George Bush has successfully reduced the tension along the Iraq-Turkey border during his meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His promise to work with Turkey to end terrorist incursions across the border by the Kurdish guerilla group PKK has stopped talk of a cross-border invasion. Erdogan said he will “trust” Iraqi officials and Bush to meet their commitments in ending the attacks:
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan left Washington reassured Tuesday after President George W. Bush called Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq a common enemy and promised greater help against them.
A large-scale Turkish incursion into northern Iraq was now unlikely, said analysts. But they saw tacit US approval for surgical strikes on rebel targets across the border in Bush’s promise to provide Ankara with “real-time” intelligence on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) movements.
Bush also announced better communication channels between the top echelons of the Turkish and US military and the top US commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus. …
“We understood each other well and agreed on the basic issues,” Erdogan said Monday after his meeting with Bush, widely seen as the culmination of frantic US efforts to avert the threat of a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq.
The crisis has not completely abated. Turkey plans to keep 100,000 troops mobilized on the border to prevent any more incursions and to serve as a reminder to Iraq to keep its promises. The “surgical strikes” proposed by Turkey could enrage the Iraqi Kurd population, which could lead to even more attacks and the dreaded invasion that could touch off a five-nation war in the region.
The situation looks better than it did two weeks ago, however. With the Turkish Parliament overwhelmingly approving a military invasion to handle the PKK issue and Congress provoking the Turks with an untimely resolution about the Armenian Genocide, it looked as though the US had lost its influence with its NATO ally, and would lose at least our vital lines of communication into northern Iraq. Bush appears to have reversed the damage, at least momentarily.
We have to take very clear steps against the PKK if that is to last. The Turks have a valid complaint in this case, and they have justification for a military response to the terrorist threat against them if Iraq and the US can’t stop it. The Kurds in Iraq seem to understand how much they have to lose if the Turks invade; we need to make that very clear to them in the weeks ahead. The Iraqis have to shut down the PKK, and keep them shut down.
At least we now have a window of opportunity to manage that complicated mission. Bush won us some breathing room, and the Iraqis and especially the Kurds had better make the most of it.
I think that all sides wanted an amicable resolution; Bush was smart enough to say the right things and Erdogan was smart enough to agree. As much as Turkey may want to squash the PKK and the Kurds in general, they DON’T want to become pariahs as far as the EU is concerned. I’m sure that they also don’t want bad relations with us any more than we want bad relations with them.
Another test for the Iraqi government and for the Iraqi Kurds. Will they work to keep a lid on the PKK?
Let’s also hope that SanFran Nan and her fellow idiots in the Congress can resist the urge to provoke Turkey again. Hopefully, they’ll confine their efforts to f*** things up to the United States and leave the rest of the world alone.
I wonder what the “or else” was?
As in “don’t send Turkish troops across the border or else …”.
Cowboy diplomacy at its best! Did it pass the global test?
Swede,
All countries have the right to defend their territory against insurrection and foreign invasion. If you don’t assert sovereignty, you lose it.
On the other side, any cross-border attacks or incursions by foreign citizens is a tacit announcement that the country from which the attacks originate either does not have sovereignty or is the originator of the attacks.
Just like Iraq, Mexico might want to consider that facet of international relations.
With regard to “cowboy diplomacy”, it’s the Turks who did that — and it looks like they got what they wanted all along — Iraqi denouncement of the PKK by all parties in Iraq, including the Kurds, and a promise by Iraq to better police its border. The US had no choice but to go along, at the risk of rending our seamless garb with respect to terrorism.
If you mean “Tensions” as in political posturing signifying nothing, I agree they have eased.
If you mean that Turkey seriously considered moving into Northern Iraq and butting heads with the Kurds while forcing the US military to take a stand against them (and move into Northern Iraq from their own territory, never mind through naval imposition) you are seriously misinformed.
Turkey’s population is passionate about the Kurdish question, no doubt. You can see it oversees in Europe where Turkish immigrants are consistently thuggish towards their newly acquired territories (assimilation is a joke).
Which is why the Turkish government MUST posture to prove it is doing SOMETHING whilst hiding its impotence to actually do anything.
