http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick10292007.html Barzani Defies Turkish Invasion Plans
The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Iraqi Kurdistan
Masoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurds of northern Iraq, expressed defiance yesterday in the face of a threatened invasion by 100,00 Turkish troops, and was scornful of Turkey's claim that it wants only to pursue Turkish-Kurd rebels.
"We are not a threat to Turkey and I do not accept the language of threatening and blackmailing from the government of Turkey," he said from his mountain fortress of Salahudin 10 miles north of Arbil. "If they invade there will be war."
....
He was in no mood to buckle under Turkish pressure to take military action against the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who have their hideouts in the mountain ranges along Iraqi Kurdistan's borders with Iran and Turkey. "My main mission would be not to allow a Kurdish-Kurdish fight to happen within the Kurdish liberation movement," he declared.
Mr Barzani said Turkey's attempt to solve its Kurdish problem by military means alone had not worked in the past 23 years and would not work now. It was in 1984 that the PKK took up arms, seeking independence or autonomy from theTurkish state that refused to admit that it had a Kurdish minority of 15 million.
Mr Barzani also said that he was increasingly convinced that the Turkish objective was not the PKK but Iraqi Kurdistan, which has achieved near-independence since 2003. He said he was convinced Turkey's claim that its target was the PKK "is only an excuse and the target is the Kurdistan region itself". When the KRG put its peshmerga (soldiers) on the border with Turkey to control the areas where the PKK has sought refuge, Turkish artillery had shelled them, he said.
Mr Barzani appears to believe there is no concession he could offer to Turkey which would defuse the crisis because he himself and the KRG are the true target of Ankara.
Turkish military action might be largely symbolic with ground troops not advancing very far, but even this would have a serious impact on the economy of the KRG. The Iraqi Kurds would also be badly hurt if Turkey closed the Habur Bridge, the crossing point near Zakho through which passes much of Kurdistan's trade. Some 825,000 trucks crossed the bridge in both directions last year. Asked what the impact of the closure of Habur Bridge would be on Iraqi Kurdistan, Mr Barzani said determinedly: "We would not starve."
....
For the moment, the villagers are staying put. Many of them in this area are Syriac Christians whose parents or grandparents emigrated to Baghdad but had returned recently because of fear of sectarian killing in the capital. Omar Mai, the local head of Mr Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party in Kani Masi, said that seven villages in the area had recently been shelled.
He said that there were no PKK in the villages and that they stayed permanently in the high mountains. Another reason for the PKK guerrillas making themselves scarce in this area is that there are Turkish outposts and garrisons already inside Iraq, set up during previous incursions. At one point near the village of Begova the snouts of Turkish tanks point menacingly down the road.
....
http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=450886&lng=1 Turkey has staged a show of strength as it prepares for military strikes on northern Iraq. The display of military might on the country's national day comes as diplomatic efforts continue to avert a cross-border operation against Kurdish rebels. Turkish nationalist fervour has been rising since the deaths of 12 soldiers in recent fighting with the PKK group along the border. The Turkish leadership is coming under increasing domestic pressure to take action against the Kurdish militants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h-5Fz1H6c8 http://www.slate.com/id/2176842 /
Divide and Conquer
The United States should be squeezing Turkey, not the other way around.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Oct. 29, 2007, at 11:36 AM ET
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani
In the past century, the principal victims of genocide or attempted genocide have been, or at least have prominently included, the Armenians, the Jews, and the Kurds. During most of the month of October, events and politicians both conspired to set these three peoples at one another's throats. What is there to be learned from this fiasco for humanity?
To recapitulate: At the very suggestion that the U.S. House of Representatives might finally pass a long-proposed resolution recognizing the 1915 massacres in Armenia as a planned act of "race murder" (that was U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau's term for it at a time when the word genocide had not yet been coined), the Turkish authorities redoubled their threat to invade the autonomous Kurdish-run provinces of northern Iraq. And many American Jews found themselves divided between their sympathy for the oppressed and the slaughtered and their commitment to the state interest of Israel, which maintains a strategic partnership with Turkey, and in particular with Turkey's highly politicized armed forces.
To illuminate this depressing picture, one might begin by offering a few distinctions. In 1991, in northern Iraq, where you could still see and smell the gassed and poisoned towns and villages of Kurdistan, I heard Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan say that Kurds ought to apologize to the Armenians for the role they had played as enforcers for the Ottomans during the time of the genocide. Talabani, who has often repeated that statement, is now president of Iraq. (I would regard his unforced statement as evidence in itself, by the way, in that proud peoples do not generally offer to apologize for revolting crimes that they did not, in fact, commit.) So, of course, it was upon him, both as an Iraqi and as a Kurd, that Turkish guns and missiles were trained last month
http://voanews.com/english/2007-10-29-voa15.cfm Turkish attack helicopters fired at Kurdish rebel positions in southeast Turkey Monday.
The fighting came after state media reported that troops surrounded about 100 Kurdish rebels in a mountainous region near the border with Iraq.
The official Anatolia news agency said Turkish forces trapped the rebels in the province of Hakkari by blocking their escape routes to bases in northern Iraq.
Turkey's foreign minister says all options remain open in the fight against Kurdish rebels and terrorists based in northern Iraq.
In an interview with the BBC, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari warned about "disastrous consequences" if Turkey launches an incursion into northern Iraq to pursue the rebels with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.
At least two Turkish soldiers were reported killed Monday, including one by a land mine believed to have been planted by rebels in the eastern province of Tunceli, far north of the Iraqi border.
Turkey: U.S. Won't Stop Iraq Invasion
Posted by tekisui on Thu Oct-25-07 06:33 PM
Turkey rejected US calls of restraint. They declined the US offer to take on the bombing campaign. Turkey says the US owes them support in this incursion due to Turkey's support during the Afghanistan invasion.
"Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that U.S. objections would not stop Turkey from crossing into Iraq to eliminate Kurdish rebels. The Turkish military said it had killed more than 30 insurgents who were poised to launch an attack on the border.
"President Abdullah Gul said Turkey is running out of patience with the Kurdish separatist attacks. A steady stream of U.S.-made Turkish fighter jets roared into the skies near the Iraqi border, loaded with bombs.
The Turkish military said it had spotted a "group of terrorists" near a military outpost in the province of Semdinli close to the border with Iraq on Tuesday and fired on them with tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry. It said the group had been preparing for an attack.
"In a statement posted on its Web site, the military said the troops kept firing on the group as they escaped toward the Iraqi territory. The report increased the official number of alleged rebels killed since Sunday to at least 64.
"The Bush administration is urging Turkey not to launch an incursion that would destabilize Iraq's autonomous Kurdish north, the country's most stable region. But Erdogan said the U.S. desire to protect the north would not hinder Turkey's fight against the rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, who use mountain bases to rest, train and get supplies in relative safety before returning to Turkey to carry out attacks against government forces in the heavily Kurdish southeast.
"They (the Bush administration) might wish that we do not carry out a cross-border offensive, but we make the decision on what we have to do," Erdogan said during a visit to Romania. "We have taken necessary steps in this struggle so far, and now we are forced to take this step and we will take it."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/25/iraq/main3408593.shtml?source=mostpop_story
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
