What Future has Kurdistan? Regional War?

Kurdistan in Iraq has been relatively peaceful since 1991 except for a brief civil war in the mid-90s. They operate essentially an independent entity aligned in mostly name only to Iraq conducting their own commerce, and providing their own service, as well as maintaining their own independent army, the infamous Peshmerga, known as the most effective fighting force in the region. This article reviews the history of Kurdistan, divided by the peace treaty at the end of WWI between Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. This border divided people represent a major risk for a regional conflict.

Image via Wikipedia

As, over time, the KRG fuses with the once-rival ruling parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and trade increases rapidly with Turkey and, to a lesser degree, with Iran and Syria, the notion of a sovereign Iraqi Kurdish state becomes more plausible while making the fantasy of reunification of "Greater Kurdistan" much less so.

Kurdistan cannot escape its landlocked geography quadrisected in the ashes of World War I. The roughly 35 million ethnic Kurds are the world's largest ethnic group without their own country. Iraqi Kurdistan's ruling politicians and their corresponding corporate interests are now shuttling between the central government in Baghdad and various regional capitals to feel out which way the winds of change are blowing.

The Kurds have been caught in a web of wildly varying, intolerant nationalisms for most of the post-Ottoman era from which they have not been able to escape. The most significant of these is Turkey's secular and militarist Kemalism. Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk the "Father of Turks", replaced the unifying Islam of the dying Ottoman caliphate with so-called "Turkishness".

Millions of Kurds, in what would become the Turkish Republic, were to be absurdly labeled "Mountain Turks". Ataturk insisted on doing away with any cultural practice related to the caliphate, including the tolerance of linguistic and religious minorities under its jurisdiction.

The newly created Turkey, forged in 1923, left no room for "Kurdishness" and Turkey's Kurds began rebelling almost at once. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran did away with the enforced secularism of the Pahlavi dynasty and enshrined a form of Shi'itism as the state ideology around which the nascent Islamic Republic was formed.

The then-new Iranian regime presented itself to the outside world as a pious Persian Shi'ite monolith, leaving little room for Iran's restive, mostly Sunni Kurdish minority. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's unorthodox interpretation of traditional Shi'itism and the creation of the velayat-e-faqih ("The rule of the jurisprudent" - considered an unwelcome innovation by much of the Shi'ite clerical establishment) left the Kurds of Iran's Kordestan and Western Azerbaijan provinces disaffected even more so.

The takeover of Iraq and Syria by Ba'athists in the 1960s led to the rise of a myopic pan-Arabism in Baghdad and Damascus that left no room for the Kurds' distinct language, culture and traditions. The Cold War Arab socialism of the Ba'ath party was, for the Kurds, simply more ethno-chauvinist demagoguery, that, as in Turkey and Iran, was bent on the destruction of their massive stateless nation.

One of the only identifying factors that these highly divergent ideologies of Kemalism, Khomenism and Ba'athism had in common was their policy of constant Kurdish repression. Internal jingoistic state policies being carried out in their respective Kurdish-majority regions in the name of law and order over the decades have now morphed across borders into external forces of political expediency unifying Turkey, Syria and Iran on the suppression of their respective "Kurdish questions".

Along with all of the external historic forces allied against them, the Kurds themselves are also internally divided by dialect, tribe and clan. In the case of Iraqi Kurdistan, these divisions translated into political allegiances that have now formed the backbone of the KRG.



Save for the very short-lived, Soviet-backed Republic of Mahabad in 1946, the Irbil-based KRG is the closest thing any of the Kurds in Kurdistan's four sectors have to an independent state. As Turkey's hopes for full-scale European Union accession have been fading into the background, Turkey's relations with Iran, Iraq and Syria have greatly improved.

Syria, which for a time once supported PKK insurgents in a petty proxy struggle with Turkey regarding disputes over water usage rights, has long since dropped all known tolerance of Turkish Kurd fighters operating from Syrian territory. Turkey has come to the realization that as much as it has looked Westward from Ataturk's secularist revolution onward, it has no choice but to integrate a higher level of cooperation with its less stable borderlands to the south and east.

Oil flowing north into Turkey from Iraq, and water flowing south into Syria and Iraq, defies Turkey's past isolation from Middle Eastern issues and may slow its Europeanization. Syria's realization that it needs Turkish cooperation on water caused the Bashar al-Assad regime to quickly snuff out its support of the PKK in Syrian Kurdistan, espoused by his late father. In so doing, Damascus has produced a remarkable thaw in Turkish-Syrian relations.

[..]
Turkish warplanes are striking PKK positions from above while Iran is firing Katuysha batteries at PJAK positions over the ridgeline from the Iranian side of the border. The Turkish and Iranian goals in the area appear to be the same and it seems to serve both Ankara and Tehran to conflate the two groups. The PKK rebels have also made statements in the press contradicting what was recently told to this correspondent by the PJAK regarding its operational independence from the PKK.

The United States government has been supplying Turkey with "actionable intelligence" [2] to target PKK outposts in Iraqi territory which the PJAK told Asia Times Online was being shared with the Iranians. Allegations that Turkey is passing on classified US intelligence to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps cannot be going down well at the Pentagon.

Turkey and Iran, at odds since Iran's revolution in 1979 collided with Turkey's rigid secularism, have a common foe in their shared attacks on Kurdish irredentists sheltering in Iraq.

Rojhilat told Asia Times Online that for the two opposing state ideologies, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", in reference to their dislike of the Kurds in their midst.

Last week, Turkey's parliament ratified a renewal of the mandate allowing its military to continue to strike Iraqi territory [3] and further coordination with Tehran may become the norm. The PJAK states that it seeks to topple the Islamic Republic to replace it with an inclusive, federal democracy - but the group does not maintain secessionist sentiments in the immediate term. The PJAK claims to have broad support among the Kurds of northwestern Iran and the EU's Kurdish diaspora. At least one of the men I met had arrived in Qandil from Finland to take up arms against Iran.

For now, the PKK and the PJAK maintain their hearty guerrilla bases in the Qandil Mountains, while Irbil continues to look the other way. For the stateless Kurdish revolutionaries launching operations out of Iraq's hinterlands, the tolerance of their bases could evaporate as the Kurds of Iraq assert themselves and Baghdad's unstable politics continue to evolve.