Turkey, in regards to Northern Iraq, is a paper tiger and will remain so until it sees the US military distance itself from the Iraqis in general and the Kurds in particular. The best chance Turkey has with overtaking Northern Iraq will come next November.
unclesmrgol,
Everything you just claimed happened in this regard is utterly meaningless [and you know it].
The parties talked tough.
Guess how much actually changed on the ground.
Nothing.
To use your analogy, it is similar to the Mexican government announcing that it is doing everything it can to limit illegals from crossing the border (which they’ve promised ad nauseum).
How many illegals are there in America now?
You are indeed naive, unclesmrgol.
Do you honestly think that the Turks are doing anything new by making raids around the “border”? Boy, you have no context. If anything, they’ve PULLED BACK in recent years. Turkey opportunistically invaded Northern Iraq when the Kurds were “distracted” by the war further South. The US wasn’t interested in listening to the “concerns” of Turkish troops in Iraq especially when we’d just been denied entry from the North to prevent Saddam’s forces from escaping into Syria.
Bottom line: Turkey chose the wrong side in the war and lost big, then was forced to unceremoniously withdraw its troops from Northern Iraq.
And now the Turks have returned, not to the outliers of Kirkuk’s oil fields, not to prevent an independent Kurdistan (which is what they feared in ’03 and why so many Turks cheered for the Baathists) but to the “border” where they’re probably still seething about not being let in by the arrogant Americans and the presumtuous Kurds.
And you think they’ve won: it’s kind of funny.
The turks are fair weather friends, no different than any other muslim country. When they are in need, they will bend over backwards to accomodate the west. Give them any sort of power over events, and bam, you see what’s happening today. We need to remove our resources from Turkey completely. There are several non-muslim countries in the region who are more than happy to have the US military permanently based on their soil with a lot less headache to the troops who have to live there.
Theresa, MSgt (ret), USAF,
“There are several non-muslim countries in the region who are more than happy to have the US military permanently based on their soil with a lot less headache to the troops who have to live there.”
And those countries would be?
Coldwarrior,
He might be sarcastic (can’t really tell).
At any rate, the singular defacto nation that is advocating for a permanent US presence is Kurdistan. I say defacto because they control their own borders and have physical and monetary control over their own resources and finances. Politically, there is an unmistakable national conscience.
While there is a weak recognition (of sorts) of an Iraqi identity, even among its advocates, it is acknowledged as a future goal, one that is not ready for prime-time.
The problem for Kurds (vis-a-vis permanent American presence and their aspirations for independence) is that an independent Kurdistan is only probable (by default) if the current Iraq project falls apart. But if that happens, the Kurds lose much of their value to the US who may pick up and leave. And considering their oil resources, their relatively weak military, and their powerful enemies in every direction, such an “independent Kurdistan” will not be long for the world, certainly not in its current and prosperous form.
Enough of the Kurds and their leaders know that, which is why an Iraqi identity is still a viable future.
For the Kurds, as a whole, to have a sovereign Kurdish Nation would be to carve out large parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Having the Kurds in Iraq establish their own federal, or autonomous, state within Iraq seems to be the only presently workable solution. Having the PKK running around upsetting the present Kurdish fairly-stable Iraq-state does not serve Iraqi Kurds well at all. It does serve those Kurds who still hold on to the ideal of a greater Kurdish nation-state. Keeping Iraqi Kurds focused on wanting what they have instead of having what they want will involve Turkey for the next several years at least, and the U.S. as well, among other regional players.
So, the US caved into Turkey again and got…nothing! What an ally! It gets: continued genocide denial, continued appeasement for its aggression, and continued label by Washington elites as “an ally”.
All are dreaming that Turkey will stand and watch its territory being attacked and its citizens killed. Turkey has a legal and a moral right to intervine in Northern Irak just as it did in Cyprus. Dont fool yourself for one minute that it would not intervine if it needs to be done niether USA or ruling party AKP will be able to stop it. In Turkey people know when to sacrife for their country and for peace and security and they willdo that just as they have always done. Remember Gallipoli!
Edogan probably now well realizes that unfortunate misunderstandings can happen when Pelosi’s botox soaks into her frontal lobe.
M Mersinoglu,
I’d rather remember the Turkish Brigade, and the 700 dead and 2111 wounded helping South Korea back when I was but an infant.
I give the Turkish people a lot more credit than apparently a lot of Americans.
Tesekkur ederim!