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| Gates visit: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, middle, and his Turkish counterpart, Vecdi Gonul, met in Ankara Thursday to
discuss strikes within Iraq. Umit Bektas/Reuters |
Will an extended Turkish offensive further destabilize Iraq?
President Bush wants a limit to the Turkish campaign against rebels, but Turkey says no to a timetable.
from the February 29, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
Gates stopped short of threatening Turkey, noting common interests in fighting the PKK, which the US and the European Union officially list as a terrorist group.
At a press conference in Washington Thursday, President Bush said Turkey should pullout "as quickly as possible" from Iraq. "The Turks, the Americans, and the Iraqis – including the Iraqi Kurds – have a common enemy in the PKK," he said, adding that he agreed with Gates that the incursion "must be limited."
"The Turks need to move, move quickly, achieve their objectives and get out," Mr. Bush said.
While in Turkey, Gates added that, "It should be clear that military action alone will not end this terrorist threat."
The Turkish military says that 27 have died so far and that it killed more than 230 PKK militants. News reports quote a PKK spokesman claiming the group has lost only a handful of guerrillas and has stalled the Turkish offensive, the 25th cross-border assault since 1984 aimed at uprooting the PKK.
"Short term is a relative notion," Turkey's military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, said on a broadcast interview. "Sometimes it is a day, sometimes it is a year. We have been struggling against terrorism for 24 years. That is why our struggle against terrorism will continue."
An initial US expectation that Turkey's operation might last only a week has eroded, says Mr. Aliriza. "Of course there is mission creep, you always want to take over the next hill, and there's always another target – and now you've lost 24 [Turkish soldiers] in there, maybe more," he says. "It's a major operation, but not a decisive one. At some stage, the troops are going to have to withdraw, having done some damage, but that doesn't mean the PKK will have been eradicated."
Gates's call for political and economic steps to undermine support for the PKK among Turkey's ethnic Kurds, discussed for years in Turkey but only haphazardly applied, "is just as important as his message about keeping this short," says Aliriza.
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