[NYTr] Cockburn: Turks "reluctantly prepare for" Attack on Kurds

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Extremely strange reporting coming out of Turkey/Iraq. It's hard to
know what's actually happening, given the contradictory reporting,
and whether it's one side's line or another, or simply delays in
getting reports into print. See also the following story, also The
Independent, also dated today from Turkey itself, not Iraq's border
with Turkey. -NY Transfer]

The Independent - Oct 28, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3104682.ece

Turkey reluctantly prepares for attack on Kurds

It is a war few in the region want to happen, apart from the PKK
guerrillas and militant factions in the Turkish army

By Patrick Cockburn on the Iraq-Turkey border

The rebels of the Turkish-Kurd PKK movement are the only guerrillas in
the world who can be seen from space. Clearly visible to any satellite
passing over their headquarters in the Kandil mountains is a giant
portrait picked out in painted stones of the PKK's captive leader,
Abdullah Ocalan, regarded with cult-like devotion by his followers.

Ignored by the outside world for years, during which they hid in the
valleys of Iraqi Kurdistan, the guerrillas looked bemused last week by
the number of journalists who had made the trek into the mountains to
speak to them. It was a PKK attack early last Sunday morning in which
16 Turkish soldiers were killed and eight captured that led to the
Turkish government threatening to invade northern Iraq in pursuit of
the Turkish Kurd rebels.

It is not a war anybody wants, apart from the PKK and militant factions
within the Turkish army. The PKK was defeated in its battle for
independence or at least autonomy for Turkey's 15 million Kurds after a
bloody war fought between 1984 and 1999. A Turkish invasion might
enable it to regain its political popularity among Turkish Kurds.

The Turkish army, or at least some of its leaders, also has a vested
interest in escalating the long-running struggle. This is the army's
strongest card in trying to maintain its authority in the state in
opposition to the moderate Islamist government of Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan, whose AK party was re-elected in July.

There is no doubt that the PKK did carry out last Sunday's attack. But
the Iraqi Kurds believe – and it is a view supported by diplomats in
Ankara – that at least some of the recent attacks on Turkish security
forces were the work of an extreme faction within the Turkish army. The
PKK denies, for instance, that it carried out a raid in which 12
village guards – a pro-government home guard – were shot dead in
Beytussebap recently. The Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, also
points out that the PKK is notoriously riddled with Turkish agents.

It is a strange crisis because Mr Erdogan, for all his threats to send
100,000 Turkish soldiers in pursuit of the PKK, is doing everything to
avoid an attack. He has pointed out that the 24 previous Turkish
invasions of Iraq have achieved little and the 3,000 PKK guerrillas can
easily hide in caves and bunkers until the Turks have left. An attack
would anger the US, the Iraqi government, the Kurdistan regional
government and the Turkish Kurds who voted for Mr Erdogan in July.

The Iraqi government is a weak player in all this because it does not
control the north of Iraq, which is firmly under the authority of the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Not surprisingly, Turkish-Iraqi
talks in Ankara aimed at averting an invasion collapsed on Friday.

Mr Erdogan is off to see President George Bush in Washington in 10
days' time, but the US is disinclined to become embroiled with Turkey
through which come much of the military supplies for the US army in
Baghdad. The KRG is the only force in Iraq capable of acting against
the guerrillas, but Turkey refuses to talk to its leaders, essentially
because they are Kurds.

There is also a suspicion among Iraqi Kurds that it is they and not the
minnows of the PKK who will be the real target of a Turkish invasion.
Turkey has watched with dismay since 2003 as the Iraqi Kurds created
what is in effect the first de facto independent Kurdish state that is
stronger than half the members of the UN.

A referendum in Kirkuk mandated by the Iraqi constitution should take
place by the end of this year, though it may now be delayed, and a vote
would probably lead to the oil-rich province joining the KRG. Such a
result is anathema to Turkey but it is not clear what it could do to
stop it.

For all Mr Erdogan's efforts to talk tough but delay military action,
another attack would make it impossible for him to avoid ordering an
incursion. There are those in the PKK or the Turkish army who will make
sure that just such a provocation does take place.