The prospect of an internationally recognized Kurdish state carved out of northern Iraq may seem far-fetched at present to many, but Iraqi Kurdish elites are harboring contingencies for such an eventuality. This scenario would make quite a bitter pill for Turkey, Iran and Syria to swallow and the independence of one sector may forever negate the potential for secession of the other three.

So while Iraqi Kurdistan elects its own parliament, forges oil contracts independent of Baghdad and prepares for its future, the "other" Kurdistan still seethes with repression and rage from nation-states that have refused to accept the Kurdish realities existing within their borders.

via Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

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• Iraq's future (news.bbc.co.uk)


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• New Kurdish Party Could Destabilize Northern Iraq (time.com)


• Ruling bloc wins Iraqi Kurd poll (news.bbc.co.uk)


• US's 'arc of instability' just gets bigger (citizengkar.wordpress.com)

FBI Whistleblower says Neocons Negotiated Iraq Invasion with Foreign Agents in Summer 2001

This pretty well documents the Bush White House planning before 9/11 to invade and partition Iraq.  Finally, something close to mainstream media (MSM) is paying attention to Sibel Edmonds and her testimony. I've been writing about this story since 2005 when I first heard about it. So far, few MSM agencies have chosen to give this story much attention.

This has far reaching implications and chronicles a hidden power game within the Bush Administration including illegal espionage activities by key neo-cons. It also gives a glimpse of Bush's conspiracy to sell the invasion of Iraq to the American people based on false information.

Suggested here also is evidence, as I have pointed out before, that Turkish, Iranian and Israeli spies had inappropriate access to the Bush Administration and very likely manipulated Bush towards an invasion of Iraq.

Image via Wikipedia

In an interview with former CIA officer Phillip Giraldi, FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds named Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle as having been wiretapped and recorded discussing plans with the Turkish ambassador in the Summer of 2001 to invade Iraq and occupy the Kurdish region bordering Turkey.

A Department of Justice inspector general’s report called Edmonds’s allegations "credible," "serious," and "warranting a thorough and careful review by the FBI." Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee members Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have backed her publicly. "60 Minutes" launched an investigation of her claims and found them believable. No one has ever disproved any of Edmonds’s revelations, which she says can be verified by FBI investigative files.

via Daily Kos: FBI Whistleblower says Neocons Negotiated Iraq Invasion with Foreign Agents in Summer 2001.

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• Sibel Edmonds Cover Story at 'The American Conservative' (bradblog.com)


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• Democratic Peace Theory (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)


• FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Tells of Bribery, Espionage and Cover-up at the Highest Levels of US Government (citizengkar.wordpress.com)


• Bombshell: Bin Laden Worked for US Until 9/11 (citizengkar.wordpress.com)

SIBEL EDMONDS' DEPOSITION: VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT RELEASED

Long-gagged FBI whistleblower's full under-oath testimony from Ohio election case, details Congressional blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, more...

via The BRAD BLOG : SIBEL EDMONDS' DEPOSITION: VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT RELEASED.

Clerics urge new jihad over Gaza

BBC NEWS

At a weekend meeting in Istanbul, 200 religious scholars and clerics met with senior Hamas officials to plot a new jihad centred on Gaza. The BBC's Bill Law was the only Western journalist at the meeting. In a hall crowded with conservative Sunni Muslim sheikhs and scholars, in a hotel close to Istanbul's Ataturk Airport speaker after speaker called for jihad against Israel in support of Hamas.
The choice of Turkey was significant. Arab hardliners were keen to put aside historic differences with the Turks. As one organiser put it: "During the past 100 years relations have been strained but Palestine has brought us together."
Many delegates spoke appreciatively of the protest by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who stormed out of a Davos debate on Gaza two weeks ago. " Gaza gives us power, it solves our differences... Palestine is a legitimate theatre of operations for jihad ". The conference, dubbed the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, also gave impetus to Sunni clerics concerned about the growing power of Hezbollah, the Shia movement backed by Iran, which rose to international prominence in its own war with Israel in 2006.
"Gaza is a gift," the Saudi religious scholar Mohsen al-Awajy told me. He and other delegates repeatedly referred to the Gaza war as "a victory. Gaza," he continued, "gives us power, it solves our differences. We are all now in a unified front against Zionism."
In closed meetings after sessions delegates focussed on the creation of a "third Jihadist front" - the first two being Afghanistan and Iraq. The intensity of the Israeli attack had "awakened all Muslims," Mr Awajy claimed. "Palestine is a legitimate theatre of operations for jihad (holy war)," he added.
Road to liberation
Mohammed Nazzal, a senior Hamas leader based in Damascus, challenged Arab governments to "open their borders and allow the fighters to come." Delegates from all over the Middle East, and from Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan and Indonesia applauded as he stabbed the air with a raised finger and declared: "There will be no agreement with Israel... only weapons will bring respect."
Mr Nazzal told his audience: "Don't worry about casualties."
The 23 days of bombardment of Gaza, in which some 1,300 people, many of them civilians and nearly 300 of them children, are believed to have died, was "just the beginning" of the struggle, Mr Nazzal said. To laughter in the audience, another speaker noted that twice as many babies were born as children were killed during the war. Every death, I was told, was a martyrdom on the road to liberation.
For the hardline sheikhs, it was an opportunity to underline what they see as the growing gulf between Arab regimes who are hesitant to back Hamas and the people of the region who, they say, embrace Hamas as heroes fighting against overwhelming odds. More importantly, this conference represented something of a coup for Hamas. They were promised weapons, money and fighters. The question remains whether such rhetoric can or will be translated into action. Israel keeps a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip, where Hamas exercises de facto control, and Israel's other borders are also heavily guarded.
But at the very least this statement of intent from Sunni hardliners poses new challenges, not just to the Israelis and to Western efforts to broker a peace deal but to Arab regimes as well.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7895485.stm
Published: 2009/02/17 19:01:50 GMT
© BBC MMIX
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• War of words between Israel, Turkey escalates (cnn.com)

