March 22, 2003

Turkey Denies Troops Sent to Iraq, West Gets Tough

Turkey said on Saturday there was no truth in reports it had sent troops into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq overnight, as U.S., European and NATO leaders made clear they wanted Ankara to stay out.

Germany led NATO voices threatening action, saying it would withdraw its crews from the alliance's AWACS surveillance planes patrolling the airspace over Turkey if Ankara became a belligerent force in northern Iraq.[Danke, Deutschland! That'll make 'em think twice!--J.T.]

The United States signaled it did not want Turkey to upset its military campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by triggering any fighting with Kurdish groups Ankara suspects of ambitions to establish an independent Kurdish state.
[...]
In Washington, a U.S. official said: "We know the Turks think that it's necessary to use the military to establish a humanitarian corridor in the north but frankly we don't agree."
[...]
Germany, which is opposed to any involvement in the U.S.-led war against Baghdad, delivered one of the toughest messages to Ankara, saying Berlin would not accept any change in the purely defensive nature of AWACS missions in Turkey.

"If Turkey itself becomes a participant in the war, that would be a new situation that would lead to the withdrawal of German soldiers from the AWACS aircraft over Turkey. We will not participate in a war," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters.

Turkey is concerned that a Kurdish state would reignite armed Kurdish separatism in southeastern Turkey that cost 30,000 lives in the 1980s and 1990s.[New Turk Prez & Islamist Erdogan was babbling about these 30,000 lives lost just the other day...Jen] Iraqi Kurdish groups, for their part, fear Turkey might move to crush the autonomy they have enjoyed since Baghdad lost control of the area after the 1991 Gulf War.

Watch this situation in northern Iraq.
Word has it that if Turkey comes into Iraq to fight the Kurds, then so will the Syrians and the Iranians.
This hunger for the northern, Kurdish part of Iraq on the part of the Turks may not just be an act of ethnic "compassion" on Turkey's part; au contraire, it's probably the first part of an effort to effect ethnic cleansing of the Kurds.
But the Turks could capture the rich Kirkuk oil fields in the process and that would we nice for them, wouldn't it?
Turkish ambitions on northern Iraq may explain everything about why they wouldn't cooperate with polite and lucrative U.S. requests to use Turkish terrority for some of our campaign to liberate Iraq.
On the other hand, the Kurds have most eagerly pledged the loyalties of 70,000+ Kurds to the U.S. and her allies to bring down Saddam's regime.