Tensions on Iraq border rile Turkey
Hitting Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq carries political risks for Turkey.
from the June 8, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
That calculation may be shifting already, as Turks this week buried seven paramilitary policemen killed in a PKK attack on a local police station. That strike follows a suicide bombing in Ankara on May 22 – attributed by Turkish officials to the PKK – that killed seven civilians and is reported to have targeted General Buyukanit's convoy as it passed.
Another bomb that week in Turkey's southeast, where ethnic Kurds are the majority, killed six troops. The result has sparked fierce debate about how to respond.
"If you don't dry out this swamp, then this swamp will continue to produce mosquitoes to infiltrate," says Metehan Demir, the Ankara bureau chief of Turkey's Sabah newspaper and a military specialist. "The Americans are not doing this deliberately. But the Americans are not acting as much as they can [to control the PKK in northern Iraq], according to Turkey."
The result, says Mr. Demir, is growing anti-US feeling. "When any Turkish soldier dies, immediate focus [lands] on the US – this is the public view, that the US is not acting sincerely for Turkey as an ally."
In recent weeks, the Turkish military has deployed thousands more troops and 100 tanks along the border with Iraq, ostensibly for exercises that have been billed as a routine reinforcement for an expected spring PKK offensive.
But this buildup is causing speculation that Turkey could repeat past incursions, such as a 1995 operation that lasted for months and a 1997 attack that brought 50,000 Turkish troops deep into Iraqi territory.
Along the rugged border areas, Turkey frequently mounts small-scale operations along the unmarked line into northern Iraq and on Sunday shelled PKK bases at Harkuk, nine miles inside the border.
"They continue to fight Kurdish terrorists that have targeted a number of their citizens in their country," US Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins said at the Pentagon on Wednesday. "They are conducting aggressive operation in southeast Turkey – counterinsurgency operations –and they continue to do so."
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