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Turkey, Iran must cooperate against
Kurdish rebels: Iran
3.11.2007
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November 3, 2007
ISTANBUL, -- Turkey and Iran should work
together against separatist Kurdish rebels and their
cooperation could include military efforts, Iranian
Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Reza Bageri said
here Friday.
"Turkey and Iran must cooperate on the PKK issue,"
Bageri told a group of reporters here, referring to
the Turkey's separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
PEJAK, a PKK-linked organisation, is active in Iran
and has conducted deadly attacks against the Iranian
security forces.
Asked whether cooperation should include military
efforts, Bageri said: "All kind of cooperation is
possible."
But he stopped short of backing Turkey's threats of
military action in Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq',
where the PKK and PEJAK have bases from which they
launch cross-border attacks in both Turkey and Iran.
"We are against all terrorist groups. We are against
the use of the territory of neighbours for any
threats," he said.
Bageri was in Istanbul with Iranian Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki to attend a multilateral
conference on security in Iraq, scheduled to begin
Friday night and continue Saturday.
He said Iran will present "a very important plan for
Iraq and the Iraqi people" at Saturday's talks, but
gave no details other than saying that it included
"elements" concerning security.
The United States accuses Iran-linked groups of
funding, arming and training extremists to fight US
troops in Iraq, a charge Tehran denies.
Participants in the Istanbul meeting include foreign
ministers and senior government officials from Iraq,
its neighbours, the five permanent members of the UN
Security Council and the G8.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held talks
with Turkish leaders in Ankara Friday in a bid to
dissuade Ankara from military action in northern
Iraq. She was scheduled to arrive in Istanbul later
in the day.
Before flying to Istanbul, Mottaki met Turkish
Foreign Minister Ali Babacan in Ankara on Thursday
evening, after Baghdad asked Tehran to help resolve
the crisis with Turkey.
The former US special envoy on cooperation against
the PKK, Joseph Ralston, warned Friday that
Washington was "driving, strategically, the Turks
and the Iranians together" because of their common
concern about Kurdish separatism.
Since 1984 the PKK took up arms for a Kurdish
homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast
of Turkey.
PEJAK (Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan) , took up
arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdistan
province northwestern of Iran. Half the members of
PEJAK are women.
AFP
**
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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