Turkey welcomes U.S. raid on Iraq camp, wants more

[sabra]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L18104460.htm

Turkey welcomes U.S. raid on Iraq camp, wants more

ANKARA, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Turkey on Thursday welcomed a raid by U.S. and Iraqi forces on a refugee camp of Turkish Kurds in northern Iraq as a first step towards combating Kurdish rebels, but insisted the camp must be shut down.

Iraqi and U.S. troops conducted a search operation on Wednesday at the Makhmur refugee camp in northern Iraq, which Ankara has long argued provides a safe haven for militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Ankara has been urging U.S. forces to crack down on the Turkish Kurd PKK rebels, who use Kurdish northern Iraq as a base.

"We desire a continuation of such steps ... in the context of our hopes for an end to the presence and activities of the PKK terrorist organisation in Iraq," Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"The Makhmur camp must be closed. To this end, a climate must be created in which the PKK presence and pressure in the camp are ended and our citizens living there can decide freely on their future," it said.

"We view yesterday's operation as a first step in this direction."

[davhill]

1. Apparently a Deal Was Struck

Turkey will let us use their bases to attack Iran; The United States will betray the Kurds.

[90-percent]

2. Kurd betrayal

man those poor bastards have been so fucked over over and over again by the USA. Just like Charlie Brown and the football as a matter of life and death. I hope they're finally realizing that trusting the word of the USA may be bad for their healths?

-85% Jimmy

[IndianaGreen]

3. The oppressed can quickly become the oppressors

We see that in Israel today in the way the children of the Holocaust are treating their non-Jewish neighbors, and we see that in Northern Iraq in the way the Kurds have behaved towards non-Kurds living among them. When Bush sends the Kurdish peshmerga into Baghdad, they are not going to be welcomed by either Sunnis or Shias.

[MADem]

4. WTF is a "search operation?" Did they have particular Turkish Kurds in mind?

Or did they just want those mortars they found? Of course, this whole event is as much about internal Turkish POLITICS as anything else:

...A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said a cache of mortar rounds had been discovered during Wednesday's operation, contradicting earlier comments by Iraqi Kurdish officials that no weapons had been found.

U.S. State Department Undersecretary Nicholas Burns was in Ankara on Thursday to address Turkish concerns about the PKK and the general security situation in northern Iraq, where Turkey fears the Kurds are bent on creating an independent state.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to crush the rebels if the U.S. and Iraqi government forces fail to take action, though most analysts dismiss the threats as rhetoric to impress voters.

Turkey faces presidential and parliamentary polls in 2007.

More than 30,000 people have been killed, mostly in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, since the PKK launched its armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in 1984.
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