Category Archives: Turkey

Turkish incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan?

Posted on by
Reply

OK. This is odd. My new go-to site on Iraq, IraqS​log​ger​.com, is report­ing con­flict­ing “reports of a Turk­ish incur­sion into Iraqi Kurdistan/Northern Iraq”:http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3103 in hot pur­suit of PKK fight­ers.
AP has been report­ing that “thou­sands” of Turk­ish troops have crossed the bor­der, but var­i­ous offi­cials are deny­ing it.

Sev­eral thou­sand Turk­ish troops crossed into north­ern Iraq early Wednes­day to chase Kur­dish guer­ril­las who oper­ate from bases there, two “senior secu­rity offi­cials” told the AP.

“It is not a major offen­sive and the num­ber of troops is not in the tens of thou­sands,” one of the offi­cials, based in south­east Turkey, told The Asso­ci­ated Press by tele­phone. The offi­cials did not say where the Turk­ish force was oper­at­ing in north­ern Iraq, nor did he say how long they would be there.

The AP has scaled back its esti­mate, and now says “hun­dreds” of troops.
DEBKA (grain of salt required) says “50,000 Turk­ish troops have invaded.”:http://debka.com/headline.php?hid=4284 The Kurds, obvi­ously, are not pleased.

Mas­soud Barzani, had sent a per­sonal emis­sary, Safin Dizai, to Ankara with an urgent warn­ing. Turk­ish tanks would not be allowed to cross into north­ern Iraq, he said. The Kur­dish pesh­merga would repel them. “The peo­ple of Kur­dis­tan,” said the mes­sen­ger, “would not stand by as spec­ta­tors if Turk­ish tanks and panz­ers entered Kirkuk.”

Is this true? I can’t tell yet, but I’ve got some emails and calls out to friends in Kur­dis­tan and I’m wait­ing to hear. Will let you know if I can find out more.
In the mean­time, some thoughts on this: If this report is true — a big “if” at this point — it’s a marked esca­la­tion in the region, obvi­ously. As with most things in the Mid­dle East, there are many, many threads and few things are so clear-cut as many in the West would imag­ine them to be. (“If A hap­pens, then B must result.”)
But, with that caveat, if the Turks really have crossed with hun­dreds of troops or more, I believe it’s a response to the Kurds’ threats of pulling out of Iraq because of the oil law, rather than any pre­tense of chas­ing the PKK. It’s also likely tied up some­how with the cur­rent dis­pute between the mil­i­tary and ErdoÄŸan’s soft-Islamist gov­ern­ment in Ankara.
But could the US have approved this? If so, the only rea­son might be to per­suade the Kurds to buckle under to Iraq’s new oil law. How­ever, If the US agreed to this, they’re play­ing with fire. Like the Ira­ni­ans next door, who think they can care­fully stoke the civil war as a means of bog­ging down the US, the Amer­i­cans likely believe they can keep the Turks in check and the Kurds from attack­ing Turk­ish forces. But I know the pesh­merga, and they’re not going to take a few hun­dred Turk­ish sol­diers in a “secu­rity zone” lightly. It will get ugly and out of con­trol quickly.
* If the US didn’t agree to this, it’s a night­mare sce­nario. Who to ally with? Turkey as a NATO ally fight­ing ter­ror­ism? The Kurds, who are the only real suc­cess story in the Iraqi nar­ra­tive? If the US takes no side and instead diverts forces to the north to stand between the two sides, where will these troops come from? Bagh­dad? Anbar? What hap­pens when the US troops leave those areas?
* I expect another Kur­dish insur­gency in Turkey is in the works. We all know how well that worked out last time.
* I don’t think the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment will col­lapse or a mil­i­tary coup will result. I think instead, the Turk­ish pop­u­la­tion will rally around what­ever action the Turks take and the gov­ern­ment led by ErdoÄŸan will fol­low the lead and lend its full-throated sup­port.
*UPDATE June 7, 11:03:44 AM +0200 GMT:* Spencer at TPM­muck­racker doesn’t buy it, and blames DEBKAfile, which is fair enough. But AP is still stick­ing to its, er, guns and now char­ac­ter­izes the oper­a­tion as “hun­dreds” of Turk­ish troops in “raids.” Curi­ouser and curi­ouser.
So many impli­ca­tions. And so lit­tle infor­ma­tion.
Also, dona­tions are work­ing again, and cov­er­ing this place ain’t cheap. Fix­ers, rented cars, hotel rooms, etc. all cost money and free­lanc­ing for news­pa­pers only cov­ers part of it. If you’d like me to keep blog­ging the devel­op­ments in Lebanon’s lat­est cri­sis, please con­sider drop­ping some coin in the donate link below and to the right. Thanks.

