The Turkish invasion of northern Iraq in pursuit of the PKK guerrillas who have been harrying the Turks for decades continues:
Turkish commandos are patrolling the snowy, mountainous region of northern Iraq Sunday as a major ground operation targeting Kurdish rebels continues for a third day.
Turkish fighter jets are also in the skies above the border region.
The leadership of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq has warned Turkey not to target civilians during its military operations in Iraq, saying there will be large-scale resistance if civilians are harmed.
There have been no reports of civilian casualties since Turkey began its military incursion late Thursday. But Iraq’s foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari says the Turkish military has destroyed five bridges.
Turkey’s military says seven of its soldiers and at least 79 Kurdish rebels have been killed during the operation.
The PKK says it has shot down a Turkish attack helicopter and has killed 20 Turkish soldiers.
Neither side’s figures, nor the rebel’s claim of downing the chopper, have been confirmed.
Turkey has been bombarding the PKK camps off and on for years, more intensively over the last couple of months. The ground forces have at least the potential for reducing civilian and noncombatant casualties compared to the shelling. Can they be trusted to do so?
There’s also an interesting video from AlJazeera’s English edition on the invasion.
I wonder how long the regional Kurdish government and Iraqi national government will be able to accept Turkish troops on their soil? Judging by the reporting at KurdishMedia not long. KurdishMedia is full of reports of exhortations for activity against Turks in Turkey and implicitly blames the situation on the Iraqi national government:
The locals are confused of the objective of the military. They boil it down to a physiological war against Kurds on both sides, north and south. Some observers believe that it is the US/Turkish pressure on the KRG to do further concessions to the Iraqi central government such as giving up the control over its oil resources, give up Article 140 regarding de-Arabisation of areas outside the Kurdish control and simply reduce down the strength of the KRG. Effectively, Turkey is doing the Iraqi central government’s war, a war of which Iraq is incapable.
For its part the Iraqi national government is dealing with the situation with a combination of denial and temporizing:
The Iraqi government on Friday called on Turkey to use diplomacy to solve the border crisis with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), denying clashes with the Peshmerga fighters.
“Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki phoned his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyib Erdogan, during which he stressed on the importance of respecting the Iraqi sovereignty,” Ali al-Dabagh, spokesman for the Iraqi government, told some reporters in Baghdad.
“Fro his part, Erdogan said that his country is keen not to broaden military operations launched against elements of the (PKK), denying clashes between Turkish troops and Peshmerga fighters,” al-Dabagh added.
“Al-Maliki stressed during the phone call on the importance of respecting Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and urged Turkey not to resort to the military option which could threaten relations between the two countries,” the spokesman explained.
“The Iraqi government considers the PKK as a (terrorist organization),” he underlined, noting that Iraq supports Turkish operations against the PKK outside Iraq and any military operations waged by the Turkish troops should be done within an agreement with the Iraqi government.
Meanwhile, al-Dabagh said that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani made a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul, during which the Turkish military operations against the PKK on borders with Iraq’s Kurdistan region were tackled.
“Gul said that there were no clashes with the Peshmerga fighters and the forces plunged into a mountain region and clashed with the PKK elements,” the spokesman said.
The media coverage on this event has been nothing short of disgraceful.
The PKK are a well organized and financed terrorist organization that has killed well over 30,000 men women and children since the 1980s.
The whole world can easily understand how the American military being bogged down in other parts has been unable to wage any sort of struggle against this group. George Bush did say he would not let Iraq turn into a breeding ground for terrorist activity but hasn’t kept this promise so far as it pertains to the largest terrorist organization based in Iraq.
So taking all this into account the Turkish troop movements into Northern Iraq to root out terrorist training camps is one of the few positives comming out of this Iraq debacle. Lets hope they can get the job done before the international press runs rampid with stories about how the terrorists are being mistreated and puts enough pressure to stop the operation.
I can’t see how any media outlet can possibly be against an operation targetting purely members of an organization who by policy attack hospitals and schools.