Clerics urge new jihad over Gaza

BBC NEWS

At a weekend meeting in Istanbul, 200 religious scholars and clerics met with senior Hamas officials to plot a new jihad centred on Gaza. The BBC's Bill Law was the only Western journalist at the meeting. In a hall crowded with conservative Sunni Muslim sheikhs and scholars, in a hotel close to Istanbul's Ataturk Airport speaker after speaker called for jihad against Israel in support of Hamas.
The choice of Turkey was significant. Arab hardliners were keen to put aside historic differences with the Turks. As one organiser put it: "During the past 100 years relations have been strained but Palestine has brought us together."
Many delegates spoke appreciatively of the protest by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who stormed out of a Davos debate on Gaza two weeks ago. " Gaza gives us power, it solves our differences... Palestine is a legitimate theatre of operations for jihad ". The conference, dubbed the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, also gave impetus to Sunni clerics concerned about the growing power of Hezbollah, the Shia movement backed by Iran, which rose to international prominence in its own war with Israel in 2006.
"Gaza is a gift," the Saudi religious scholar Mohsen al-Awajy told me. He and other delegates repeatedly referred to the Gaza war as "a victory. Gaza," he continued, "gives us power, it solves our differences. We are all now in a unified front against Zionism."
In closed meetings after sessions delegates focussed on the creation of a "third Jihadist front" - the first two being Afghanistan and Iraq. The intensity of the Israeli attack had "awakened all Muslims," Mr Awajy claimed. "Palestine is a legitimate theatre of operations for jihad (holy war)," he added.
Road to liberation
Mohammed Nazzal, a senior Hamas leader based in Damascus, challenged Arab governments to "open their borders and allow the fighters to come." Delegates from all over the Middle East, and from Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan and Indonesia applauded as he stabbed the air with a raised finger and declared: "There will be no agreement with Israel... only weapons will bring respect."
Mr Nazzal told his audience: "Don't worry about casualties."
The 23 days of bombardment of Gaza, in which some 1,300 people, many of them civilians and nearly 300 of them children, are believed to have died, was "just the beginning" of the struggle, Mr Nazzal said. To laughter in the audience, another speaker noted that twice as many babies were born as children were killed during the war. Every death, I was told, was a martyrdom on the road to liberation.
For the hardline sheikhs, it was an opportunity to underline what they see as the growing gulf between Arab regimes who are hesitant to back Hamas and the people of the region who, they say, embrace Hamas as heroes fighting against overwhelming odds. More importantly, this conference represented something of a coup for Hamas. They were promised weapons, money and fighters. The question remains whether such rhetoric can or will be translated into action. Israel keeps a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip, where Hamas exercises de facto control, and Israel's other borders are also heavily guarded.
But at the very least this statement of intent from Sunni hardliners poses new challenges, not just to the Israelis and to Western efforts to broker a peace deal but to Arab regimes as well.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7895485.stm
Published: 2009/02/17 19:01:50 GMT
© BBC MMIX
Print Sponsor

Related articles by Zemanta

• War of words between Israel, Turkey escalates (cnn.com)

Turkish Invasion of Iraq Threatens to Escalate to Full Scale

The Iraqi Government finally acknowledges the Turkish invasion. The Iraqi Cabinet condemned the Turkish military incursion in northern Iraq as a "violation" of its "sovereignty".
Meanwhile, the Kurds are rattling sabres and may be preparing a counter-attack which will clearly provoke a massive Turkish response. The Turks have massed over 140,000 troops near the border, as many troups as the US had before the surge.
Harpers

“The bombings are continuing by land and by air; the clashes are becoming heavier.” This was a Turkish military source quoted in a story today in the Guardian, referring to his country’s incursions into northern Iraq yesterday to pursue militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Hundreds of soldiers and rebel troops have died since fighting began last week. (I previously discussed last December’s attack by Turkey into Kurdistan.)


The Turkish offensive, which has been green-lighted by the Bush Administration, was criticized by the Iraqi government. “We know the threats that Turkey is facing, but military operations will not solve the PKK problem,” a government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told The Guardian. Meanwhile, Kurdish anger towards the United States is growing. “We are their friends and we thought we were their allies,” the newspaper quoted Muhammad Qadir, a shopkeeper in Irbil, as saying. “We don’t support the PKK, but we are angry that the Americans are allowing the Turks to wage war against our fellow Kurds.”


A former U.S. official who works in northern Iraq emailed me to say:

The United States is being skillfully handled by the Turks, who are dragging the U.S. into a policy disaster in Kurdistan. The Kurds have moved a lot of fighters and equipment quietly into the area, and are prepared to strike the Turks. Massoud Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader [NOT PKK, Peshmurga, the best Iraqi soldiers!] has issued all the press comments he can to publicly warn that Kurdish patience is gone. The United States is either ignoring the signals or missing them…The Kurds can and will bloody the Turks badly in a fight.

This former official is close to Kurdish officials and hence an interested party, but his previous reports from the ground have been well-informed.

The Kurds Pretend Turkey Hasn't Invaded

How do the Kurd's deal with a major Turkish incursion? By denial. If it didn't really happen and was coordinated with Kurdish authorities to chase bandits, then there wasn't an invasion. You can hide 10,000 troops backed by tanks in the mountains. Turkish media warn a larger incursion is being prepared.
AlterNet

Turkish troops entered northern Iraq to hunt Kurdish separatist rebels after fighter jets struck at their bases, the Turkish army said Friday. Some 10,000 troops penetrated 10 kilometers (six miles) into the autonomous Kurdish northern Iraq, the NTV news channel said.


The operation started late Thursday when tanks were reported heading for the frontier and came as the region is in the thick of winter with sub-zero temperatures. The army did not state the number of troops involved but said the incursion followed eight hours of air and artillery strikes on Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) camps across the border on Thursday.


"Following this successful offensive, a cross-border ground operation backed by the Air Force was launched at 7:00 pm (1700 GMT)," said an army statement posted on the general staff Internet site. The army said troops "will return home as soon as possible after achieving their planned objective of incapacitating members of the terror organization and destroying their infrastructure." The statement highlighted that Turkish armed forces "attach special importance to Iraq's territorial integrity and stability."


[..]Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari denied a large-scale Turkish raid had been launched but said tension was high and rising in the border region.