U.S. clashes with PKK/Kadek in north?

Posted on by
3

Eye­brows should be raised, but the Turk­ish for­eign min­is­ter Abdul­lah Gul is claim­ing that Amer­i­can forces have clashed with PKK/KADEK forces in north­ern Iraq. The BBC reports that U.S. forces exchanged fire with “unknown forces” in the area.

A spokesman for the US 101st Air­borne Divi­sion, based in Mosul, said the inci­dent took place near Dahuk, about 10 miles (15 kilo­me­ters) from the Turkey-Iraq bor­der.
One mem­ber of the Iraqi bor­der patrol was killed, he said.
The “unknown forces” were dis­bursed with the assis­tance of Apache attack heli­copters and a quick reac­tion force team, he added.

“It is true that clashes took place yes­ter­day,” Gul has said. “Not only U.S. forces but also Kur­dish ‘pesh­merga’ fight­ers were involved in engag­ing the PKK. Some U.S. heli­copters were also deployed.“
[UPDATE 1:40 PM EST: Agence France Press is report­ing ambi­gu­ity in the par­ties involved, just as BBC did ear­lier, say­ing Iraqi bor­der guards came under attack by “unknown forces.” The “Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party”:http://www.kdp.pp.se/ office in Wash­ing­ton has no com­ment.]
The “PKK/KADEK”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000119.php#000119 fought a bru­tal war with Turkey from 1984 – 1998, in which upwards of 30,000 civil­ians in south­east Turkey were killed and entire vil­lages destroyed. In an effort to per­suade Turkey to con­tribute 10,000 troops to Iraq, Wash­ing­ton promised to help crack­down on the Kur­dish group, which ended its 5-year cease fire against Turkey in Sep­tem­ber.
At the time, Qubad Jalal Tal­a­bani, the deputy rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the “Patri­otic Union of Kurdistan”:http://www.puk.org in Wash­ing­ton — which has had some­times warmer, some­times cooler rela­tions with the PKK — told me via email:

There is much talk about US-Turkey action towards the PKK, but in real­ity, the US are already fight­ing a war on a few fronts (Al-Qaeda, Ansar, Sad­dam loy­al­ists etc). The last thing would want to do is open another front.
Sec­ondly, the US and the Kurds (Iraqi), are on a very new and dif­fer­ent play­ing field, in terms of the respect that each shows the other. The US would never do such actions with first con­sult­ing, and sec­ond receiv­ing per­mis­sion, from us.
Our advice to the US and to Turkey has always been, the PKK are tired, regard­less of what some idiots from within them think, the major­ity of them are ready to lay down their arms and go back to their homes. If the US can pres­sure Turkey into pro­vid­ing them with an amnesty (a real one!) then this prob­lem will be resolved.

Turkey appar­ently with­drew its offer of troops Nov. 7 and said, “The gov­ern­ment has decided not to imple­ment the (par­lia­men­tary) motion to send troops to Iraq,” an unnamed gov­ern­ment offi­cial was quoted as say­ing. The next day, Gul warned the U.S. “not to show bias towards Iraqi Kurds.” Tellingly, Gul also

told NTV that the US had reaf­firmed its deter­mi­na­tion to elim­i­nate the PKK threat, but insisted that that Ankara reserved the right of inter­ven­tion in case of a “threat or attack” com­ing out of its neighbour’s territory.

The next day, Sun­day, we see the U.S. [pos­si­bly] attack­ing PKK/KADEK forces. Gul’s com­ments can only be seen as a maneu­ver to get the U.S. to act, [and thus should be looked at skep­ti­cally.]
But why? Run­ning through all this is the Amer­i­can desire to have some kind of help — any kind — to help with increas­ingly suc­cess­ful insur­gents in Iraq. Strat­for says a Turk­ish force is still not out of the ques­tion, espe­cially if Wash­ing­ton fields a Shia anti-guerilla force with the help of Iran — Turkey’s old neme­sis in Iraq. Is it so out of the ques­tion that the action in the north, which runs the risk of alien­at­ing a sub­stan­tial por­tion of the Kur­dish pop­u­la­tion in Iraq, which is anti-Turk, is a show of good faith by the U.S. in an effort to get Turkey’s civil­ian gov­ern­ment to change its mind? (By all accounts, the Turk­ish mil­i­tary, unlike Ankara’s civil­ian gov­ern­ment, sees send­ing troops as a chance to deal with the “Kur­dish Prob­lem” once and for all and estab­lish con­trol over north­ern Iraq.) If, in the future, fight­ing between PKK/KADEK and U.S. forces is seen, I wouldn’t be sur­prised to see Turk­ish troops close behind.

