured weapon of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whose attacks, Turkish media say, have claimed nearly 100 lives this year alone.

Speaking after Sunday's attack, the worst in more than a decade, Erdogan said Turkey would now press its fight against the PKK "in a very different way", implying it might send troops to crush an estimated 3,000 PKK rebels based in northern Iraq.

Government spokesman Cemil Cicek told reporters on Monday a cross-border operation would be "complicated", but refused to rule out any option.

He denied opposition accusations the government lacked the political will to combat terrorism effectively.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group began its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.

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