[..]In Baghdad, the foreign minister, a Kurd, denied there had been an incursion but said there had been intense Turkish air and artillery strikes and that forces loyal to northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish government had been involved in a stand-off with Turkish forces. Turkey has bases of its own in Iraq's northern mountains and on Thursday attempted to launch a land operation, Zebari said. "They were prevented from doing this because this is not their mandate," he said, explaining that Turkish troops were allowed to operate inside Iraq only as observers. "There weren't any clashes. It was resolved peacefully," he said.


The Turkish army and Iraqi forces both denied media reports Thursday that fighting had broken out between Turkish troops and Peshmarga forces in northern Iraq.


Turkish media reported Thursday that the army was moving reinforcements and equipment to the border in preparation for a large-scale incursion.

The Nuclear Espionage Media Cover-up

Hat tip to The Brad Blog.
This story smells like Cheney all over. There may be a good reason why the Sibel Edmunds allegations were covered up. I wonder if the Bush Administration ordered a violation of treaty obligations, and very likely a violation of US and International law. Bush could have authorized passing nuclear secrets to Turkey as a counter to Iran and to persuade it to support the invasion of Iraq. But those same sources may have leaked nuclear secrets to Pakistan as well, perhaps deliberately, to buy Musharraf's cooperation in the "War on Terror."
Dallas Morning News: Philip Giraldi

Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will.


The former FBI translator turned whistle-blower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington's highest levels – sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Ms. Edmonds' account is full of dates, places and names.


And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified government documents were made available to investigators.


But Congress has refused to act, and the Justice Department has shrouded Ms. Edmonds' case in the state-secrets privilege, a rarely used measure so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by officials with top-secret security clearances. According to the Department of Justice, such an investigation "could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the foreign policy and national security of the United States."


After five years of thwarted legal challenges and fruitless attempts to launch a congressional investigation, Sibel Edmonds is telling her story, though her defiance could land her in jail. After reading its November piece about Louai al-Sakka, an al-Qaeda terrorist who trained 9/11 hijackers in Turkey, Ms. Edmonds approached the Sunday Times of London. On Jan. 6, the Times, a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper that does not normally encourage exposés damaging to the Bush administration, featured a long article. The news quickly spread around the world – but not in the United States.


[..] After exhausting all appeals through her own chain of command, Ms. Edmonds approached the two Department of Justice agencies with oversight of the FBI and sent faxes to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy on the Judiciary Committee. The next day, she was called in for a polygraph. According to a DOJ inspector general's report, the test found that "she was not deceptive in her answers."


But two weeks later, Ms. Edmonds was fired. Her home computer was seized. Her family in Turkey was visited by police and threatened with arrest if they did not submit to questioning about an unspecified "intelligence matter."


When Ms. Edmonds' attorney sued to obtain the documents related to her firing, Attorney General John Ashcroft imposed the state-secrets gag order. Since then, she has been subjected to another federal order, which not only silenced her but retroactively classified the statements she eventually made before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the 9/11 commission.


[..] Ms. Edmonds alleges to have heard evidence linking him to bribery from an ATC contact, to his intervening with the FBI to halt the interrogation of four Turkish and Pakistani intelligence operatives, and helping seed U.S. nuclear facilities with Turkish and Israeli Ph.D. students who in turn sold nuclear secrets abroad, primarily to Pakistan. The accused, who emphatically denies Ms. Edmonds' charges, is now a senior executive at a Washington lobbying firm.


A low-level contractor might seem poorly positioned to expose major breaches of national security, but the FBI translators' pool, riddled with corruption and nepotism, was key to keeping these secrets from surfacing. Ms. Edmonds' claims that the section was infiltrated by translators who should never have received security clearances and who were deliberately failing to translate incriminating material are supported by the Justice Department inspector general investigation and by an FBI internal investigation, which concluded that she had been fired after making "valid complaints."


Ms. Edmonds' revelations have attracted corroboration in the form of anonymous letters apparently written by FBI employees. There have been frequent reports of FBI field agents being frustrated by the premature closure of cases dealing with foreign spying, particularly when those cases involve Israel, and the State Department has frequently intervened to shut down investigations based on "sensitive foreign diplomatic relations."


Curiously, the state-secrets gag order binding Ms. Edmonds, while put in place by DOJ in 2002, was not requested by the FBI but by the State Department and Pentagon – which employed individuals she identified as being involved in criminal activities. If her allegations are frivolous, that order would scarcely seem necessary. Under the Bush administration, the security gag order has been invoked to cover up incompetence or illegality, not to protect national security.

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft

Hey, Murdock can't be all bad. His newspaper in London, often used as a disinformation leaker for US intelligence, has a real story today.
Today, I got more information on Sibel Edmund than in any US news source.
I'm guessing that what Sibel tripped over was the Bush Administration, via the Turkish ambassador and the No 3 man in the State Department, leaking nuclear secrets to Turkey to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions. It seems that Bush is in the business of nuclear proliferation to India, and now to Turkey??
Worse yet, Turkish intelligence has a cozy relationship with Pakistani intelligence. Now doesn't that sound reassuring??
Hat tip to The Brad Blog.
Times Online

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.


The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.


Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.


She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.


One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.


Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.


"œI can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,"€ she said.


The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.


The letter says: "€œYou may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office."€


It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file “ many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.


Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.


She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.


The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.


It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.


The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.


Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.


"œI cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,â€" she said, €œ"but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.


"This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.

Iraqi Kurdish Leader Sees Turkish Invasion as Declaration of War

Leader of the Regional Iraqi Kurdistan government, Massoud Barzani, sees a Turkish invasion as a declaration of war. He believes that all the talk about PKK is just an excuse to reign in the Kurdish moves to acquire Kirkuk, a traditional Kurdish area acquired by Saddam forcibly because of it's rich reserves of oil.
Hürriyet

The leader of the regional northern Iraq Kurdish government, Massoud Barzani, commented this weekend that any move by Turkish forces with respect to northern Iraqi land would be considered a declaration of war.


Speaking to the British The Times newspaper sources in Erbil, Barzani noted "Ankara, which is using its problems with the PKK to justify itself, wants actually to blockade the Iraqi Kurds, who are themselves becoming more prosperous and more independent every day."


Barzani was very blunt in his interview with The Times, asserting: "Whether Turkey invades or occupies, either way it means war. If our people, our land, or our interests are attacked, there are no limits left. When that happens, it means everything has been attacked."


