TURKISH LEADERS PRESS RICE FOR ACTION AGAINST KURDISH GUERRILLAS
By Helene Cooper
International Herald Tribune, France
Nov 2 2007
ANKARA: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came under pressure Friday
from Turkish leaders seeking strong American action to rein in Kurdish
guerrillas in northern Iraq.
During a string of meetings in Ankara before heading to Istanbul,
Rice took pains to demonstrate support for Turkey, while at the same
time calling for restraint in an attempt to forestall any military
incursion of Turkish forces into northern Iraq.
But whatever restraint Ankara has demonstrated so far may be reaching
its limits.
"Our expectations of the United States are very high," Foreign Minister
Ali Babacan said, standing next to Rice during a press conference. "We
want action. This is where the words end and action needs to start."
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has given the United States a
de facto deadline of Monday, the day of his visit to Washington for
talks with President George W. Bush, to satisfy Turkish demands for
American action. The Turkish military has indicated that it is willing
to wait for Erdogan’s return before launching any operation into Iraq.
But with their forces already stretched thin in Iraq, American military
commanders have balked at taking action against the Kurdistan Workers’
Party, known as the PKK, which hides in mountains in Iraq and has
made cross-border attacks on Turkish forces. Thus far, the Bush
administration has done little besides call on Iraq’s Kurdish leaders
to take action against the PKK.
America’s relationship with Turkey is at perhaps its lowest point
since March 2003 when the Turkish Parliament refused to authorize
movement of American ground troops through its territory during the
initial invasion of Iraq. Things hit another rough patch last month
after a House committee, with the support of the speaker, Nancy Pelosi,
approved a resolution condemning the mass killings of Armenians during
World War I as an act of genocide. Although the full House ended up
not voting on the resolution, Turkey reacted angrily, threatening to
shut off the American military’s use of its territory as a resupply
hub for Iraq, and recalling its ambassador to Washington.
The Bush administration opposed the Armenian vote and has worked to
smooth things over since. Rice delicately referred to the Armenian
issue on Friday as "the events of 1915" but made no mention of the word
"genocide," a term the Turks strongly reject.
Still, many Turks are now openly criticizing the United States for
failure to do more to stop the PKK attacks.
Even within the Bush administration, there has been internal criticism
that the United States, in more than three years in Iraq, should have
done more to rein in the Kurdish guerillas. A retired U.S. Air Force
general, Joseph Ralston, until last month the U.S.
special envoy for countering the PKK, told McClatchy Newspapers that
U.S. inaction on the PKK issue might force Turkey to act. Ralston
resigned his post, administration officials said, because he was
frustrated with the failure of both the Iraqi government and the
United States to do more in northern Iraq.
"I think it’s fair to say that we all need to redouble our efforts,"
Rice acknowledged during the press conference. She added: "All across
the world we’ve seen that it’s not easy to root out terrorism."
But she maintained that "effective action means action that can deal
with the threat, but that’s not going to make the situation worse."
She said that Turkey and the United States "really need to look for an
effective strategy, not just one that’s going to strike out, somehow,
and not deal with the problem."