Turkish forces shell northern Iraq - Iraqi leader

[cal04]

Source: Reuters

Iraq said Turkish forces shelled a mountain stronghold of Turkish Kurd rebels in the north of the country on Sunday, a day after it urged Turkey to use diplomacy to resolve rising tensions in the region.

While residents say Turkey shells the area almost daily, the latest attack came days after Turkey moved tanks to its border and speculation mounted that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government is planning a military incursion.

"There were some strikes from Turkish forces on areas next to the Turkish border, but until now there has been no Turkish military invasion of Kurdish lands in Iraq," Masoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdistan region, told a news conference.

Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, told the same briefing that "we do not accept interference in others' affairs and we do not accept interference in our affairs"

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL342931.htm

[ck4829]

1. "we do not accept interference in our affairs"

Um... yeah... sure...

You have noticed that there are about 100 thousand US troops in your country, right?

[still_one]

2. The last PKK terrorist bombing of a shopping center in Turkey was the last straw

The U.S. invaded a country based on lies, was not a threat to us, and destabilized a whole region, which is actually a large factor in what is occurring in Turkey now, and we have the arragance to tell them what they can or cannot do?

[razzleberry]

3. I believe everything, the invisible/unnamed person says .n/t

[LynnTheDem]

4. "we do not accept interference in our affairs"

ROTFLMAO!

[arewenotdemo]

14. Yeah, that was a killer!

Unless, of course, by "our" he meant to include his American masters.

[cliss]

5. This situation is getting dangerous.

Notice, world tensions in certain hot spots are reaching the exploding point. I see Northern Iraq as one of the "Tinderbox" places, every bit as dangerous as Pakistan, or Afghanistan.

Turkey is going to get sucked into a holocaust, and the US will be unable to do anything because we don't have the people. We would just start dropping big bombs in the northern area. But that would be a disaster because that's where the oil is located.

So they won't do that. And summer is coming, so it's going to be even more volatile. Pouring oil on the flames.

The U.S. could very well lose n. Iraq. Wouldn't that be ironic? After all this time, trying to "pacify" the country, losing $500 billion dollars, only to have it swiped by Turkey? We'd start bombing Ankara this weekend if that happened.:smoke:

[amandabeech]

6. The only group in Iraq who seemed happy to see us were the Kurds.

They had done well under the northern no-fly zone and hated Saddam who treated them abominably.

They have supported us during the occupation, as well.

If we don't protect them from the Turks, they may very well turn on us.

We have few friends in Iraq. We could end up losing almost all of them in this situation.

[ohio2007]

7. And they seem to stir the pot in that region of the world

Turkey probes weapons cache from Iran to Syria
Tue. 29 May 2007
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, May 29, 2007 (AFP) - Turkish authorities have launched an investigation into what they describe as an undeclared train shipment of weapons from Iran to Syria, local security sources said Tuesday.



The cargo was discovered in one of the cars of a freight train that was derailed Friday near the town of Genc in the southeast province of Bingol.

The derailment was caused by a landmine explosion blamed on separatist Kurdish rebels who are active in the region.

The cargo was declared as construction materials, but turned out to contain US-made rocket launchers and rifles, the sources said.


A prosecutor in Genc has launched an investigation into the incident, they said.

No other details were immediately available.

State-owned Turkish Railways runs both passenger and cargo services from Iran, Turkey's eastern neighbor, to Syria, which borders Turkey to the south.

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=11410

Wonder how much the customs officials get paid.....under the table?
Boy, imagine the stories they could $ell.

[amandabeech]

8. We really stirred the hornets nest, not just the pot!

There are so many points of conflict in the Middle East, that it's hard to keep all problems and ramifications in mind when attempting to formulate a policy.

Those kind of mental challenges seem to be lost on our Supreme Leader, don't they?

[LynnTheDem]

17. Actually, they weren't. More news the US "media" didn't think you needed to know:

Kurds not happy with US invasion plans for Iraq

Washington's goal of a "regime change" in Baghdad is running into strong reservations from Iraqi Kurdish leaders who would be crucial allies in any military campaign.

American officials had been told bluntly that the Kurds would oppose any attempt to topple Mr. Hussein by a coup.
http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2002nn/0207nn/020708nn.htm#326

Kurdish leader and Iraqi president Talabani;

In our opinion, invasion is a different issue. We are against the concept of the invasion scenario.
http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/knwsline/nws/interv.htm

[Celefin]

18. 'If we don't protect them from the Turks...'

Now here's an interesting scenario...
two NATO members fighting each other over Iraq's northern
oilfields. Oh yes, and protecting -insert some innocent people- from
-insert latest boogie here- of course.

The Kurds really are in a miserable position.
Always have been.

Problem is, you are right.
If you lose the unsteady kurdish support you will either have
to leave fast or incinerate the whole country.
Wonder what the US leadership would chose.

[nealmhughes]

9. The Kurds are truly in a sorry position: their ethnic cousins the Iranians don't want anything to do

with them, their neighbors to the West and South are not inclined to allow them full membership into the Turkish/Aramean/Arab fraternities, and what have they left?