Barzani implied in his words this weekend that Ankara might have other reasons behind its stance on the PKK, noting that PKK terror was not a new factor for Turkey. He said "I am about ready to believe that the PKK is just an excuse. Turkey's stance towards the Kurdish region, and its direct and indirect threats towards the region, make me think this. The real target is the Kurdistan region, otherwise why would we even want to get involved in a struggle between Turkey and the PKK?"

Informed Comment reports that Turkish helicopter gunships have fired into Iraq. He also notes that Turkey is attempting an embargo against the financial interests of firms connected to Kurdistan leader Massoud Barzani. If true, this would seem to confirm Barzani's perception that the Turkish interest in Iraq goes well beyond the PKK.

Indian NDTV is reporting Tuesday morning that Turkish Cobra helicopter gunships have fired into Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) positions inside northern Iraq. The action comes after following on an engagement in the border region on the Turkish side that began on Monday and went late into the night. AP does not mention the strikes inside Iraq, but NDTV apparently has a reporter in the area. If the Indian account is true, it is a step up in the building Turkish-Kurdish confrontation.


Turkey is also squeezing Iraqi Kurdistan economically, putting embargoes on firms connected to Kurdistan leader Massoud Barzani.

Turk forces attacked rebels in N.Iraq

It begins. Turkey will continue these raids and will escalate as necessary in response to further attacks in Turkey. Reports indicated Turkey has anywhere from 10,000 to 140,000 troops at it's border with Iraq. I believe the larger figure.
Reuters

Turkish warplanes and ground troops attacked Kurdish rebel positions just inside northern Iraq between Sunday and Tuesday evening, military sources told Reuters on Wednesday.


The warplanes flew as deep as 20 km (13 miles) into Iraqi territory and some 300 ground troops advanced about 10 km, killing 34 rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the sources said.


They made clear these were small sorties of a kind that Turkish forces have been known to conduct in the past across the mountainous border, not a large-scale offensive that U.S. and Iraqi authorities are trying to avert.


"Further 'hot pursuit' raids into northern Iraq can be expected, though none have taken place so far today (Wednesday)," a military official said, adding that all Turkish troops involved in the operations were now back in Turkey.

EU: Don't Lose Turkey

International Crisis Group

When a half-century of convergence between Turkey and the European Union last floundered a decade ago, the Turks regrouped and forged forward and the EU met them halfway. The result was a revolutionary period of reform in Turkey. Last month, grateful for their most fruitful period of political stability in many years, the Turkish electorate gave a resounding 46.7% vote of confidence to the ruling, pro-reform AK Party.


Now it is Europe's turn to take a stand. Instead it is stumbling: finding enlargement unfashionable, fearing immigration and mistaking some nonintegrated Turks within the EU for Turkey itself. Governments in France, Germany, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands are trying to short-change Turkey with the new idea of a "privileged partnership," not the membership promised repeatedly since 1963.


There is no need for Europe to fear Turkey's membership goal. The Turks themselves acknowledge the country is far from ready; the earliest date for joining the EU is a decade away. Turkey has to fulfill the stiffest conditions applied to any candidate. Any EU government can veto its membership, and the French people can vote it down in a referendum. If and when Turkey becomes acceptable to the EU, the Turks, attached to their sovereignty, make no secret that they too may think hard about the last step.


Nor is there cause to fear the Turks' mostly pragmatic take on Islam. The AKP's affable foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, almost certain to be elected president by parliament this month, has highlighted his vow to preserve the secularism of Turkey's political system. Mr. Gül's wife wears the urban-chic headscarf of Turkey's new Muslim conservatives, but in time this symbol is likely to become as unremarkable as the one worn by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's wife, which was equally controversial when he became prime minister four years ago. The secularist mass demonstrations this April and May showed that Turkey's still-powerful Kemalist establishment and vigilant society will be the first to block any real attempt to install a theocratic regime.


[..]Since 2005, however, the EU's loss of nerve, driven by domestic politics, mistakes on all sides over Cyprus and misplaced prejudices about Turkey's progressive Islam, has put the process under pressure. The U.S.-led war in Iraq has done even more to rouse anti-Western feelings in Turkey. These have triggered jarring actions by nationalist Turkish prosecutors, who harassed intellectuals, and authoritarian generals, who fanned political tensions this year as they warned of intervention if they felt the republic's secularist heritage was at risk. This in turn provoked new European criticism.


Turkish politicians are now avoiding pro-EU stances. The military has slowed purchases from Europe; French companies, in particular, have suffered losses. Religious and ethnic minorities in Turkey have come under renewed pressure. Rows over Cyprus are increasingly damaging EU and NATO diplomacy. Ankara is questioning its contributions to the new European defense structure and showing signs of a go-it-alone attitude in military matters, particularly toward northern Iraq, where Kurdish rebels from Turkey have bases. Behind closed doors, the idea of being strategically alone in a rough neighborhood is making some in Ankara weigh up whether Turkey, too, should pursue a nuclear option.


It is not too late to reverse this trend. Despite the increasingly negative atmosphere since 2005, technical work on EU reforms continues. In April, the AK Party drew up the country's most intensively researched action plan for convergence toward EU standards. Prime Minister Erdogan did not highlight his pro-EU credentials in the election campaign, but neither did he jump on the neonationalist bandwagon that has developed in reaction to the EU disappointments. In his first speech after the election victory, he vowed to use his strong new mandate to relaunch the EU reforms.


To help that happen, Europe has to reach out, seriously and sincerely, with the goal of membership firmly in place. Palliatives like a "privileged partnership" or "Mediterranean Union" cannot gain the traction the EU needs with Turkey. And the EU-Turkey accession process is not, as one French politician has portrayed it, a breakable flirtation or engagement. Like two towns that have grown into each other, Turkey and Europe, once distinct, now overlap to an extent that cannot be undone.

Turkey Still Massed on Iraqi Kurdish Border

Djelloul Marbrook

One of the events that has overtaken General Petraeus’ report—remember, he has already told the BBC we need to stay 18.jpgput—is the positioning of 160,000 Turkish troops along Iraq’s northern border. This may well prove to be the event that overtakes everything else.


