Turkey approves Iraq incursion
* Turkey’s Parliament approves military action on Kurdish separatists
* Move comes despite international calls for restraint
* Bush: "We don’t think it is in their interests to send troops into Iraq"
* Turkey says PKK separatists are launching attacks from Iraqi Kurdistan
(CNN) — The Turkish parliament has voted to allow its military to
make an incursion into Iraq and chase down Kurdish rebels staging
cross-border attacks.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government had asked
parliament in Ankara on Monday to authorize a military incursion, and
the lawmakers responded with overwhelming approval, 507 to 19.
Parliamentary approval, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
said before the debate, would not necessarily trigger immediate
military action and many analysts doubt a full-scale invasion will be
launched.
Turkey has already massed 60,000 troops in the region and over the
weekend it shelled farms across the border.
But the chances of such military action raises great concerns in the
United States, which fears it would undermine the stability of the
American-backed government in Baghdad and jeopardize the supply lines
that support U.S. troops in Iraq.
And it heightens anxiety in Iraq, where officials have been taking
all-out diplomatic efforts to keep Turkey from carrying out
cross-border assaults against Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels
in northern Iraq.
Speaking as news of the vote was announced, U.S. President George W.
Bush — who said there already are Turkish troops stationed in Iraq —
said "we are making it very clear to Turkey that we don’t think it is
in their interests to send troops into Iraq."
He noted that Iraq considers the issue sensitive. Saying Vice
President Tariq al-Hashimi traveled to Ankara to discuss the issue
with Turkish officials, he said the diplomatic discussions on the
issue are positive.
"There’s a better way to deal with the issue than having the Turks
send massive troops into the country," said Bush.
Meanwhile, Barhim Salih, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, who is Kurdish,
told CNN that Iraqis believe the "prospect of unilateral action will
mean irreparable damage to bilateral relations, and will be a bad
consequence to Iraq, bad consequence to Turkey, bad consequence to the
region."
Salih said before Wednesday’s parliamentary vote in Turkey that such a
move would also set a grim precedent.
"If Turkey were to give itself the right to interfere in Iraq
militarily, what is there to stop other neighbors from doing so?"
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called for a series of steps
to tackle the dispute, including the dispatching of top-level
political and security delegation to Turkey.
Al-Maliki phoned Erdogan on Wednesday and reassured him that Iraq has
banned PKK terror activities, his office said.
The office said Erdogan expressed his desire for good relations with
Iraq and stressed Turkey’s determination to cooperate with the
government to deal with the PKK and welcomed negotiations and talks on
the issue.
Cross-border trade
In an agreement signed in late September, Iraq agreed to crack down on
the PKK, which the U.S. and the European Union consider a terrorist
organization.
Iraqi army has no plan to deploy its soldiers near the rugged
Turkish-Iraqi border to take on the Kurdish rebels targeting Turkey,
and Iraqi authorities are satisfied with the efforts by the Iraqi
Kurdish regional authorities to deal with the militants there, a top
Iraqi military official told CNN Wednesday.
"It’s a mountainous area, difficult terrain and our troops are not
trained for that," said Lt. Gen. Nasier Abadi, Iraqi Armed Forces
deputy chief of staff.
But Abadi said it was in the interest of the Kurdish Regional
Government to deal with the Kurdish rebel problem because of its
economic relationship with Turkey.
"They can’t afford the PKK to spoil it," he said.
Abadi underscored the importance of cross-border trade, saying that
the Kurdish region lost $1 million a day in trade when the Iraq-Iran
border was closed during the recent Ramadan holiday.
Iran closed border points in the Kurdish region to protest an arrest
of a man the U.S. military called a member of Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force, a point disputed by Iran.
Abadi added that the Turkish military in the past has conducted a
series of hot-pursuit-style raids over the vast and mountainous border
into northern Iraq in recent years and it didn’t find a single Kurdish
rebel.
He said most PKK rebels are believed to be in southern Turkey, Syria and Iran.
"They are very good at hiding; it’s guerrilla warfare up there," Abadi said.
Armenian issue
The United States has been attempting to use its influence to keep
Turkey from launching an incursion but a U.S. domestic political
dispute involving the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
around 90 years ago has enflamed passions in Turkey and presented
challenges for American diplomacy.
Ties between the NATO allies are strained over a symbolic measure
making its way through Congress that would declare the Ottoman-era
killings of Armenians "genocide."
Bush on Wednesday urged Congress to drop the House resolution. "One
thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical
record of the Ottoman Empire. The resolution on the mass killings of
Armenians beginning in 1915 is counterproductive," Bush told
reporters.
Two senior U.S. military officials told CNN that commanders in Europe
have been told to be "prepared to execute" alternatives to using
Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey if Turkey follows through on
threats to restrict U.S. use of the base in retaliation for the
resolution, which a House of Representatives committee approved last
week.
Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, said on Tuesday that Pentagon planners are looking at "a
broad range of options" to keep food, fuel and ammunition flowing to
U.S. troops in Iraq if Turkey pulls the plug on Incirlik.
"We’re confident that we’ll find ways to do that," Ham told reporters
at the Pentagon. "There’s likely to be some increased cost and some
other implications for that, and obviously we’d prefer to maintain the
access that we have."
The move is a preliminary step to ensure that alternative aircrews,
planes, fuel and routes are lined up and that troops in Iraq will see
minimal interruption in their supply lines, the senior officials told
CNN.
Source: raq/index.html