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U.S. air strikes on PKK weighed
23.10.2007
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Bush
seeks to keep Turkey out of Iraqi Kurdistan
October
23, 2007
WASHINGTON, -- The Bush administration is
considering air strikes against the Turkey's Kurdish
rebel group PKK in Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq'
in an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of
Iraqi Kurdistan to fight the rebels, administration
officials said.
President Bush spoke with Turkish President Abdullah
Gul by phone Monday in an effort to ease the crisis.
According to an official familiar with the
conversation, Bush assured the Turkish president
that the U.S. was looking seriously into options
beyond diplomacy to stop the attacks coming from
Kurdistan region in 'northern Iraq'.
"It's not 'Kumbaya' time anymore—just talking about
trilateral talks is not going to be enough," the
official said. "Something has to be done." |
The Bush administration is considering air strikes
against the Turkey's Kurdish rebel group PKK in
Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq' |
While the use of U.S. soldiers on the ground to root
out the PKK would be the last resort, the U.S. would
be willing to launch air strikes on PKK targets, the
officials said, and has discussed the use of cruise
missiles. But air strikes using manned aircraft may
be an easier option because the U.S. controls the
air space over Iraq, the officials said.
Another option would be to persuade the Kurdistan
Regional Government, which runs that part of Iraq,
to order its peshmerga forces to form a cordon
preventing the movement of the PKK beyond its
mountain camps, said U.S. officials and experts.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with
Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister
Nechirvan Barzani on Sunday to request his
cooperation in dealing with the PKK.
"In the past, there has been reluctance to engage in
direct U.S. military action against the PKK, either
through air strikes or some kind of Special Forces
action," said the official familiar with the
Bush-Gul conversation, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "But the red line was always, if the
Turks were going to come over the border, it could
be so destabilizing that it might be less risky for
us to do something ourselves. Now the Turks are at
the end of their rope, and our risk calculus is
changing."
An ambush over the weekend by 200 PKK guerrillas
left 12 Turkish soldiers dead and 8 missing. The
attack's sophistication and scope surprised not only
the Turks but also the U.S. and its Iraqi allies.
The U.S., with Iraqi help, also could squeeze the
flow of supplies and funds for the PKK coming across
the border, or through the airport in Erbil, the
capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, according to U.S. and
Kurdish officials and experts. The Bush
administration, which has an intelligence-sharing
operation with Turkey, also could lean on the
Kurdistan Regional Government to provide more of its
own intelligence to the Turks, experts said.
Rice called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan on Sunday in an appeal for patience, and
administration officials said Erdogan granted a
72-hour reprieve on any cross-border attack by the
Turkish military. The Turkish leadership is under
heavy pressure from its public, with thousands of
demonstrators shouting anti-PKK slogans in Istanbul
after the weekend ambush.
The U.S.-Turkey alliance is particularly important
to the Bush administration in its conduct of the
Iraq war. About 70 percent of the American
military's air cargo headed to Iraq is shipped
through a U.S. air base in southern Turkey.
Analysts say the PKK, fighting for Kurdish self-rule
since 1984, would like to incite Turkey to attack
its bases inside Iraq to help fuel its movement,
which lost political ground to the ruling Justice
and Development Party, in Turkey's last general
election.
"The Turks know these are provocations to draw them
across the border, and they're reluctant to charge
at that cape, because they know a sword is behind
it," said Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to
Turkey now at the Brookings Institution, a
Washington think tank. "But Erdogan doesn't have any
cards left to play."
Last week, Turkey's parliament authorized the
government to send troops across the Iraqi border at
any time in pursuit of the PKK.
The Kurdistan Regional Government warned that any
air strikes by the U.S. or the Turks could inflame
nationalist sentiments among the millions of Kurds
who live inside Turkey.
"If the U.S. starts bombing PKK camps in the north,
Turkey will be ablaze tomorrow," said Qubad
Talabani, spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional
Government in Washington.
He added that the peshmerga has already formed a
sort of security belt around the PKK to keep the
fighters from coming down from the mountains into
the cities of Iraqi Kurdistan. The only long-term
solution, the regional government said, would be for
it to be part of a serious dialogue among Turkey,
the U.S. and Iraq. It complained that it is
currently being left out of any discussions.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a Kurd who
visited the White House on Monday, said at a
Brookings appearance, "My worry is that there are
demands of the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government]
and the Iraqi government to 'fight the PKK.' That
could well be a recipe for an open-ended conflict in
which we will not win and will basically destabilize
the only stable part of Iraq."
Rice issued a statement with British Foreign
Secretary David Miliband, calling on Baghdad and the
Kurdistan Regional Government to "take immediate
steps to halt PKK operations from Iraqi territory."
Kurdistan Regional Government spokesman Talabany
said, "Everyone's passing the buck. The Turks want
the U.S. to do something, the U.S. wants us to do
something, and we don't think we can do anything. We
fought the PKK in the '90s with the full force of
the Turkish military and couldn't eradicate them."
On Monday, the PKK issued a statement that it would
be ready for a cease-fire "if the Turkish army stops
attacking our positions, drops plans for an
incursion and resorts to peace," but most analysts
dismissed this announcement as meaningless.
"The PKK always declares a cease-fire when winter
approaches and it can't operate anyway," said Soner
Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"Then when the snow melts, they start fighting
again."
chicagotribune com
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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