Turkey, a Sunni nation and a member of NATO, has been telling the government of Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad for more than a year now that it must curb pan-Kurd ambitions in northern Iraq. The situation is far more volatile than the press has described. The Shias have their own militias. The Kurds have the well-trained Pesh Merga, which is in fact a standing army. But Iraq’s Sunnis have only their tribes. That in itself is enough to explain Sunni concerns.


The Kurds would like to see an independent Kurdistan. Considering the large Kurdish minorities in Iran and Turkey, it is not difficult to see why Shia Iran and Sunni Turkey are worried. Short of independence, the Kurds would like a semi-autonomous Kurdistan, which would contain Mosul’s rich oil fields. The Kurds could then continue to agitate for a greater Kurdistan, perhaps even arming militants inside Iran and Turkey.


Where does this leave us? In the soup, where we have been from the beginning. Consider these combustibles:


—Turkey has not set foot on Arab land since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.


— Iran and Turkey are traditional enemies. Iran would feel as threatened by an expanded border with Turkey as the Arabs feel threatened by a militant Iran.


—The Sunni Arabs have more in common with the Turks than they have with the Iranians, but the reappearance of Turkish soldiers on Arab land would be viewed with alarm.


—There are more than 100 million people in the world of Turkish origin. Turkey, a secular nation with an Islamist party in power, regards itself as the protector of these people. There are large Turkish minorities in Iran and Afghanistan, and people of Turkish origin are spread throughout Central Asia.


—Turkey has no oil, but it is host to oil pipelines. Moving into northern Iraq would give Turkey control of its oil fields. The Turks would say they have come only to stabilize the situation, but that is our story too, and we have already witnessed how many people in the world believe us.


If we are soon presented with a situation in which Turkey has as many troops in Iraq as we do it will change the entire equation, and yet the Washington establishment—the press, the government, the think tanks, the industry lobbyists—are all silent about an eventuality that would change everything in a thin minute.

Turkish Election Leans the Army Away from Iraq

TURKEY’S mildly Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has won an impressive election for a second term. This would appear to enhance the future of Turkish democracy and away from a military coop. Turkey would also appear to be headed towards membership talks with the European Union (EU).

Erdogan’s party had won 47% of the vote—a dramatic 12-point rise from the 34% that got him to office in 2002. Laying claim to 340 of the 550 seats in parliament the AK party can comfortably form a government alone. But it failed to secure the two-thirds majority needed to amend the country's authoritarian constitution, drawn up by the armed forces when they last seized power in 1980.


With all of the ballots counted unofficial results suggested that Mr Erdogan’s party had won 47% of the vote—a dramatic 12-point rise from the 34% that got him to office in 2002. Laying claim to 340 of the 550 seats in parliament the AK party can comfortably form a government alone. But it failed to secure the two-thirds majority needed to amend the country's authoritarian constitution, drawn up by the armed forces when they last seized power in 1980.


[..]The other big challenge facing the government is the upsurge in Kurdish separatist violence in the southeastern provinces bordering Iran and Iraq. The army has been backed by the CHP and the MHP in calls for a cross-border operation against some 3,500 rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq. A large invasion would damage Turkey's relations with America and the EU and could scare foreign investors who control 70% of the shares traded by the Istanbul stock exchange. Worse, Turkey could get mired in conflict in Iraq. It will take all of Mr Erdogan's skills to resist pressure to go into Iraq. He will need all the help he can get from America to get the Iraqi Kurdish leadership to clamp down on the PKK.

However, the Turkish, Iranian border is like northern Pakistan. It's heavily mountainous limiting the usefulness of heavy armor and sports many hiding places for guerrilla fighters. The Turkish army may well bog down in a quagmire in Iraq.
AlterNet

Hiding in the high mountains and deep gorges of one of the world's great natural fortresses are bands of guerrillas whose presence could provoke a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq and the next war in the Middle East.


After the election, Ankara may find it impossible to retreat from the bellicose rhetoric of recent weeks and will send its troops across the border, even if the incursion is only on a limited scale.


[..]If the Turkish army does invade, it will not find it easy to locate the PKK guerrillas. Their main headquarters is in the Qandil mountains which are on the Iranian border but conveniently close to Turkey. It is an area extraordinarily well-adapted for guerrilla warfare where even Saddam Hussein's armies found it impossible to penetrate.


[..]The scale of the fighting is small. Pejak launches sporadic raids into Iranian Kurdistan. The PKK stages ambushes and bombings in Turkey and has escalated its attacks this year, killing at least 67 soldiers and losing 110 of its own fighters according to the Turkish authorities. But this limited skirmishing could have an explosive impact. The attacks provide an excuse for Turkish action against an increasingly independent Iraqi Kurdish state. "They [the Turks] want an excuse to overturn what has been achieved in Iraqi Kurdistan," says Mr Dezayee. A referendum is to be held in northern Iraq by the end of 2007 under which the oil city of Kirkuk may vote to join the KRG. The incentive for a Turkish invasion is growing by the day.


"Everything depends on the result of the Turkish election," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Iraqi Kurdish politician.


If the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wins a two-thirds majority then the pressure for an invasion may be off. But if he believes he lost votes because his anti-PKK and Turkish nationalist credentials were not strong enough then he might want to burnish them by ordering a cross border incursion.


The lightly armed PKK, knowing every inch of the mountainous terrain at Qandil, will be able to evade Turkish troops. But the Iraqi Kurds worry that they and not the PKK are the real target of the Turkish army. After making so many threats before the election, Turkey may find it difficult to back off without looking weak.

Turkish Invasion of Iraq Imminent

140,000 Turkish troops are massed at the Iraqi border, nearly as many troops as the US has in Iraq. They are poised to invade and secure the Iraqi-Turkish border area from PKK Kurdish extremists.
We may be seeing the beginning of the regional war in the Middle East sparked by the US invasion of Iraq.
The massacre of 152 Turkmen this weekend have riled both the 800,000 Turkmen in and around Kirkuk, but Turkey as well, who see them as unarmed kin they need to protect.
Thank you Dubya for a world of chaos.

