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Turkey plans attack, will warn Iraqi leaders about
Kurds
6.8.2007 |
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August
6, 2007
Turkish leaders this week will give visiting Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki what Turkish military
commanders and analysts said could be a final
warning to act against anti-Turkey Kurdish rebels in
Kurdistan (northern Iraq) -- or to stand by while
Turkish forces go after the rebels themselves,
risking a new front in Iraq's war.
Leaders of Turkey's governing Justice and
Development Party appear to be in agreement with
Turkey's generals that the time has come to move
against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its
Kurdish initials, PKK, in its bases in the mountains
of northern Iraq, former generals and a military
expert close to the Turkish military's general staff
said.
At least 37,000 people have been killed since the
Kurdish rebels launched a campaign in 1984 for an
independent Kurdish homeland in mainly Kurdish
eastern Turkey. Clashes and bombs this week killed
14 Turkish soldiers and rebel fighters. The rebels
also kidnapped eight residents of a Kurdish village
in the east.
Turkey accuses Iraq's Kurds -- who have built a
nearly autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq
under protection of the U.S. military since the
early 1990s -- of giving the Kurdish rebels a haven
and allowing them free passage back and forth across
the Iraqi Kurdistan border into Turkey.
"The Turkish people want the government to do
something, and in this case, the Turkish military
and government now coincide," retired Turkish Maj.
Gen. Armagan Kuloglu said in a telephone interview
from the Turkish capital of Ankara.
"It could be any moment, basically," said Zeyno
Baran, a senior fellow and director at the Center
for Eurasian Policy at the Hudson Institute in
Washington who is familiar with the Turkish military
command.
"Both the civilian and military leadership believe
we really have to do something about it, that this
is getting ridiculous," Baran said.
Turkey's military, outraged at what it says have
been escalating attacks on its troops by the PKK,
has been warning for
months of an imminent invasion of northern Iraq in
pursuit of the PKK.
The timing of a Turkish attack is a matter of
"whenever it's convenient," Baran said. "August or
September," she added.
Baran and some others expect U.S. forces to join in
if Turkey does act against the rebels in northern
Iraq. The scenario most often cited is an operation
involving U.S. and Turkish special forces already in
northern Iraq.
"I do believe that the Americans . . . are probably
getting ready to do something jointly with Turkey,
but they really don't want the Turks to go on their
own," Baran said.
Robert D. Novak wrote in a syndicated column that
appeared July 30 in The Washington Post that Eric S.
Edelman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and now
an undersecretary of defense policy, had secretly
briefed U.S. lawmakers that the United States was
planning a covert action with the Turkish army
against the PKK in Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
Edelman added that "the U.S. role could be concealed
and always would be denied," according to Novak.
The leak of the alleged plans for a U.S.-Turkish
operation makes a fully covert mission now
impossible, noted Strategic Forecasting, a private
intelligence-analysis agency based in Austin.
With the alleged planning made public, "the United
States is betting that the Iraqi Kurdish leadership
will succumb to pressure to act against the PKK
itself, and thus preclude the need for a major
Turkish incursion -- which would be an extremely
messy situation considering the bloody result of
having two NATO allies, PKK rebels and
battle-hardened pesh merga forces fighting it out in
mountainous terrain," the group wrote, using the
Kurdish term for fighters. Strategic Forecasting was
founded in 1996 by George Friedman, a political
scientist and former college professor.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees military
operations in Iraq, for months has resisted Turkish
appeals for action in Kurdish northern Iraq. Any
major operation would mean diverting U.S. troops
needed for operations in the rest of Iraq and risk
mass defections by Kurdish forces from the Iraqi
army.
U.S. action against the Kurdish separatist fighters
also would expose American forces to retaliation by
PKK forces in northern Iraq, one of the few
relatively calm and prosperous regions in the
country.
U.S. reluctance to hit the PKK has angered many in
Turkey and damaged relations between the two NATO
allies. A recent Pew public opinion survey showed
only 9 percent of Turks viewed the United States
favorably. The governing party's slowness to agree
to appeals by the Turkish military for permission to
invade northern Iraq helped elect a pro-invasion
nationalist bloc to parliament in elections last
month.
Iran, also combating Kurdish rebels on its soil, has
used the situation to court an alliance with Turkey.
Last month, the two countries signed a major gas
line proposal, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan invited Maliki to the Turkish
capital, after Erdogan's party triumphed in the
elections. The prime minister accompanied his
invitation with a new public warning that Turkey's
military would strike the PKK in Kurdistan region
(northern Iraq) if the United States and their Iraqi
allies failed to do so. Maliki is due in Ankara on
Tuesday.
Iraqi Kurdish lawmakers have urged Maliki to tell
the Turkish leader to stay out of Iraq's affairs.
Turkish forces for years have launched occasional,
small-scale raids and artillery strikes into
northern Iraq in pursuit of the PKK.
Kurdish leaders now in the Iraqi government at times
in the past paired up with Turkey to fight the PKK.
But while Iraq's two main Kurdish parties have their
own objections to the PKK, there also is sympathy
for the PKK among Iraqi Kurds, making it politically
difficult for Kurdish leaders to be seen as
endorsing an attack on the rebels.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders also appear to regard the PKK
as providing useful leverage in any negotiations
over Kirkuk, an oil center in northern Iraq, said
Omer Taspinar, a Turkish expert at the Brookings
Institution in Washington. Kirkuk residents are to
vote by the end of this year on whether to annex the
city to Iraq's Kurdish north. Many Turks object to
the annexation, in part out of concern for the fate
of Kirkuk's Turkmen population.
Some Iraqi Kurds want to trade their agreement to
crack down on the PKK "as a quid pro quo for Kirkuk,"
Taspinar said.
A former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Morton
Abramowitz, urged the Iraqi Kurds to move against
the PKK. The United States should press the Iraqi
Kurds to do so -- and send U.S. forces into action
against the Kurdish rebels if the Iraqi Kurds
refuse, Abramowitz said by telephone from the
Washington area.
"It's time for the Kurds to act," Abramowitz said.
"If they don't, I hope the Americans will act. And
if there's another serious incident, I think the
Turks will act. I think you have a very dangerous
situation."
Washington post com
** Ankara is anxious to prevent the emergence of a
Kurdish state in Kurdistan region (northern Iraq),
fearing this could fan separatism among its own
large Kurdish population in southeast Turkey. Kurds
constitute about 20 percent of Turkey's more than 70
million people.
Kurdish politician says, Turkey is using a Kurdish
separatist PKK rebel group as an excuse to invade
Kurdistan region (Iraq) to prevent the establishment
of Kurdistan state in the Kurdish autonomous region
in (northern Iraq).
Ankara fears that if the oil-rich Kirkuk joins
Kurdistan, the Kurds will have the economic
foundation they need for an independent state
The Kurds are the strongest allies the US has in the
area.
Officially, Turkey does not recognise the regional
government of Kurdistan led by president Massoud
Barzani.
** 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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