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Turkish raids into Iraqi Kurdistan trigger U.S.
diplomatic, military concerns over potential hot spot
7.6.2007 |
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June
7, 2007
WASHINGTON,-- Turkey's new incursion into
Kurdistan (northern Iraq) to strike back at Kurdish
guerrillas delivered a diplomatic warning shot to
U.S. and Iraqi leaders struggling to hold off a
divisive conflict.
The latest raid by Turkish troops raised concern
among U.S. military officials from Baghdad to the
Pentagon, even as they first denied and then
downplayed the border crossing in one of Iraq's most
peaceful regions.
Analysts said the move signaled growing impatience
by the Turks, who have pressed the U.S. to crack
down on the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party,
also known as PKK, which launches raids into
southeast Turkey from hideouts in Iraq.
"This is a shot across our bow and, more
importantly, the Iraqi Kurds' bow — all of us who
hope that this doesn't escalate," said Peter Rodman,
who until earlier this year was a top international
policy adviser at the Pentagon.
While Turkey is a critical ally in the region, the
Iraqi Kurds are "the best friends we have in Iraq,"
said Rodman, now a foreign studies fellow at the
Brookings Institution. "So we're in the middle."
On Wednesday hundreds of Turkish soldiers crossed
into Kurdistan (northern Iraq) in pursuit of PKK
rebels, in what may have been retaliation for the
PKK's assault Monday on a Turkish outpost, where
seven soldiers were killed.
U.S. military officials said they could not confirm
any large Turkish strike Wednesday, but they quickly
noted that the Turks have routinely conducted
counterinsurgency raids into Iraq across the
mountainous, remote border.
"They continue to fight Kurdish terrorists that have
targeted a number of their citizens in their
country," Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins, deputy director
of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told
Pentagon reporters. "They are conducting aggressive
operations in southeast Turkey — counterinsurgency
operations — and they continue to do so."
The Turks accuse Iraqi Kurds of supporting the
separatist PKK rebels, who are fighting for
independence in Turkey's heavily Kurdish southeast.
The Iraqi Kurds once fought alongside the Turkish
soldiers against the PKK in Iraq. But since the fall
of Baghdad, the Turks have worried that the Iraq war
could lead to the country's disintegration and the
creation of a Kurdish state in the north.
There are suggestions that the U.S. military may be
simply turning a blind eye toward a conflict it does
not want to plunge into, in an effort not to
alienate its few remaining friends in the region.
But diplomatic efforts to calm the situation have
stumbled, and the Turkish military has ratcheted up
its warnings that a larger-scale incursion may be
coming.
"People are basically looking at this as a matter of
Turkey defending its sovereignty," said Soner
Cagaptay, director of Turkish Research program at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He
said that as long as there is not a large number of
Turkish troops in Iraq on a more permanent basis,
the U.S. is likely to continue to have a muted
response.
As Turkey prepares for a national election, there
also is growing pressure within the country to
strike back at the PKK as well as the Iraqi Kurds
who may be quietly allowing the rebels to operate.
"Turkey is about to reach its boiling point.," said
Cagaptay. "The arguments of rationality will be
trumped by popular anger over the PKK."
The increased activity comes after Defense Secretary
Robert Gates and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
on Saturday cautioned Turkey not to send troops into
Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
But Turkey's political and military leaders have
been debating whether to try to root out the rebel
bases, and perhaps set up a buffer zone across the
frontier as the Turkish army has done in the past.
And, the Turkish military chief said last week that
his army was ready and only awaiting orders for a
cross-border offensive.
Any U.S. intervention would be difficult both
diplomatically and militarily.
"The nightmare scenario is at a time when Kurdish
soldiers are fighting along side U.S. soldiers in
Iraq," said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkish scholar at the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
If the U.S. takes military action against the Kurds
or simply allows the Turks to come in from the
north, "it's really caught in an impossible
position, and frankly it's going to get worse," he
said. "That's the reason the U.S. has not been able
to move."
But Rodman said the U.S. military should not be the
answer to the problem.
"This is not something we could easily take on," he
said. "We don't have a mission there. This would be
a big, new, complicated mission. Chasing these
people in the mountains is a daunting task."
According to the Pentagon, there are about 16,500
U.S. troops in Kurdistan (northern Iraq), but most
of those are well south of the border. Those along
the northern edge are largely training teams working
with the Iraqi border patrols.
AP
** 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.
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.
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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