Both Israel’s Debkafile and India eNews are reporting that Turkey has launched bombing attacks against Kurdish militant outposts in Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq, and that 50,000 troops are involved in in the operation to root out Kurdish militant strongholds, based on an article issued by the Turkish mews agency, Cihan:
Ankara, June 6 (RIA Novosti) The Turkish army has mounted a massive military operation against Kurdish separatists in the southeast of the country, local media reported Wednesday.
According to the Turkish Cihan news agency, the operation, involving about 50,000 troops, armoured vehicles and combat aircraft, is targeting Kurdish militants in 11 provinces in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq.
‘Three F-16 Falcon fighter-bombers…have carried out bombing raids on militant positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq,’ the agency said.
Observers are not ruling out the possibility that the current operation will precede a full-scale invasion into northern Iraq, where up to 3,500 PKK separatists, poised to commit terrorist attacks in Turkey, are reportedly based.
Stay tuned. Turkey has just put war with the Kurds on the front burner.
Look for Dear Leader to come out that he “strongly disagrees” (he likes to say that) with Turkey’s invasion of the “sovereign nation of Iraq”. That’s all he can do now, you know. Just “strongly disagree”.
In the words of The Great Gildersleeve … “What a revolting development this is!”
The vise on this administration’s dick just cranked down a lot tighter. SO now we have a force, given implicit approval by the EU, invading a country which we support and defend with the lives of American soldiers. And since we, or rather, Bush, doesn’t believe in diplomacy, what is the next logical step? Bomb Iran??? Or send fighter jets to defend the Kurds?
A few additional logs have just been thrown on the fire that is Iraq. We have really stepped in it now.
whoops.
Isn’t this the proverbial bag of flaming dog poo which is hurled onto the bad neighbor’s front porch with the hope that they’ll try to stamp it out? What sort of reaction do we expect from the Kurds (and even from the Sunni and Shia Arabs) when we do essentially nothing to prevent this incursion? I’d like to hear Kissinger’s take on this event, since it’s basically the same thing as the American invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
OK. The article Steven links to seems to suggest that the soldiers operated in southeast Turkey, it only references the F-16’s as entering Iraqi territory.
I checked a few Turkish sources and found this:
I think it’s pretty major. This is a first step. Clean up what might effect you logistical tail, then move the force into Iraq to clean up the safe haven for the PKK there. Fifty thousand troops is not a small force, and the article points to an even larger force (90,000) for the full scale operation to come. Yes this is only the preliminary stage of the conflict, but it’s not as minor as the “anonymous senior Turkish officials” are making it sound. You don’t just bomb another country with your air force every day (unless you’re George Bush that is.)
I certainly agree with you on this. I was simply linking to a news report, which confirms that Turkish soldiers have actually invaded Iraq. The scale will become apparent over the next few days.
I wouldn’t get out on a limb quoting Debkafile. I’m still waiting for those Russian tank columns they claimed were on their way to beating us into Kabul back in 2003. I can’t tell you how many times their predictions and
wild claims haven’t panned out.
Hm. Watch and see if there are no retaliations from the Kurds. I doubt it. In the tradition of wartime politics eveerywhere, there is very little political incentive to de-escalate. It is, rather, strangely in the Kurdish leaders’ political interests at this point to demand and/or demonstrate some kind of retaliation. Then what do the Turks do? Welcome to the next step in a messy war.
The Kurds have often been touted as having a fierce fighting force (the Peshmerga) of about 50,000. But they haven’t ever been demonstrated to exist in that kind of force. However, if Turkey actually invades then they will be playing to the strength of local guerrilla forces. So if the Kurds want to damage the Turks (which seems somewhat a given), then it is also in their strategic interest to attempt to provoke an invasion.
So politically and strategically we can guess that the Kurds will try to escalate the situation.
The Turks, on the other hand, have less clear incentives. They want to secure their borders and their state, fair enough. But they also are opposed to the Kurds getting oil revenues since it would provide the basis for a functional state government – something for Kurds in Turkey to aspire to join. This is reaching for the Turks. There’s little reason to suspect that they could successfully occupy the area (without heavy losses and eventual retreat, that is), so in order to prevent the emergence of an oil-revenue fueled local government their goal becomes to simply destabilize the situation in Northern Iraq. But that’s a very vague objective for a military – at what point is a situation clearly or sufficiently destabilized?
The game is awful deadly, and it has begun. Bonus complicating factor: Remember that Isreal has recently spurned their old friends the Turks in favor of the Kurds, because the Kurds hate Iran more than the Turks (to grossly oversimplify things, I’m sure).
PS- Thanks BooTrib!! Always love the breaking geopolitical news that is too interesting for primetime! I’ll be surprised if this gets much coverage from the big media.
Ok, so the Kurds are denying that it happened at all and the Turks are making diplomatic noises.
I’d give it at least a couple weeks, but probably longer before anything major happens. The big problem that Turkey faces is that we’re talking about some of the most rugged terrain in the world. Not good for modern infantry. I would be surprised if they actually invade.
But I stand behind my assertion that the some Kurdish actors will find a way to hit the Turks again. There is very little reason for them not to.
It was also thoroughly predictable. Strike that. It WAS predicted… by many people… people who actually knew something about the region. You know, people who thought it might just be a bad idea to invade Iraq.
“It WAS predicted… “
Yup: Steve Gilliard was right again.
Yep..AP is saying Turkey denies extend of Turkish incursion into Kurdistan…but then I gave up on trusting the AP’s…”headlines” a long time ago.
But I trust Juan Cole’s take on this matter and he has laid it out previously:
“The Turks are still apparently mulling hot pursuit of Kurdish terrorists who have taken refuge in Iraq. They blame them for a major recent bombing in Ankara, the Turkish capital
The only place in Iraq that looks at all like South Korea is maybe Kurdistan. But it is also allied with Iran behind the scenes, and it is in a troubling way giving asylum to Turkish-Kurdish terror groups that are infliction harm on the US’s NATO ally, Turkey.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As usual in the ME , the Kurds like most others are aligned with the Israelis where their goals match and allied with Iran where their goals match and allied with the PKK where their goals match.
And the US thinks it can manage all these groups of strange bedfellows? Not likely.