Is Syria Next?

Posted on by
3

There’s been a lot of spec­u­la­tion that Iraq was just the first in a line of net­tle­some prob­lems in the Mid­dle East that neo-cons wanted to “solve.” Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Sharon said in an inter­view almost a year ago that Iran should be the next tar­get. How­ever, it seems Wash­ing­ton has decided to step up its cam­paign against Syria.
I44038-2003Oct17L.jpg
U.S.-led coali­tion troops treat wounded sol­diers after an attack on a Humvee on the main road about 50 miles south of Bagh­dad. The extent of the sol­diers’ wounds was unclear. (Greg Baker — AP) Click to enlargeLast week­end, “to cau­tion Israel’s ene­mies at a time of height­ened ten­sions in the region and con­cern over Iran’s alleged ambi­tions,” Wash­ing­ton revealed that Israel now has land-, air– and submarine-based nuclear launch capa­bil­ity. This came just days after Turk­ish law­mak­ers voted to send up to 10,000 troops to Iraq. With the Turks now a dues-paying mem­ber of the “Coali­tion of Will­ing,” this means Syria is effec­tively sur­rounded. Remem­ber that the major fight­ing in Iraq ended with Syr­ian and Amer­i­can forces skir­mish­ing on the bor­der, and now Dam­as­cus is pressed on the north and south by the for­merly neu­tral Turkey and its old enemy Israel. The pres­sure is on Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Asad to cease sup­port for groups such as Hizbal­lah and other groups oper­at­ing out of Dam­as­cus. Asad is fac­ing a dan­ger­ous gam­ble: Is the United States bluff­ing in its deploy­ment of its and its allies’ forces around Syria in an attempt to force behav­ior change? Will a regime change fol­low if Syria’s behav­ior doesn’t alter?
Adding fur­ther to pres­sure is the Syria Account­abil­ity and Lebanese Sov­er­eignty Restora­tion Act of 2003 (HR 1828). It passed the House this week, and par­tic­u­lar note should be paid to Sec­tion 4 — State­ment of Prin­ci­ples:

  1. Syria will be held respon­si­ble for attacks com­mit­ted by Hizbal­lah and other ter­ror­ist groups with offices, train­ing camps, or other facil­i­ties in Syria, or bases in areas of Lebanon occu­pied by Syria;
  2. the United States shall impede Syria’s abil­ity to sup­port acts of inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism and efforts to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction;
  3. the Sec­re­tary of State will con­tinue to list Syria as a state spon­sor of ter­ror­ism until Syria ends its sup­port for ter­ror­ism, includ­ing its sup­port of Hizbal­lah and other ter­ror­ist groups in Lebanon and its host­ing of ter­ror­ist groups in Dam­as­cus, and comes into full com­pli­ance with United States law relat­ing to ter­ror­ism and United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 1373 (Sep­tem­ber 28, 2001);
  4. efforts against Hizbal­lah will be expanded given the recog­ni­tion that Hizbal­lah is equally or more capa­ble than al Qa’ida;
  5. the full restora­tion of Lebanon’s sov­er­eignty, polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence, and ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity is in the national secu­rity inter­est of the United States;
  6. Syria is in vio­la­tion of United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 520 (Sep­tem­ber 17, 1982) through its con­tin­ued occu­pa­tion of Lebanese ter­ri­tory and its encroach­ment upon Lebanon’s polit­i­cal independence;
  7. Syria’s oblig­a­tion to with­draw from Lebanon is not con­di­tioned upon progress in the Israeli-Syrian or Israeli-Lebanese peace process but derives from Syria’s oblig­a­tion under Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 520;
  8. Syria’s acqui­si­tion of weapons of mass destruc­tion and bal­lis­tic mis­sile pro­grams threaten the secu­rity of the Mid­dle East and the national secu­rity inter­ests of the United States;
  9. Syria will be held account­able for any harm to Coali­tion armed forces or to any United States cit­i­zen in Iraq due to its facil­i­ta­tion of ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties and its ship­ments of mil­i­tary sup­plies to Iraq; and
  10. the United States will not pro­vide any assis­tance to Syria and will oppose mul­ti­lat­eral assis­tance for Syria until Syria ends all sup­port for ter­ror­ism, with­draws its armed forces from Lebanon, and halts the devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of weapons of mass destruc­tion and medium– and long-range surface-to-surface bal­lis­tic missiles.

