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2 Turkey approaches its 'finest
hour' By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - With tension rising on the
Turkish-Iraqi border over the weekend - Kurdish
rebels killed 17 Turkish troops on Sunday - the
region could be plunged into war in a matter of
days.
Armagan Kuloglu, a retired Turkish
major general, expressed the public mood in
Istanbul, saying: "With this incident, the arrow
has left the bow, and no room is left for the
government to hesitate, postpone or fail to launch
a cross-border operation."
Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan summed it up
simply, "Our anger is great."
He then called for an emergency meeting with top
politicians and officers, attended by President
Abdullah Gul. The subsequent official communique
stressed, "We will not hesitate to pay the price,
no matter how high, to protect our citizens." It
added, "We will show no tolerance whatsoever with
those who support and help terrorism."
Apparently, as made clear on Monday
morning, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
has called on the Turks to practice
"self-restraint". The Turkish parliament has
already given permission for the Turkish army to
cross into Iraq to pursue an estimated 3,500
Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas who use
their bases in Iraq to conduct attacks in Turkey.
News stations in Turkey on Monday reported
that a convoy of 50 military vehicles loaded with
soldiers and weapons was heading for the border
with Iraq. Tens of thousands of Turkish troops are
already deployed in the border area.
The
latest PKK attacks took place after Kurdish rebels
trespassed into Turkey and attacked soldiers in
the town of Hakkari, nearly 40 kilometers miles
from the border. This was the worst attack on
Turkish nationals in nearly 10 years. Till now, to
play down tension, the Turks have announced on
several occasions that there is still room for
diplomacy, adding that they are "not in a hurry"
to order attacks on the Iraqi border. The Sunday
attack, however, kills whatever patience or second
thoughts they might have had and shows that the
PKK - and whoever is behind them - actually wants
Erdogan to invade northern Iraq.
The
killing of Turkish troops runs contrary to a
message sent by Massoud al-Barazani, president of
Iraqi Kurdistan, to the Turkish government less
than 24 hours earlier, calling for dialogue to
avert a military clash between the PKK and the
Turkish army. The Erdogan government, however,
curtly refused to meet the PKK, claiming that it
is a "terrorist organization" and called on the
United States and Iraq to get it to lay down its
arms. Barazani added, "We are not going to be
caught up in the PKK and Turkish war."
Echoing Barazani in a similar
contradiction was Iraqi President Jalal Talabani,
also a Kurd, who was quoted in the French daily Le
Figaro as saying he had told the PKK "it should
now understand that the world has changed and that
the era of Che Guevaras is over". He added, "I am
telling the PKK to go to Turkey and join
discussions in Parliament."
Hoshyar
Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister (another Kurd),
contributed to the mixed signals being sent to
Turkey by saying, "This party [the PKK] is not
present with the approval of the Iraqi government
or the government of the Kurdish region. The Iraqi
government has asked them and other military
groups to leave Iraq." He added, "Absolutely, with
no doubt, our formal request is that they leave
Iraqi soil and leave Iraq for its people and do
not bring us more problems than we're already
suffering. Kurdistan is a stable area and it is
not in the interests of any party, or any side, to
threaten its stability." Asked if the government
was giving the PKK a timetable to leave, Zebari
said, "As soon as possible."
What
America wants "Black Sunday" seems to show
that key players - Talabani, Barazani and Zebari -
and US president George W Bush - are simply not
telling the truth. The Kurdish leaders insist, and
so does the United States, that the PKK operates
from northern Iraq on its own, with no mandate
from either Kurdish decision-makers, the Iraqi
government or the Bush White House.
Speaking at a press conference with
Barazani on Sunday, Talabani seemed to contradict
himself, confirming his ties to the PKK by saying
that all Turkish requests to arrest or extradite
its leaders were "a dream that will never be
fulfilled". Earlier, he had bitterly criticized
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a personal
friend and former host, for having supported
Turkey's claim to self-defense in its war with the
PKK. This means that something is just not right
in the Kurdish and American denial of PKK
connections.
For years, Turkey had been
one of America's best friends in the East. In the
1950s, it actively contributed to the containment
of communism and the seemingly excellent working
relationship between Washington and Ankara lasted
long after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the
early 1990s.
Then came the victory of the
pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party in 2002,
followed by the war on Iraq, which Erdogan opposed
from day 1. Relations soured after the Turks
refused to grant the US passage rights over Turkey
to launch its war on Iraq. Ties have been on a
downward slope ever since.
Lately, the
Turks have presented an "invoice" to the US -
demanding reward for all that they offered during
the Cold War. They didn't want money, their reward
was to come in the form of crushing the PKK. The
United States, immersed in combating other
militias throughout Iraq, did not respond.
Instead, it turned its back on an old friend with
a blind eye to the PKK (which, ironically, it
considers "terrorist" as well).
The
Americans will not abandon their Kurdish allies
(Barazani and Talabani) because they are some of
the few politicians in Iraq who remain
cooperative, and risk havoc in the relatively
peaceful and stable district of Kurdistan. As a
result, anti-Americanism has grown in Turkey.
The situation in Kurdistan, support for
the PKK, the chaos "spilling in" from Iraq, and
America's support for Israel in its war with the
Palestinians, have all contributed to why America
is losing friends in Turkey. A recent Pew Global
Trend survey showed that 91% of Turks distrust the
United States. That number is usually reserved for
countries like Iran or Palestine, but not a former
"best friend" like the Turkish republic.
On October 19, Erdogan appeared in an
interview with Kanal 24 TV, saying: "We have
expectations mainly from the US more than Iraq. We
want the coalition forces - mainly the US - to
take a step here." He added, "Our demands from
them are known and we will see what happens in
time. We will put into action our own road map if
we do not get the results we want."
Erdogan, not expecting Sunday's
development, had hoped to postpone the crisis
until he met US President George W Bush in
Washington in November. Waiting to see what the
Americans would say is probably want prompted
Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul to say that military
intervention "is not urgent" shortly after the
bill passed in the Turkish Parliament.
After Sunday, however, everything has
changed. The Turks are wondering why the Americans
are so passive with regard to the PKK. Whatever
happened to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO)? The article says that an
attack on any
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