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Turkey weighs cross-border attack on
Kurdish PKK
1.2.2007 |
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February 1, 2007
Turkey made a decisive contribution to the Iraq war
nearly four years ago when the parliament in Ankara
rejected a US request to allow an invasion from the
north.
The diplomatic fallout is still casting a shadow
over the US-Turkish relationship. Now Turkey could
be about to make a second dramatic contribution.
Amid constant bloody clashes between Turkish troops
and PKK Kurdish separatist guerrillas operating out
of northern Iraq, Ankara is weighing up a
cross-border incursion to attack PKK bases. Turkey,
its political leaders insist, has the right and the
determination to eliminate threats to its territory
wherever they come from.
General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the general staff,
is expected to set out Turkey's concerns over Iraq
when he visits Washington later this month. One
possible outcome intended to guard against a
unilateral Turkish intervention would be a joint
anti-PKK military operation with US and Iraqi
forces, says an analyst who asked not to be named.
Turkey is also becoming alarmed by what it claims is
electoral and demographic gerrymandering by Iraqi
Kurds in Kirkuk, the oil capital of
Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Ankara fears that
Kurdish control of Kirkuk would give the Iraqi Kurds
the economic basis for independence if Iraq were to
break up.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, and
other Turkish leaders have warned repeatedly that
the gerrymandering threatens to make a fait accompli
of a referendum on Kirkuk's status later this year
that Turkey will not tolerate.
Some see the danger of fighting erupting in Kirkuk.
This would complicate US plans to "surge" troops
into Baghdad, commented Glen Howard, head of the
Jamestown Foundation, a Washington security
think-tank.
"The Turks are now signalling that they are going to
arm the Iraqi Turkmen as the Kurds refuse to back
off on the [Kirkuk] referendum," he commented.
Some of the talk in Turkey is election-year
rhetoric: no Turkish politician ever lost votes by
being tough on Kurdish separatism.
But diplomats and analysts say the debate is also
serious. A military strike into northern Iraq – with
or without the consent of the US – is militarily and
politically possible, perhaps even probable, some
believe.
A senior retired Turkish diplomat, with extensive
knowledge of the political and military calculations
involved in such a decision, said military planning
was not as far advanced as public statements from
politicians suggested.
"This is not an easy decision to take, even though
we are entitled by international law to undertake
such a mission," the diplomat said on condition of
anonymity.
"We have to ask ourselves whether it would achieve
our objectives, would it satisfy public opinion,
what impact it would have on our international
relations."
The debate among the Turkish leadership, he said,
"is hot, but the thinking is not yet at that stage
[of military intervention]".
In 2006, the US and Turkish governments each
appointed a retired general – Gen Joseph Ralston of
the US and Gen Edip Baser of Turkey – as "PKK
co-ordinators" to develop a strategy to target the
separatists in northern Iraq. But last month Mr
Erdogan branded the initiative "a failure", without
quite specifying how it had failed.
The two generals met senior politicians in Ankara
this week and the initiative appears to be still on
track.
Mr Erdogan's remark nonetheless indicated Turkey's
impatience with the apparent impunity with which the
PKK is acting and the inability of the overstretched
US and Iraqi military to crack down on the
separatists in what is Iraq's most stable region.
Turkey is home to some 15m ethnic Kurds, some of
whom openly sympathise with the PKK. Turkey fought a
long war against the PKK in the 1980s and 1990s,
which cost at least 35,000 lives. It was after that
conflict petered out and its leadership was captured
that the PKK disappeared into the Iraqi mountains to
launch periodic attacks on Turkish soil. Clashes
between the Turkish military and the PKK in
south-eastern Turkey last year killed scores of
Turkish soldiers.
Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state, said in
Ankara recently that the US had "enormous sympathy"
with Turkey's stance on the PKK, but he suggested
that Ankara needed to work more closely with Baghdad
rather than undertake unilateral moves. Diplomats
say Ankara should be spreading largesse among the
Kurdish communities. instead of threatening to
disrupt the referendum process in Kirkuk. Others say
Turkey's entire Iraq strategy – such as it is – will
fail unless it wins the hearts and minds of the
Iraqi Kurds.
Sahin Alpay, an academic and commentator, wrote this
week: "The most effective way for Ankara to achieve
its objectives in Iraq is to win the trust and
friendship of the Iraqi Kurds."
ft com
* The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
more than 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's
oil industry.
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region and it is not under the full
control of Kurdistan Regional Government
administration.
Based on Iraq's Constitution, a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
*
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. The Kurds have no rights in
Turkey.
Others estimate as many as 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.
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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