UPSURGE IN KURDISH ATTACKS RAISES PRESSURE ON TURKISH PRIME MINISTER TO ORDER IRAQ INVASION
Ian Traynor, Europe editor
Guardian Unlimited, UK
Oct 8 2007
Bomb brings death toll of soldiers in one day to 15 · Erdogan caught
between public opinion and US
The coffin of a Turkish soldier is carried from a military helicopter.
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came under intense
pressure last night to order an invasion of northern Iraq following
the deadliest attacks for over a decade on the Turkish military and
civilians by separatist Kurdish guerrillas.
Mr Erdogan, who has resisted demands from the Turkish armed forces
for the past six months for a green light to cross the border into
Iraqi Kurdistan, where the guerrillas are based, called an emergency
meeting of national security chiefs to ponder their options in the
crisis, a session that some said was tantamount to a war council.
A Turkish incursion is fiercely opposed by Washington since it would
immensely complicate the US campaign in Iraq and destabilise the only
part of Iraq that functions, the Kurdish-controlled north.
Two Turkish soldiers were killed yesterday in booby trap explosions
laid by guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) – fighters
classified as terrorists by Ankara, Washington and the European
Union. Those casualties followed the killing of 13 Turkish soldiers
in the south-east on Sunday when PKK forces outgunned a Turkish unit
of 18 men without sustaining any casualties, according to the Kurds.
Last week, in an ambush also ascribed to the PKK, gunmen sprayed a
bus with automatic fire in the same region, killing 13 civilians,
including a boy of seven.
The Turkish media described the toll from the attacks as the worst
in 12 years in a conflict spanning several decades that has taken
almost 40,000 lives.
Mr Erdogan is known to think little of the invasion option, making the
pragmatic calculation that it would probably fail. Western diplomats
in Ankara agree that an invasion could be counter-productive. The
Turkish military raided Iraqi Kurdistan dozens of times in the 1990s
but were unable to suppress the insurgency.
After a cabinet meeting dominated by the Kurdish conflict, Cemil
Cicek, the Turkish government spokesman, said yesterday: "What is at
issue here is how much any action we decide to take would bring us
closer to a result." He did not rule out an invasion but queried its
"usefulness".
The prime minister, however, is being challenged by the army command,
which earlier this year demanded his authority to invade. He is also
vulnerable to a mounting public clamour to act because of the upsurge
in guerrilla activity and the heavy casualties being suffered.
Hardline Turkish nationalists entered parliament in Ankara following
elections in July and they are also baying for Kurdish blood.
Following the soldiers’ deaths on Sunday, Mr Erdogan signalled a shift
in policy without specifying how. "Our campaign against terrorism will
continue in a different manner," he said. The Turkish military has
just declared 27 "security zones" on the Iraqi and Iranian borders
off-limits to civilians, suggesting to some that it might be gearing
up for an invasion.
But despite the rising violence, Mr Erdogan has opted for politics in
his attempts to defuse the conflict with the Kurds. His Justice and
Development party (AKP) enjoyed a stunning success among the Kurdish
minority, concentrated in the south-east, in the July elections and
he has also focused on political pacts with Baghdad to get the better
of the guerrillas.
Last week Iraqi and Turkish interior ministers signed an accord
aimed at combating the PKK by trying to cut the rebels’ funding
and logistics, and agreeing to extradite captured "terrorists". The
accord, however, took three days to thrash out; Turkish insistence
on a "hot pursuit" formula, allowing cross-border raids, was denied,
and scepticism is high as to whether Baghdad can deliver.
Officially, Ankara refuses to recognise or deal with the government
of Iraqi Kurdistan, although there have been back-channel attempts
over the past year to engage with Massoud Barzani, the president of
the Iraqi Kurdish region.
Mr Erdogan’s options are also constrained by strong US hostility to an
invasion. While Turkish public opinion has been strongly anti-American
since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, much of the logistical support for
the US troops goes to Iraq via Turkey. Relations are also under severe
strain because of US congressional moves to brand the 1915 massacres
of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as "genocide".
Mr Erdogan sent aides to Washington yesterday to lobby Congress on
the "genocide" resolution. Ankara is also warning that it could block
the logistical support to the US in Iraq if the resolution is passed.
PKK guerrillas
The Kurdish separatist guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ party,
or PKK, have been at war with the Turkish state since the early 1980s.
Although it is now said to favour home rule within Turkey over
secession, the PKK has historically pursued the breakaway of
Kurdish-dominated south-east Turkey as a prelude to unifying Kurdish
lands in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Turkey pursued a scorched
earth policy in the 1980s and 1990s, destroying thousands of villages,
sending millions of Kurds west and leaving some 37,000 dead. Turkey’s
biggest coup came in 1999 with the capture of the PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan, who was jailed for life.
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