Well, this is just great. Reuters is report­ing that Turk­ish for­eign min­is­ter (and pre­vi­ous prime min­is­ter) Abdul­lah Gul said that Turk­ish troops will soon be mov­ing into Iraqi Kur­dis­tan “within the next few hours.” [BBC]
Jonny Dymond of BBC says Turkey has up to 10,000 troops are sit­ting on the bor­der wait­ing to move into Iraqi Kur­dis­tan.
[UPDATE 6:57 p.m. EST: BBC is report­ing that Turks have already crossed the bor­ders.]
This is slap to the United States, which has “cau­tioned” the Turks not to move into the region, but the nego­ti­a­tions between Turkey and the United States pos­si­bly grew so bit­ter that Turkey feels it now doesn’t trust the United States to watch out for its inter­ests in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan.
Qubad Jalal Tal­a­bani, the deputy rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the PUK in Wash­ing­ton, appeared on BBC to explain his party’s view­point.
“It is very wor­ry­ing for my peo­ple,” he said. “We believe that Turk­ish inter­ven­tion in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan is a recipe for dis­as­ter.“
He wor­ried about the prece­dent it might set, and expressed con­cern that Iran or Syria might also decide to move troops into the region to pro­tect their own inter­ests. (Syria and Iran have their own rest­less Kur­dish pop­u­la­tions.)
Kurds have faced this threat for some time now, and many Kurds have pledged to fight the Turks. In an email sent to me some days ago from Arbil, Karzan Aziz, a friend of mine, said, “I do believe that Turkey will face prob­lems if [it] invaded Kurdistan,�as I have met so many peo­ple [who] all repeat the same thing: ‘As we�have been fight­ing against Sad­dam from many decades, we are ready to�fight Turkey some more other decades.’”
Turkey says its goal is to pre­vent an influx of refugees and “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties,” accord­ing to Gul.
[ASIDE: BBC also is report­ing that Turkey has finally agreed to open up its air­space. Since this has flipped back and forth all day, I’ll believe this when F-16s fly over Incir­lik.]
But Tal­a­bani said this is not needed. “The dis­place­ment of the pop­u­la­tion at the moment is not head­ing toward the moun­tain­ous bor­ders,” he said. “They’re dis­pers­ing among their fam­i­lies in the nearby towns and vil­lages.“
“The Kur­dish peo­ple are actu­ally con­cerned that the Turk­ish mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion is not to pre­vent an influx of refugees into Turkey, but it is in effect an attempt to stran­gle Kur­dish aspi­ra­tions,” he added.
Many Kurds feel this is the first step toward Turk­ish attempts to annex ter­ri­tory. (It has long cov­eted the oil-fields around Kirkuk and Mosul.)
“We under­stand the allied forces will prob­a­bly try to leave our region as quickly as pos­si­bly,” Tal­a­bani said. “But I’m not sure the same can be said for our neighbors.”