Turkey Ready to Invade Northern Iraq

Conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate. The US is arming it's former enemies in Anbar, further destabilizing Iraq while in Washington gears up to begin a phased withdrawal that seems to slated to begin next year. I suppose the military plan will be to pull back to the green zone and defend a figurehead government while the militias who already control the country fight it out in a civil war.
Meanwhile, the one so far peaceful part of Iraq is about to explode under an Turkish invasion designed to not only stop cross border incidents with Turkey, but to cast an intimidating pall on the coming vote in Kirkuk to determine it's regional affiliation.
The Daily Star

Turkey's government and military have agreed on detailed plans for a cross-border operation against Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, the foreign minister said Friday. Abdullah Gul urged the United States and Iraq, which oppose a Turkish military move into Iraq, to crack down on rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. But he said Turkey was ready to stage an offensive if necessary.


"We have decided how to act, everything is clear," Gul told private NTV television. "We know what to do and when to do it," he said without providing details.


The government has come under pressure from the opposition to launch a military incursion as the country gears up for parliamentary polls on July 22.

Prospects of Turkey Invading Iraq

Joshua Partlow's article in the Washington Post this Sunday while it does review the recent history of border incidents between Turkey and the Turkish Kurd rebel group PKK, he misses completely the Turkish perspective. Juan Cole, in his blog Informed Comment, outlines what he over-looked about public opinion in Turkey.

the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq will certainly annex Kirkuk later this year, and that there may be as a result clashes between the Kurds and the Turkmen minority. Iraqi Turkmen, some 800,000 strong, have been adopted by the Turks of Turkey as sort of little brothers. I can't imagine the Turkish public standing for a massacre of Turkmen, and hundreds of thousands of people in the street could force Buyukanit to act decisively.


My colleagues universally agreed that the potential was there for an escalation of the crisis under such conditions. No one said I was exaggerating the risks. One former official who is an expatriate said that before he arrived in Ankara last week, he did not know just how angry people there were over this issue. He is now convinced that the situation is serious.


Partlow points out that if Turkey did take on the Iraqi Kurds over the haven they have given the PKK, the US would likely be forced to support Turkey, a NATO ally acting against a terrorist threat.


Partlow quotes Massoud Barzani as saying that Turkey has a problem with the existence of Kurds. This is a vast exaggeration. The status of Kurds in Turkey has substantially improved over the past two decades. Barzani neglected to mention the 35,000 dead in PKK's dirty war, or that he is actively harboring 5,000 PKK guerrillas. He recently went so far as to imply that if Turkey intervened on the Kirkuk issue, it would result in terrorism in Diyarbakir (a city in Turkey's eastern Anatolia). It was a shameful performance.


So I don't think Partlow's sanguine conclusions are justified. I think the situation in the north has entered a phase of continual crisis in which things could spiral out of control at any moment.


I continue to be just amazed that no one in authority in Iraq is taking any steps to try to avert such a crisis. I earlier suggested a partion of Kirkuk province before the referendum as a way of defusing the tensions. But it seems like that the referendum will be held in the whole province and that the whole of it will go to Kurdistan. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has said that this development would be a cause for war in and of itself.

Turkey Sees Many Incentives to Invade Iraqi Kurdistan, Few Deterents

The final straw to invade Iraqi Kurdistan may have already been broken. Recent attacks by the PKK on targets in Turkey near the Iraqi border come in the context of a election campaign that threatens to unseat the moderate Islamic Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Dar Al Hayat

Turkey fought a bitter war against the PKK from 1984 to 1999 which resulted in 35,000 dead and the displacement of some 2 million. On both sides, memories of this war are very fresh, and there is great reluctance to see it break out again. The argument on the Turkish side is that a decisive campaign against the PKK is the best way to prevent its recurrence.


What seems certain, however, is that a Turkish assault on northern Iraq would deal a serious blow to Turkey's already frayed relations with the United States, further destabilize the fragile American-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad, and possibly put Turkey's own economic growth at risk.


On the other hand, a war against the PKK could yield political benefits for Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he prepares for general elections on 22 July. It could heal tensions between his moderately Islamic government and the army chiefs, who are eager for a showdown with the PKK. It could also blunt the attacks on him from the ultra-secular and ultra-nationalist Kemalist opposition.


A key legacy of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, was the defence of the 'territorial integrity' of the new Turkey, which he rescued in the early 1920s from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire defeated in the First World War. Ottoman domains had suffered repeated and large-scale plundering by the Great Powers throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ataturk was determined that no one would ever again be allowed to take a bite out of Turkish territory.


[...]An autonomous Kurdish 'statelet' has already taken shape. It is now actively seeking, by an official plebiscite, to incorporate Kirkuk and is rich oil-rich region, into its domain. For Turkey, this is a red rag to a bull, because the absorption of Kirkuk would give the Kurds the economic means for full independence.


Erdogan's immediate dilemma is this: whether to authorize a military attack on the PKK in Iraq and risk a breach not only with the U.S., but also with the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government of northern Iraq under its president Mas'ud Barzani and with the Maliki government in Iraq; or fail to attack the PKK and face damaging accusations from the armed forces and from secular nationalists of capitulating to Kurdish 'separatism.'


Many observers believe the odds are that he will in the coming weeks authorize an attack. Some 150,000 Turkish troops with tanks and artillery have been massing on the border with Iraq. Mine-clearing operations on the Iraqi side of the border have been underway for several weeks, while Turkish Special Forces, often in civilian clothes, are said to have penetrated some 20 to 40 kilometers inside Iraq to prepare the ground for an attack and seal off PKK escape routes in the mountains.

Turkey Shelling Kurdish Iraq

Turkish paramilitary police are the target of a suicide bomber. Turkey strikes back with bringing tanks to the border and shelling Kurdish positions in Iraq.
Al Jazeera English

At least eight Turkish paramilitary police have been killed after Kurdish fighters attacked their headquarters in eastern Turkey, security sources say. Monday's attack, blamed on the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), came amid speculation that Turkey may send troops into neighbouring Iraq to attack Kurdish separatists based there. The US has pleaded for Turkey to avoid military action. Three people thought to belong to the PKK drove into the gendarmerie complex in the eastern province of Tunceli, opened fire and threw a grenade, killing eight and wounding six more. One fighter was also killed, the security sources said. The gendarmerie is a paramilitary force responsible for security in rural areas of Turkey.

