[NYTr] Frenetic U.S. pins hope on joint military action

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Toronto Globe & Mail - Oct 29, 2007
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071029.wturkey29/BNStory/International/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20071029.wturkey29

'Frenetic' U.S. pins hope on joint military action

Strike on PKK in northern Iraq is a bid to keep civil war from erupting
in the one region Washington can claim any success

By MARK MACKINNON

ISTANBUL — Within hours of the deadly clash in eastern Turkey that left
12 Turkish soldiers and a reported 32 Kurdish fighters dead, U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on the phone to Ankara,
pleading with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for restraint.

It was a phone call that, so far, has forestalled a major Turkish
military incursion into northern Iraq.

With Turkish popular anger sky-high over the cross-border attacks by
separatist fighters from the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, Ms. Rice
told Mr. Erdogan two things: that she took the PKK problem "very
seriously" and that the United States had a plan to deal with it, if
Mr. Erdogan would give her a few days before reacting.

Turkey has waited expectantly for over a week now, and Ms. Rice's plan
is finally starting to emerge. Rather than the Turkish military going
it alone with a large-scale ground operation that would likely inflame
Kurdish nationalism on both sides of the border, talk here has shifted
to the likelihood of some kind of limited joint U.S.-Turkish strike.

The attack, which is expected to begin shortly after a meeting between
Mr. Erdogan and U.S. President George W. Bush on Nov. 5, would limit
its aims to destroying PKK bases in the region while preserving the
fragile alliance between Ankara and Washington.

While the White House has remained tight-lipped - other than to
publicly chastise the PKK as "terrorists" while warning Turkey that an
invasion would be counterproductive - Mr. Erdogan debriefed selected
journalists who travelled with him to London last week after the latest
fighting. "I have never seen Americans this frenetic," Mr. Erdogan was
quoted as saying, referring to Ms. Rice's desperate diplomacy since the
Oct. 21 attack.

The operation reportedly would involve a small number of troops, backed
by air support. Despite the widespread public sentiment in Turkey that
the real problem is Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who heads the
Kurdistan Regional Government that runs northern Iraq and has been
accused of providing aid to the PKK, his administration apparently will
not be targeted.

It's small wonder that the prospect of Turkey invading northern Iraq
would cause panic in Washington. The area governed by Mr. Barzani is
the lone oasis of relative peace and prosperity in the country, the
only place where the Bush administration can honestly claim to have
achieved its aim of "spreading freedom" in the Middle East.

The potential for the Kurdish north to be dragged into the civil war
that has engulfed the rest of the country is already increasing by the
week as Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen (the ethnic kin of Turkey's Turks)
battle for control of the ethnically mixed and oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
A car bomb there - now a frequent occurrence in the once-calm city -
killed at least eight Kurds yesterday.

Turkey and the Kurds are two of the staunchest U.S. allies in the
Middle East, and seeing them come to blows would be a disaster for U.S.
foreign policy in the region. If it were as simple as choosing between
them, Turkey - which in addition to being a NATO partner that hosts
U.S. air bases crucial to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a key
energy corridor for oil and gas flowing to the West - would surely win
out as the more important friend.

But, as usual when the Bush administration dabbles in the Middle East,
there's also the Iran factor. The United States has been providing
support to Kurdish separatist groups in Iran that also have links to
the PKK and bases in northern Iraq. In the event of a U.S. war against
Tehran, the United States will count on them to rise up against Tehran
as Iraq's Kurds did against Saddam Hussein. If Turkey unilaterally goes
into northern Iraq to crush the PKK, Iran could use it as a precedent
and move to crush Kurdish groups both within its own borders and inside
Iraq.

There will be a flurry of high-profile diplomatic activity in the
coming days, ostensibly aimed at averting a military incursion: Ms.
Rice arrives in Turkey on Thursday, ahead of a regional summit on
Iraq's security that begins the next day in Istanbul. Then Mr. Erdogan
heads for Washington.

But Mr. Erdogan's remarks suggest that a decision has already been
made. Turkey will attack and U.S. participation, or at least support,
will serve as notice to Tehran that nobody takes action in Iraq without
Washington's approval. With public anger in Turkey still red-hot, many
here say there is no other way out.

"We don't see anything coming from the Iraqi government, which isn't in
control of [the border area] anyway, so that eliminates a non-military
solution," said Cengiz Aktar, a professor of European Studies at
Bahcesehir University in Istanbul. "The only remaining option left
looks like military action by Turkey."

The battle is already raging on Turkish soil. Some 8,000 Turkish troops
engaged suspected PKK rebels in the east of the country yesterday, near
the Iraqi border, reportedly killing some 20 fighters. Turkey has
massed some 100,000 soldiers in the frontier region, backed by tanks,
helicopters and fighter jets, ready to hunt down the 3,000 PKK members
who are believed to be based in the mountains of northern Iraq.

Despite warnings that any offensive could reignite the ethnic strife
that killed more than 30,000 people in the 1980s and 1990s, the Turkish
public is clamouring for the military to hit the PKK hard.

It's unclear whether a limited "joint" strike will cool emotions in
Turkey. Thousands of Turks marched all weekend in demonstrations around
the country calling for all-out war against the PKK and Mr. Barzani's
regime. "Damn the PKK!" flag-waving crowds chanted in one of several
angry protests that broke out yesterday on Istanbul's bustling Taksim
Square. "We are all soldiers! Give us guns!"

"The Turkish media is pushing very hard [for war] and the public is
completely upside-down," Prof. Aktar said. "I'm afraid the government
isn't in control of this process any more."