ULUDERE, Turkey, 16 October 2007 — The prospect of a Turkish Army incursion against Kurdish rebels in Iraq stirred unease among villagers in southeast Turkey yesterday as the government prepared to seek authorization for an operation. Despite an imminent parliamentary ruling on the issue and intense military preparations along the heavily fortified border, life went on as normal in Uludere, nestled in a valley beneath the sheer cliffs along the Iraqi border.
Uniformed children walked to school, women ran household errands and traders chatted outside empty shops as rain poured. Shattering the air of normality, nearby soldiers wielding metal detectors searched for roadside mines at the front of army foot patrols monitoring the surrounding mountains. Armored vehicles and helicopters patrolled intermittently.
Turkey’s Cabinet asked Parliament yesterday for permission to launch attacks on Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq that Washington fears could destabilize one of the most peaceful areas of the country.
Government spokesman Cemil Cicek said Turkey still hoped military action against the Kurds, would not be needed.
“But the most painful reality of our country, our region, is the reality of terror,” he told a news conference. Cicek said the motion, which Parliament is expected to approve tomorrow, would be valid for one year and would allow multiple cross-border operations.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s center-right government is under heavy public pressure to act after a series of attacks on Turkish troops by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which seeks an independent homeland in eastern Turkey.
The prospect of NATO’s second largest army crossing into mainly Kurdish northern Iraq helped propel global oil prices to an all-time high of $85 a barrel yesterday while the lira currency fell more than 2 percent against the dollar.
The United States has urged restraint on Turkey, a key NATO ally strategically located between Europe and the Middle East. But Washington’s influence in Ankara is being severely undermined by US Congressional moves to brand as genocide the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915.
Ankara has recalled its envoy to Washington and warned of serious damage to ties if next month the House of Representatives backs a resolution pressed by an Armenian lobby with great influence among the Democrat majority. Turkey rejects the genocide claims, now fatefully entangled with the northern Iraq issue.
“We are continuing to ask the Turks to exercise restraint,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. “We realize how difficult the problem is and we all want to work together to resolve the problem posed by PKK terrorists and their operations against Turkey from northern Iraq,” Casey said.
“That requires, though, cooperative and coordinated efforts between people on both sides of the border with us supporting that effort. A unilateral step would be unlikely to make the situation any better,” he told reporters.
The European Union, which Turkey aims to join, has also urged caution. “It is a dangerous situation... It can indeed be deadly, but it is not the first time,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters in Luxembourg. Cicek said Turkey’s sole target, if its troops entered northern Iraq, would be the PKK militants, about 3,000 of whom are believed to be hiding there. He repeated criticism of Iraq’s failure, despite Turkish pressure, to take action against the PKK on its territory.
Iraqi Vice President Tariq Al-Hashemi will hold talks in Ankara with Turkish officials on Tuesday, he said. In the text of the motion, seen by Reuters, the government states continued commitment to Iraq’s territorial integrity and defends its right under international law to send troops across the border as an act of self-defense.
Turkey’s powerful and respected military has long called for permission to hunt down PKK rebels in Iraq. A top general said yesterday it was too early to discuss the exact timing or scale of a possible operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. “If this duty (Iraqi incursion) is assigned to us, we will look at the scale on which it will be carried out. It is not possible to say this right now,” deputy chief of General Staff, Gen. Ergin Saygun told reporters.
