As promised, the latest Turks-&-Kurds jitters:
Far as I can tell, the Herald Sun’s (slightly misleadingly-headlined) scoop yesterday, “Bush offers to bomb Kurds,” remains an exclusive. Nowhere else do I see a U.S. or U.K. paper claiming that the “Bush Administration is considering air strikes, including cruise missiles, against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq” (though Google that headline phrase and marvel at how much of the wonky blogosphere took note). Strange that an Aussie tabloid would beat all the bigs, but not impossible or unheard-of, I suppose. Still, it’s a cinch that, if Bush wants something physical done to the PKK from their southern flank, he’ll have to provide it himself.
As McClatchy reports,
In Baghdad, politicians acknowledged that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki lacked the political and military muscle needed to fulfill his pledge to crack down on rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, who last week killed 12 Turkish soldiers and captured eight in an ambush in Turkey. …
“We believe that the statements of Mr. Maliki about closing the centers of the PKK don’t apply to us because we do not have any centers,” the [Kurdish regional government's] spokesman, Jamal Abdullah, said.
“If Mr. Maliki knows about any centers of the PKK in areas under the control of the central government, let him close these centers and we will encourage and support him. But in areas under our control, there is not a single center.”
Nice little jeer, isn’t that? And truly, what’s Maliki to do about an Iraqi Kurdistan that, as McClatchy points out, “operates virtually as an independent country, flying its own flag and signing its own deals with foreign investors”? Members of the regional government headed by Massoud Barzani said they have little interest in tangling with the PKK. And “[Maliki] really can’t do anything about it,” Mahmud Ali Othman, a Kurdish MP in Baghdad, told McClatchy. “I think it’s just words he’s using to satisfy the Turks. He hasn’t thought about how he’s going to implement it.”
Turkish parliamentarians interviewed by the AP
say that only U.S. intervention can solve the problem. “People are at a point beyond waiting for the results of proposals, offers and promises as such,” said a member of the ruling AK Party who refused to be identified. “Here, we expect the U.S. to do something tangible like returning some leading members of the PKK, closing down their camps. Only the U.S. has the intelligence and the capacity to do that.”
Meanwhile, the Turks moved from shelling Kurdish villages to launching planes and helicopters across the border, according to the New York Times, “attacking the mountain passes that Kurdish separatist rebels use to travel from hide-outs in northern Iraq into Turkey.”
The Anatolian [press] agency said Turkish security forces had captured many P.K.K. hide-outs and destroyed livestock that they said belonged to the rebels. It did not say which side of the border this happened on; the P.K.K. has hide-outs on both sides.
The Washington Post says that, although Turkey admits only to overflights of Kurdish territory, not bombing runs,
An Associated Press cameraman saw helicopters and several F-16 warplanes take off from a Turkish air base in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, the AP reported.
There were conflicting reports about exactly when and where the Turkish military carried out its attacks. Residents in northern Iraq described bombings Wednesday in the Mergasur area on the Turkish side of the border and said artillery shells had crashed down a day earlier near several villages inside Iraq. Much of the borderland is sparsely populated, accessible only by narrow dirt roads, making it difficult to confirm the extent of violence in the area.
Reuters reports an Iraqi Kurdish official’s statement that “a Kurdish village in mountainous country near Shiranish Islam, 25 km (15 miles) northeast of the northern town of Dahuk, had been heavily bombed at midday. He gave no details of damage.” And Bloomberg says, “In the village of Derecik, 5 kilometers from Iraq, village chief Adil Ercan said the military have been shelling targets in northern Iraq for the past three nights. Smoke was rising from several points on the Iraqi side.” Meanwhile, “The Kurdish channel Roj TV today showed videotape of men it identified as the eight captive Turkish soldiers, adding that they were in good health.”
And Turkey’s frequent-flying PM Erdogan checked in again too:
As a “strategic ally” the U.S. government is obliged to help Turkey battle PKK fighters, just as Turkey sent troops to help the U.S. combat terrorism in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in televised comments in Bucharest today. He didn’t provide further details.
The AP further quotes him:
“They (the Bush administration) might wish that we do not carry out a cross-border offensive, but we make the decision on what we have to do,” Erdogan said during a visit to Romania. “We have taken necessary steps in this struggle so far, and now we are forced to take this step and we will take it.”
He said that the U.S. should repay Turkish assistance for the invasion of Afghanistan with support for Turkey’s struggle against the Kurdish rebels, who want autonomy in the southeast.
“Right now, as a strategic ally, the USA is in a position to support us. We have supported them in Afghanistan,” he said.
Here’s Agence France Press with more of the jaw-jaw:
Turkey is losing “patience” with Baghdad over Kurd separatists in northern Iraq, President Abdullah Gul said Thursday, ahead of talks with an Iraqi delegation seeking to avert a Turkish strike against the rebels.
“We respect the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq, (but) we are running out of patience and we will not tolerate the use of Iraqi soil for terrorist activities,” Gul told a gathering here of 12 Black Sea countries.
“We are fully determined to take all necessary steps to end this threat,” he said
As I type, a seven-member delegation from Baghdad is in Ankara, promising whatever it can (and probably more). “I told Baghdad that the delegation must come with concrete proposals, that the visit would be futile otherwise,” Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan told AFP. “We need more than just words.”
And as AFP describes, rather than merely take in the Iraqis’ serenades, Turkey is applying one more possibly-quite-effective bit of self-help:
Turkey supplies Iraq — and the Kurdish region in particular — with much of its power, water and food.
Turkey is Iraq’s largest trading partner, and media reports Thursday said Ankara, not wanting to hurt economic ties with the rest of the country, planned to divert its main land transport routes from the Habur border post with Iraq to posts on the Syrian border to bypass the Kurdish Iraqi region.
That may get them farther than any number of bombing runs and sheep murders. To end up where we began, with McClatchy:
Iraq’s Kurdish region is often held up as the only part of Iraq that’s made economic strides and enjoys relative peace. A battle to dislodge PKK guerrillas almost certainly would disrupt that.
Abdullah, the regional government spokesman, said that any effort to remove PKK sympathizers in the areas should be done by “dialogue and negotiation.”
“Violence and force is not useful,” he said.
But, now, cut off a region’s power, water, and food, and see how fast you get its pols’ attention and action . . .
lotus
UPDATE: The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn goes into the mountains to interview two PKK leaders. Interesting texture there, if you’ve got time.
Tags: Abdullah Gul, Ali Babacan, Habur, Herald Sun, Iraq, Kurdistan, Kurds, McClatchy, Nouri al-Maliki, PKK, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey, Turks