Everyone wants to know if Turkey will invade Iraq. The answer is embedded in this article. Turkey has troops in Iraq and they have routinely engaged in hot pursuit engagements. They will continue with perhaps a bit larger incursion. Indeed, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul asserted it's right to take all measures necessary to deal with the PKK.
The Daily Star

Turkish forces shelled a mountain stronghold of Turkish Kurd rebels in northern Iraq on Sunday, shortly after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautioned Turkey against sending troops into the area. The latest attack also comes a day after Iraq's prime minister and the president of the country's northern region hit back at Turkish invasion threats, and called for diplomacy to solve the problems.


Sunday's shelling targeted Haji Umran, a mountainous area which fighters of Turkey's separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) use as a springboard to carry out attacks in Turkey.


Residents told Reuters the attack lasted about 30 minutes and caused no casualties.


"There were some strikes from Turkish forces on areas next to the Turkish border, but until now there has been no Turkish military invasion of Kurdish lands in Iraq," Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdistan region, told a news conference Sunday.


Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, told the same briefing that "we do not accept interference in others' affairs and we do not accept interference in our affairs."


Last week, Turkey moved tanks near to the Iraqi border after bomb attacks killed 12 Turks. Ankara swiftly blamed the PKK for the bombings and said its troop movement was routine.


US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, on a trip to Asia, urged Ankara not to resort to military action to solve the crisis. "We hope there would not be a unilateral military action across the border into Iraq," Gates told a news conference.


[..]Turkish commandos occasionally stage so-called "hot pursuits" of the rebels, who operate in small bands, carry little food and know fresh water sources in the region. Those pursuits are limited in time and scope.


Turks accuse Iraqi Kurds, who once fought alongside the Turkish soldiers against the PKK in Iraq, of supporting the separatist rebels and worry that the war in Iraq could lead to Iraq's disintegration and the creation of a Kurdish state in the north.Turkey also is concerned that Iraqi Kurds' efforts to incorporate the oil-rich city of Kirkuk into their self-governing region in northern Iraq could embolden rebels seeking self-rule in southeast Turkey.


Turkey already has more than 1,000 troops deployed mainly in the Suleimaniyya area in northern Iraq, since the last major incursion a decade ago. The troops run several liaison offices in the region from where they collect intelligence and monitor rebel activities in the region. On Friday, Iraqi Kurds questioned some Turkish officers in civilian clothes at gunpoint, according to the Turkish military.

Tension increasing on the border between Turkey and Iraq

Tensions are rising in and around Iraq. Mosul, Kirkuk and Baghdad, large cities in Iraq, are seeing daily ethnic cleansing. Basra is in virtual anarchy with the Brits packing to leave and hunkered down while the Madhi Army and Badr Corps fight for supremacy. Saudi Arabia is funding and arming the Sunni insurgency with the tacit approval of the Bush Administration, while the US Military engages them.
Turkey, concerned about chaos in Iraq and it's border with it and terrorism in it's Kurdish minority is building troops on the border and announced it's intention to do hot pursuit of PKK fighters across the Iraqi border. An incursion into Iraq by Turkey is just a matter of time.
Al Jazeera

Turkish troops have killed two Kurdish fighters in clashes in the southeast overnight, the regional governor's office said, bringing the number killed this week to at least 16. The separatists, meanwhile, attacked a Turkish military vehicle near the border with Iraq on Friday, injuring eight soldiers, the governor's added. The overnight clash, near the town of Tunceli, was part of a series of large-scale offensives that the military has launched against separatists who cross into Turkey from bases in northern Iraq to stage attacks.


Turkey's military has been deploying troops near its border with Iraq, but says it is a routine precaution against separatist infiltrations. The massing of troops, however, coincides with debate over whether to stage an incursion into Iraq to try to eradicate separatist bases there. Turkey's military chief said on Thursday that his army was prepared to attack Kurdish fighters in a cross-border offensive but such action would need to be order by the government.


Turkey last carried out a major incursion into Iraq to chase fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a decade ago. Separatist Kurdish fighters, taking advantage of a power vacuum in northern Iraq, have escalated attacks on Turkish targets. Turkey complains that the United States and Iraqi Kurds have done little to stop them. The United States opposes a Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq, fearing it could destabilise what is one of the most stable regions of the country.

The Daily Star

Turkey sent more tanks to its border with Iraq on Wednesday in a military build-up that is fueling US concern about a possible incursion into northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels.


The move came on the day that US forces handed over responsibility for security in Iraq's three Northern provinces to the Kurdish regional government.


A group of 20 tanks loaded on trucks emerged Wednesday from army barracks in Mardin near Syria and headed toward the Iraqi border in southeastern Turkey, already the scene of a major army offensive against rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).


"The PKK must be eliminated as a problem between Iraq and Turkey," Turkey's special envoy to Iraq, Oguz Celikkol, told CNN-Turk television on Wednesday after visiting Baghdad this week.


Asked whether Turkey could take unilateral action, Celikkol said: "Our expectation is that this issue is resolved before it comes to that point."

And as TomPaine.com aptly points out, it's all because of "crackpot realism", an ideological world view that has little connection with the real world, more connection with the biases and preferences of those in the Bush Administration who feel the need to act.

I’m talking about his concept of "crackpot realism," a tough-talking, no-nonsense, power-driven line of thought and action that invariably leads to disaster. Mills was particularly concerned with looming nuclear war, but his analysis holds fine in today’s non-nuclear (so far) conflict.


“In crackpot realism,” he wrote, “a high-flying moral rhetoric is joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter of unfocused fears and demands. ... So instead of the unknown fear, the anxiety without end, some men of the higher circles prefer the simplification of known catastrophe.”


You might think he was reporting on the planning of the Iraq invasion when he wrote, “... They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines... In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war—as they used to be. For they still believe that ‘winning’ means something, although they never tell us what.”


[...]On May 23, John Edwards told the Council on Foreign Relations, "By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set—that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam."


First we framed the Middle East conflict as a war when it wasn’t, then we initiated a full-scale war to match our language. Then, we lost.


The response to Edwards was either to attack the messenger, as the RNC did, or to dismiss it as fantasy, as the right-wing blog world did. Hard-headed realists like Dick Cheney simply continued to push the war, and the Congress continued to fund it. Apparently, a majority of federal legislators fear being identified as traitors to a war that was crackpot from the get-go. Mills would understand.