TURKEY IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Washington Times
Oct 15 2007

A combination of events – including a dramatic upsurge in violence
from Kurdish terrorists based in northern Iraq and a House resolution
condemning Turkey for the mass killings of Armenians more than 80
years ago – have created an explosive, dangerous situation on the
Turkish-Iraq border that could endanger the resupply of U.S. forces
in Iraq.

In recent years, Ankara has been complaining with considerable
justification about an upsurge in attacks from northern Iraq by
members of the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Beginning in 1984, PKK forces (based in Syria and Lebanon) launched
a bloody war in southern Turkey in which 37,000 people were killed;
the war appeared to have ended in 1999 after Turkey pressured Syria to
exile PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned in Turkey for
the past eight years. Unfortunately, however, the Kurdistan Regional
Government in northern Iraq has failed to crack down vigorously against
PKK operatives based in KRG territory. The PKK has made a comeback,
and during the first half of this year, it was responsible for the
deaths of at least 80 Turks. On Sept. 28, Turkey and Iraq signed
an agreement to clamp down on PKK operations in Iraqi territory,
but the agreement did not give Turkey permission to pursue PKK
operatives inside Iraq. The following day, the PKK ambushed a bus
carrying Turkish soldiers and civilians, killing 12 people. Then,
last weekend, another PKK attack killed 13 Turkish soldiers.

As anger mounts in Turkey over the PKK, the Bush administration has
been urging restraint while simultaneously leaning on Iraq (and Iraqi
Kurdish leaders in particular) to take action against terrorists
operating from their territory. But last week, as Turkey was burying
its most recent war dead and American diplomats were working feverishly
to prevent the situation on the Iraqi border from exploding, the
House of Representatives (in this case members of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee) decided to pour gasoline on the fire, approving
a resolution accusing Turkey of committing genocide against against
the Armenians between 1915 and 1923. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
has agreed to bring the resolution to the floor – all the better to
ensure that U.S.-Turkish relations, already damaged by the failure of
Washington and Baghdad to stop PKK attacks, continue to worsen. Ankara
is now hinting that the genocide resolution could cause long-lasting
damage to Washington’s military relationship with Turkey, a nation
critical to the resupply of the 160,000-plus American soldiers in Iraq.

Two things need to happen right away 1) Responsible adults on Capitol
Hill need to bury the Armenian genocide resolution to prevent it from
doing more damage to relations with Turkey, a critical ally, and 2)
Washington needs to press the Iraqi government, especially the Kurds,
to act now to put the PKK out of business. That’s the way to ensure
that Ankara does not take the dangerous, destabilizing step of sending
its forces across the border into Iraq.