It does appear that Arbil is a relative peaceful and even tolerant place, where many Iraqi Christians have gone to refuge. They were the victims of Saddam's pogroms and purges, and the forced immigration from cities such as Mosul, so the Assyrian and Kurds could be set aside for Sunni Arabs.

The situation in Turkey is especially troubling. Turkey is a very valuable NATO ally and a secular Europeanized state, but with a very strong Turkish nationalism streak running thru the state from its creation in the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

It is of course, the old nationalism ghost rearing its head again, misreading Herder to the Nth degree, but let us consider the PKK actions as analogous to IRA actions in Ulster and the position of Eire and the UK in regards to them in the past. While the Irish Republic publicly tssked and tssked at the IRA, it did not stop a large part of the population from claiming Ulster as Ireland Irrendenta.

When the Ottomans were in control of the entire Middle East with the exception of portions of Arabia, it was very easy for everyone to have a common enemy/patron: the Sultan. Now with the fragmentation of the state, it is not so easy, with lines being drawn on maps at the Treaty of Sevres with France and the UK taking their chunks of spheres of influence and importing Hashemites to rule from Mecca as payment for the Sharif's opposition to Ottoman rule and ibn Saud's subsequent conquest of the Peninsula.

In short, we are reliving WW I's aftermath in the Kurdish regions as well as the partitions of Iraq in general. When will it stop? Who knows, how long was there an Irish Question? Until both the UK and Eire were in the EU!

[cliss]

10. Thanks,

very nice summary.

[Orrin_73]

11. There are some 6-7 million kurds in turkey, 1 million of them are

active supporters of pkk. The pkk is not endorsed by all kurds in Turkey only by alevite kurds who make some 15% of the kurds. The rest of the kurds are sunni kurds and are loyal.

[amandabeech]

15. I don't think that it is completely certain that the Irish question has been settled.

There are great signs, but I'm not ready to call it over.

There are some who really won't call it over until the Ulstermen go back to Scotland and England, after an armed re-enactment of the Battle of the Boyne.

Sometimes things don't stop until all parties are completely exhausted and stay exhausted for a generation or two. I have the feeling that the Kurdish issue is one of them.

[SoCalDem]

12. of course they will.. The North of Iraq seems to be the most "stable"

and the Kurds seem to have evolved into the most autonomous section of the country (what's left of it)..so why not bomb it and reduce it to wreckage like the rest of the place ?:puke:

[maddezmom]

13. A Showdown In Ankara

A Showdown In Ankara
A Showdown In Ankara
Turkey is increasingly divided, and the secular Turkey is increasingly divided, and the secular elite is terrified of losing more power to the akp.

Ten years ago the generals who guard Turkey's secular tradition overthrew a coalition government headed by an Islamic fundamentalist and banned his party. This time, however, the ruling party (known in Turkish as the AKP) is refusing to go gently into the night. True, it has bent in the face of military and judicial pressure by withdrawing the nomination of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul for the presidency—a revered bastion of secular power. Yet the AKP has also contested the military's diktat by calling a general election. And it's in a strong position to do so: the party already enjoys a majority in Parliament and widespread popularity thanks to five years of effective rule, economic progress and political reform.

Another key difference between this crisis and past ones is that Turkey's economy has (so far) kept humming along; the lira has even risen in value. International markets have ignored the turmoil because of a consensus that no political party can reverse Turkey's reforms and its integration into the global economy.

Yet Turkey itself is increasingly divided. The secular establishment is deathly afraid of losing more power to the AKP, which draws much of its support from poor, pious Muslims. Secularists despise the party, and are sure that, given the opportunity, it would use the state to promote Islam in all aspects of Turkish life.

I was confronted by such attitudes on a recent trip. One friend, a professor, insisted, "You simply miss the increasing pressures that religious elements are impinging on our daily existence." He and others cited a mass of anecdotal evidence: their children are being harassed, liquor is getting harder to come by, religion has become the key to promotion in public institutions, and many parts of Istanbul now look more and more like the Middle East—boys and girls separated in many public places and women covered from head to foot. "Is this what Ataturk fought for?" I heard over and over. A prominent mathematician said: "You Americans believe in moderate Islam. There is no such thing."


more:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19000113/site/newsweek/

[Eugene]

16. Turkey to submit report to U.N. on north Iraq

Source: Reuters

Turkey to submit report to U.N. on north Iraq
Mon Jun 4, 2007 5:08AM EDT

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey will deliver a report to the
United Nations this week spelling out its concerns about
militant Kurdish separatists in Iraq and reaffirming its
legal right to take action against them, an official said
on Monday.

The news comes as Turkey reinforces its troops along
the border with Iraq and the powerful army General
Staff stresses its readiness for a cross-border operation
to crush guerrillas of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK).

"Diplomacy first," said Monday's Sabah newspaper
headline, saying the U.N. move prepared the legal and
diplomatic ground for the possible military operation,
which has already sparked alarm in the United States,
Turkey's NATO ally.

The Foreign Ministry official told Reuters Turkey's
permanent U.N. representative, Baki Ilkin, would hold
talks with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this
week.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0424229920070604