|
Bush steps up US aid to Turkey against
Kurdish PKK rebels
6.11.2007
|
|
|
|
November 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, -- President George W. Bush,
vying to avert a Turkish incursion into Iraqi
Kurdistan, pledged Monday to step up US military and
intelligence cooperation to aid Turkey's fight
against Turkey-Kurdish PKK rebels.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed
Bush's promise made at crisis talks here, but said
his country had no plans to withdraw some 100,000
troops massed on the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
"We will continue to take those precautions," he
said.
Bush insisted that the United States stood shoulder
to shoulder with its NATO ally Turkey over a spate
of deadly cross- border attacks by the separatist
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
"Turkey is a strategic partner and strong ally of
America," the president told reporters, sitting next
to Erdogan in the White House Oval Office. |
President Bush, right, meets with Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office of
the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 5, 2007 |
"(The) PKK is a terrorist organization. They're an
enemy of Turkey. They're an enemy of Iraq. And
they're an enemy of the United States," Bush said.
The president announced a new three-way military
partnership grouping the United States, Turkey and
Iraq to improve the sharing of real-time
intelligence on the PKK.
Washington was also looking at cutting off money
flows to the Kurdish rebels, and their ease of
travel, he said.
As Pakistan sinks deeper into political crisis, Bush
would be loath to see any escalation in tensions
between Turkey, another crucial anti-terror partner,
and US allies in northern Iraq's autonomous
Kurdistan region. www.ekurd.net
As the two leaders met, hundreds of banner-waving
ethnic Kurds rallied outside the White House with
chants of "stop the Turkish invasion."
"We are not after war. We have a mandate from the
Turkish parliament to conduct an (anti-PKK)
operation," Erdogan said at Washington's National
Press Club, describing himself has "happy" as a
result of his talks with Bush.
The prime minister said Turkey had no expansionist
designs in Iraq, but stressed that his country's
patience with the PKK
was exhausted.
"We would like to see the US and Iraqi governments
take concrete action urgently, to go beyond rhetoric
and clean out the PKK from northern Iraq," he said
in a speech to the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
In Ankara on Friday, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice pledged to "redouble" US efforts to combat the
Kurdish fighters, but stressed it would take time
and effort to flush them out of their mountainous
redoubts.
Iraqi Kurdistan regional prime minister Nechirvan
Barzani proposed four-party talks to end the PKK
incursions -- with his administration as one of the
participants along with Ankara, Baghdad and
Washington.
"This is a transnational issue, complicated by
ethnic ties, and no party can find a solution on its
own,"
Barzani wrote
in Monday's Washington Post.
But PKK leader Murat Karayilan called on the Iraqi
Kurdish leadership to stand by its ethnic kin.
"No action (against the PKK) can be successful ...
as long as we, the Kurds, preserve our unity," he
told the Firat news agency, considered to be a
mouthpiece of the PKK.
Erdogan was accompanied by Turkish Foreign Minister
Ali Babacan and Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul on his
brief visit to Washington, before he headed on to
Rome for talks with Italian Prime Minister Romano
Prodi.
Despite Iraq's announcement of new steps to curb the
PKK separatists, Babacan said military options
"remain on the table."
Some observers fear that US influence with Turkey
has been undermined by a push in Congress to label
the Ottoman Empire's World War I massacre of ethnic
Armenians as "genocide."
But fierce pressure from both Turkey and the White
House appears to have paid off for now, with its
Democratic authors agreeing to shelve a debate on
the resolution in the House of Representatives. www.ekurd.net
"We view this with cautious optimism," Erdogan said,
after his government had threatened to cut off US
military access to a Turkish air base if the
resolution was adopted by the full House.
"We are ready to settle accounts with our history,
but our documents indicate that no such genocide
took place. In fact our values do not permit our
people to commit genocide," the Turkish leader said.
Over 37,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish PKK
guerrillas have been killed since 1984 when the PKK
took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly
Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
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
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 