Note that many of these prin­ci­ples are almost iden­ti­cal to those expressed against Iraq, par­tic­u­larly the vio­la­tion of United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions, the weapons of mass destruc­tion and its ties to ter­ror­ism — in this case Hizbal­lah, which has been pro­moted to Al Qa’ida rank in evil. Even the “axis of evil” rhetoric has been heated up, as this state­ment from the office of House Major­ity Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, illus­trates:

Syria is a gov­ern­ment at war with the val­ues of the civ­i­lized world and a vio­lent threat to free nations and free men every­where. We’ll send a clear mes­sage to Pres­i­dent Asad and his fel­low trav­el­ers along the axis of evil: The United States will not tol­er­ate ter­ror­ism, its per­pe­tra­tors, or its spon­sors. And our warn­ings are not to be ignored. (Empha­sis added — Ed.)

Strat​for​.com notes that the cap­ture of Bagh­dad shocked the Arab world, and the United States seized the psy­cho­log­i­cal ini­tia­tive with the city’s fall. The United States went from being per­ceived as a hated but impo­tent power to a hated but feared one. Since the fall of Bagh­dad, how­ever, the per­cep­tion that the United States is bogged down by gueril­las has taken hold and much of the ini­tia­tive has been lost. The pas­sage of HR 1828 and the coa­lesc­ing of a regional coali­tion against Syria is required if the United States’ is to regain its foot­ing and momen­tum. If pres­sure by Wash­ing­ton works, then Syria will reduce sup­port to ter­ror groups tar­get­ing Israel and halt the flow of fight­ers into Iraq. If it doesn’t, the United States will need to deal with Syria by force.
Related link: Why Iraq?

Update to Flag Flap

Posted on by
Reply

A knowl­edge­able friend who was in Kirkuk a few weeks ago wrote in to tell me that the Kurds — and other polit­i­cal par­ties such as the Turko­man Front — had been fly­ing their flags since at least the begin­ning of August. Three days ago, when the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sional Author­ity instructed the flags be taken down, Kurds pelted U.S. sol­diers with stones. The CPA soon reversed itself, the rea­son for the pre­vi­ous entry.
As my friend wrote: “When I was there [in early August], the city was FILLED with Kur­dish flags. It is truly unbe­liev­able, and quite beau­ti­ful. Every sin­gle build­ing had a Kur­dis­tan flag fly­ing. Many walls had Kur­dish flags painted on them. Even the light­posts had Kur­dish flags painted on them.“
The fla­grant flag fly­ing was news to me. I had heard from friends in the area that the Iraqi flag (minus Saddam’s post-1991 Ara­bic addi­tions) had been fly­ing since the early sum­mer or so. In fact, when I was there in April on the day of Kirkuk’s lib­er­a­tion, there were many old-style Iraqi flags being waved about — in addi­tion to the polit­i­cal par­ties’ flags. When did the Kurds and oth­ers begin putting up their own flags? I don’t know.
Any­way, the deci­sion to let the Kurds wave their ban­ner high in Kirkuk seems to be a revert­ing to the sta­tus quo, although one that I still think is decid­edly shaky. Regard­less of the valid­ity of the Kurds’ claims on Kirkuk (and I think they’re pretty damn valid), flaunt­ing the Kur­dish nature of the city in the face of Turkey and its Turko­man brethren is ask­ing for trou­ble.
Any­way, this flag lag reveals a source of major frus­tra­tion for me. My sources com­mu­ni­cate too slowly to allow for time­li­ness. Try­ing to parse Kur­dish and Ara­bic English-language media over the net is a bit of a fool’s game. In short, there’s no good way to cover Iraq from New York, and I have no way to get to Iraq any time soon.

