April 15, 2007

Ankara Watch

FT:

Turkey's top general called yesterday for military intervention in northern Iraq in comments that will increase regional tensions - already high after a series of verbal exchanges between Turkish and Kurdish leaders.

General Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey's chief of staff, said he believed that Turkish troops had to move across the border to combat rebels from the Kurdish Workers party (PKK).

Ankara accuses the Kurdish regional government of northern Iraq of harbouring the rebels - an allegation the regional government denies.

"From the military point of view, a [military] operation in northern Iraq must be made," said Gen Buyukanit. He added, however, that he had not yet submitted a request to parliament and that "no political decision has been made yet".

More here:

Turkey warned Iraqi Kurdish leaders yesterday they would be "crushed" if they carried out a threat to stir up trouble among Turkish Kurds, as clashes with separatists in south-eastern Turkey claimed at least 20 lives.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, reacted angrily to weekend comments by Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. Mr Barzani has set off a political and media storm in Ankara with his threat to "interfere" in Turkey's restive Kurdish provinces if Ankara did not stop "interfering" in his region.

Mr Erdogan said Mr Barzani would "be crushed by his own words". The Iraqi Kurdish leadership, he said, was "making very serious mistakes, and the cost will be very heavy".

The threats and counter-threats mark a fresh low point in relations between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership. A few weeks ago Mr Erdogan was tentatively suggesting that official contact be established between them.

But that idea was strongly rejected by the Turkish military. The military and civilian leadership in Ankara has also become frustrated at its inability to influence events in Iraq as the prospect of an independent Kurdistan, with its capital in the oil-rich, Kurdish-dominated city of Kirkuk, moves ever closer.

Now, amid a heavy build-up of Turkish forces along the country's border with Iraq, some diplomats said the poisoned atmosphere could hasten a long-threatened "incursion" into Iraqi territory by Turkish forces to target the PKK Kurdish separatist movement.

Finally, for today:

Turkey made a decisive contribution to the Iraq war nearly four years ago when the parliament in Ankara rejected a US request to allow an invasion from the north. The military impact of this decision belongs to the "What if...?" school of history.

The diplomatic fallout is still casting a shadow over the US-Turkish relationship. Now Turkey could be about to make a second dramatic contribution.

Amid constant bloody clashes between Turkish troops and PKK Kurdish separatist guerrillas operating out of northern Iraq, Ankara is weighing up a cross-border incursion to attack PKK bases. Turkey, its political leaders insist, has the right and the determination to eliminate threats to its territory wherever they come from.

General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the general staff, is expected to set out Turkey's concerns over Iraq when he visits Washington later this month. One possible outcome intended to guard against a unilateral Turkish intervention would be a joint anti-PKK military operation with US and Iraqi forces, says an analyst who asked not to be named.

Turkey is also becoming alarmed by what it claims is electoral and demographic gerrymandering by Iraqi Kurds in Kirkuk, the oil capital of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Ankara fears that Kurdish control of Kirkuk would give the Iraqi Kurds the economic basis for independence if Iraq were to break up.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, and other Turkish leaders have warned repeatedly that the gerrymandering threatens to make a fait accompli of a referendum on Kirkuk's status later this year that Turkey will not tolerate. Turkey is increasingly identifying with the Turkmen minority in the city, which Ankara believes is being ill treated by the Kurds. [my emphasis throughout]

More on this increasingly alarming situation soon.

Posted by Gregory at April 15, 2007 04:15 PM