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U.S. Races to prevent Turkish raid into Iraqi
Kurdistan region
1.6.2007 |
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June 1, 2007
WASHINGTON, -- American diplomats and
generals are working to stop Turkey from invading
Kurdistan region (northern Iraq).
With Turkish forces amassed along their country's
southern border, Ankara's top general, Yasar
Buyukanit, said yesterday that his soldiers are
awaiting instructions to invade Kurdish safe havens
in northern Iraq. "As soldiers, we are ready," he
said at a security conference in Istanbul.
Washington is doing its best to make sure those
orders are never given. "We are in close
communication with the Turks, the Iraqis, and the
Kurds about this," a State Department spokesman,
David Foley, told The New York Sun. "We have made
clear privately and publicly for them to work to
resolve this through the existing tripartite
process."
At least publicly, Turkey's military has pinned a
May 22 suicide bombing in Ankara on the Kurdistan
Workers' Party, or PKK, a separatist group with whom
the Turks have been at war for a generation. The
Turks responded to the attack with border operations
against suspected PKK safe havens along the Iraqi
Kurdistan border, where Turkey, a NATO member and
candidate for European Union membership, says it
killed 14 members of the group on Monday in a series
of raids and attacks.
On Wednesday, a Turkish prosecutor, Ismail Sari,
said a Syria-bound train attacked by Kurdish
guerrillas on May 25 contained weapons from Iran.
The Iranian Embassy in Ankara denied the accusation.
The mounting tensions between the Kurds of Iraq and
the Turkish army have been a priority for the Bush
administration, which last year appointed a retired
Air Force general, Joseph Ralston, as a special
mediator between the Kurds and Turks specifically to
deal with the PKK.
For both sides of the potential conflict, it is a
difficult issue. The Kurdish press in Iraq is
generally sympathetic to the plight of the Kurds in
Turkey, and an offshoot of the PKK has established a
safe haven in the mountain of Kurdistan region
(Iraqi territory) near Iran's border. Nonetheless,
the two ruling Kurdish parties in Kurdistan
region-Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and
the Kurdistan Democratic Party, have pledged to
control their border with Turkey and say the PKK can
be contained through political dialogue.
But the PKK is also a major political issue within
Ankara. Many Turkish generals have been hostile to
the ruling Justice and Development Party — the first
openly Islamist party in modern Turkish history —
which has maintained ties to Hamas in Gaza. Those
generals may be attempting to portray the ruling
party as indecisive on terrorism seven weeks ahead
of national elections.
For Turkey, a military incursion into Kurdistan
region (northern Iraq) could jeopardize its
relationship with its most powerful ally, America.
The north (Kurdistan) remains the most stable part
of Iraq, which has been wracked by terrorist attacks
and sectarian violence.
"The Americans surely do not want their ally Turkey
to destabilize the only stable part of Iraq," a
representative of the Kurdistan regional government
in Washington, Qubad Talabani, said.
Both the Iraqi and Kurdistan regional authorities
have condemned the bombing in Ankara, Mr. Talabani,
whose father is the president of Iraq, Jalal
Talabani, added. "We in the Kurdistan regional
government are also seeking a political solution to
the issues that exist between Iraq's Kurdistan
region and Turkey. We have seen the impact of an
improved economic relationship between Turkey and
Iraq's Kurdistan region. If we can improve the
political relationship, rewards will be that much
greater."
President Talabani met yesterday with President Bush
at the White House. After that meeting, Mr. Bush
announced that he was sending his former aide,
Meaghan O'Sullivan — a protégé of the president of
the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass — to
Iraq to help the Iraqi government meet
reconciliation benchmarks built into the temporary
funding bill he signed last month to fund the
military surge.
The Iraqi leader conceded that his government will
face challenges in the coming months. "I don't think
that everything is okay, everything is good, we have
no problems. No, we have problems," he said. "We
have serious problems with terrorism. The main enemy
of Iraqi people is Al Qaeda and terrorists
cooperating with them. But there are groups who are
now raising arms against us, now we are negotiating
with them to get them back to the political process
of the Iraqi people."
nysun com
** 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.
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.
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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