Ethnic violence in Kirkuk

Posted on by
3

Three Turkomen were shot dead in eth­nic vio­lence in Kirkuk on Sat­ur­day, end­ing months of rel­a­tive calm in the Kur­dish region of Iraq. It’s unclear exactly what’s hap­pen­ing, but that seems to have been the cap on two days of vio­lence in Kirkuk and Tuz Khar­mato to the south, with at least 10 peo­ple being killed, some of them at the hands of Amer­i­can troops. The Asso­ci­ated Press reports that in addi­tion to police shoot­ings, artillery or mor­tar fire “rocked” the city on Sat­ur­day.
While a sin­gle week­end does not an internecine con­flict make, the fall­out has reached Ankara, where a “mob” of about 100 Turks attacked the office of the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan there. Kur​dish​Me​dia​.com reports that about 23 Turk­ish police offi­cers and a num­ber of pro­test­ers were injured in the melee.
“Kirkuk is Turk­ish and it will remain Turk­ish,” shouted the pro­test­ers. “Damn Tal­a­bani, damn the pesh­merga.” (Jalal Tal­a­bani is the Secretary-General of the PUK.)
In Kirkuk, the Turk­men rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the interim Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil called for the Kirkuk police to be dis­armed.
All this is hap­pen­ing as the Mid­dle East Newsline reports that Turkey will con­tribute 10,000 troops to patrol the Sunni Tri­an­gle extend­ing west and north of Bagh­dad. They will remain under Turk­ish com­mand and sep­a­rate from the two inter­na­tional divi­sions rumored to be en route to Iraq.
This is most alarm­ing. I wrote, dur­ing the war, that I felt the Turkomen were cry­ing wolf about the threat to their secu­rity in a bid to play Turkey and the United States off one another so as to reign in the Kurds when it came time to estab­lish a gov­ern­ment in Kirkuk.

[Salim Otrakchi, a Turko­man spokesman] said the Turkomen were espe­cially wor­ried about Kirkuk because the PUK had promised it would not go into the city with its forces and it did any­way.
At this point, it’s prob­a­bly a good idea just to tell you that I don’t believe what any­one is telling me at face value. The Kurds, deep in their hearts, really do want an inde­pen­dent Kur­dis­tan and this talk of fed­er­al­ism is the prac­ti­cal side of Kur­dish nation­al­ism. If they thought they could get away with it, they would bolt Iraq and never look back, I think. The Turkomen don’t really feel that threat­ened, but they see the Kurds with their new bud­dies, the Amer­i­cans, and worry they’ll be left out of any set­tle­ment and devel­op­ment plans in the north. So, they’re try­ing to play the Turks off the Amer­i­cans to keep the Kurds in check. And the Turks … Well, actu­ally, I believe them when they say they’re wor­ried about their secu­rity. They’re a truly para­noid bunch.

While this may be an iso­lated inci­dent, as I men­tioned, I could also be wrong in my orig­i­nal thoughts on the sub­ject. I watched with dis­may as in the days fol­low­ing the cap­ture of Bagh­dad and Kirkuk as the Kurds drove Arabs from land they felt had been taken from them under Sad­dam Hussein’s Ara­biza­tion pro­gram. Revenge was being taken and the U.S. wasn’t doing enough to stop it.
Well, now the U.S. has its hands full with the Sunni Tri­an­gle and the guer­rilla fight­ers there. Most of Iraqi Kur­dis­tan has had but a sprin­kling of Amer­i­can troops with most of the secu­rity being pro­vided by Kur­dish forces. Per­haps long-simmering ten­sions are start­ing to boil over after a bru­tally hot sum­mer.
I hope not. But — and I apol­o­gize for again refer­ring back to myself — as I wrote on Jan. 12, 2003:

Instead of a nice, clean occu­pa­tion that results in the first Arab democ­racy — and a net­work of Army bases from which to project power through­out the region — I pre­dict the United States will have years of guerilla insur­gency from nation­al­is­tic Iraqis (some of the fiercest nation­al­ism in the Arab world), the dirty job of sup­press­ing Kur­dish and Shi’ite inde­pen­dence move­ments and Sunni power grabs, the prob­lem of al Qai’da slip­ping across the bor­ders (with the help of Iran and sym­pa­thetic Saudis) into the coun­try to stike at Amer­i­can troops and med­dling in Iraq’s inter­nal affairs by Turkey, Iran, Saudi Ara­bia and Rus­sia. And don’t for­get the resent­ment in the region that will occur when the United States begins exploit­ing the Iraqi oil fields for its own pur­poses. No one will like that, least of all the Iraqis.

So far, it appears only the last pre­dic­tion hasn’t come to pass. Let’s hope this lat­est inci­dent isn’t the start of some­thing far worse.