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Major Turkish incursion in Iraqi Kurdistan seen as
unlikely
17.6.2007 |
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June
17, 2007
Ebil, Kurdistan region (Iraq), -- Iraqi
border police believe neighboring Turkey has amassed
20,000 to 30,000 soldiers along its southern border
with Iraqi Kurdistan region. Turkish helicopters
have flown into Iraqi airspace to conduct missions
against Kurdish rebels in the mountainous region,
and Turkish mortar shells regularly crash down on
Iraqi soil, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
About two weeks ago, a team of Turkish special
forces soldiers was discovered in the Kurdish city
of Sulaimaniyah, about 115 miles into Iraqi
Kurdistan territory.
The view from northern Iraq of the growing Turkish
military presence and escalating conflict with
separatist rebels is of increasing concern to Iraqi
border officials and their U.S. military
counterparts who monitor the 200-mile border.
Drawing another country into the maelstrom of Iraq
would represent a serious blow to an already
unstable political situation and put Americans in a
precarious position between two supporters: the
Turks, who are NATO allies, and the Kurds, who are
close partners in Iraq.
But in interviews last week in the Kurdistan
semiautonomous region in Iraq, officials responsible
for the border said they did not expect a major
Turkish incursion and hoped the tensions would
dissipate with diplomatic negotiations.
"I can't believe that the Turkish people would
attack Kurdistan. I just can't believe that," said
Brig. Gen. Muhsen Abdul Hasan Lazem, an Iraqi
Interior Ministry official who leads the border
force. "All this staging is a show of force, but I
don't think they're going to do anything. They are
passing a message to the Kurdistan government that
they are serious."
It is a display that has grown more brazen in recent
weeks. For decades, Turkey, which has a large
Kurdish minority, has suffered attacks from the
Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a militant group
based in northern Iraq that wants an independent
Kurdistan.
In response to recent attacks, including a bombing
in Ankara in May that killed eight people, Turkey
has expanded its force along the border, deploying
additional artillery and dozens of tanks. A
contingent of Turkish soldiers -- nearly the size of
a brigade -- already operates inside Iraqi
territory, a remnant of earlier invasions into
Kurdish territory, according to U.S. and Iraqi
officials. And some Turkish politicians have called
for an invasion to confront the rebels.
But the prospect of a large-scale Turkish military
movement into Iraq appeared to lessen last week when
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his
country should focus on the large number of
militants operating in Turkey before seeking them
out in Iraq. And Iraqi officials acknowledge that
Turkish shelling of the border regions and troop
movements in the area have been a seasonal pastime
for years as the snows melt and activity picks up
across the border.
Still, some Kurdish leaders are angry at what they
describe as escalated Turkish aggression that
extends beyond an animosity toward rebel groups.
"Turkey has a problem with the existence of Kurds,"
Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan regional
government in Iraq, said Wednesday, according to
Kurdish television reports. "We have always
advocated good neighborliness on the basis of mutual
interests and nonintervention; nonetheless, we do
not accept violations and threats."
The Iraqi government has walked a fine line on the
Kurdish issue. The Foreign Ministry has formally
demanded that Turkey halt its shelling inside Iraq
but has also condemned attacks by Kurdish
separatists. Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari,
a Kurd, said at a meeting in New York on Thursday
that the issue could be resolved only through
dialogue.
"We've been very honest," Zebari said, according to
the Reuters news agency. "We're fighting in the
neighborhoods of Baghdad. We can't release Iraqi
troops to the Kurdish mountains."
The U.S. military has a small contingent in Iraq's
Kurdish north and a limited view of activity along
the northern border. A team of about a dozen U.S.
soldiers works with the Iraqi border force in
Kurdistan capital of Erbil and visits the outposts
along the border; a U.S. Special Forces team also
works in the area. On one trip, Special Forces Col.
Johnny C. Strain, who leads the border transition
team, saw a 1.5-mile-long airstrip with 18 Turkish
tanks guarding it.
The team's intelligence officer, Sgt. 1st Class Jody
Reynolds, said Turkish forces have been "mortaring
fairly regularly" along the border and "conducting
cross-border operations, in order to push back PKK
elements or to retaliate."
"There are Iraqi Kurds who have been abandoning
their homes" along the border, Reynolds said. "And
with good reason.
Who wants to live where they're going to be
shelled?"
Within the past two weeks, a team of Turkish special
forces soldiers wearing civilian clothes was stopped
by Kurdish militiamen, known as pesh merga, at a
checkpoint in Sulaimaniyah and asked for
identification, an episode that worsened tensions
between the two countries, Strain said.
"It just added to the fuel of what was already going
on," he said.
Iraqi officials estimate that about 3,000 PKK
members are in northern Iraq. The group controls
some routes into the country and taxes passing
vehicles to help finance its operations, U.S.
officials said. One senior Iraqi security official
said the United States needs to "pinch Barzani" to
make him take a harder line against the rebels. The
Iraqi border force does not have the power to stop
Turkish troops from coming into Iraq or to keep
rebels from pushing out to Turkey, the security
official acknowledged.
"They only can write reports," said the official,
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
To the U.S. military, having to take sides in an
open fight inside Iraq between Turkey and the Kurds
is not a pleasing prospect. Brig. Gen. Dana J.H.
Pittard, who works with Iraqi security forces, said
that "there appears to be some activity on the
Turkish side, but it may just be brinksmanship."
"We can't have it to where we have friction with a
NATO ally," Pittard said. The Kurdish regional
government "must help out in muzzling the PKK or
suffer the consequences."
washingtonpost 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.
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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