Turkey Seeks Lawmakers' Blessing For Attack on Rebel Kurds in Iraq
Turkey moves tanks to its border with Iraq after lethal strikes this weekend by Kurdish rebels.
(By Burhan Ozbilici -- Associated Press)
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007
SIRNAK, Turkey, Oct. 9 -- Turkey's ruling party decided Tuesday to seek parliamentary approval for an offensive against Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, a move that could open a new front in the Iraq war and disrupt one of that nation's few relatively peaceful areas.
The government did not say it had decided to launch such an attack, which could jeopardize Turkey's ties with the United States. The Bush administration warned against sending troops across the border and urged Turkey to work with Iraq's government to quell the Turkish Kurd guerrillas.
"If they have a problem, they need to work together to resolve it, and I'm not sure that unilateral incursions are the way to go," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
In the past, Turkish troops have made small-scale raids into Iraq that officials say do not require parliament's approval. The last major incursion against the armed separatists operating out of Iraq's Kurdish region was in 1997.
There are widespread fears that a Turkish offensive would destabilize that region, which has escaped most of the violence and political turmoil afflicting areas dominated by Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs.
Iraqi Kurds, who run a semiautonomous government in Iraq's north, have vowed to defend their borders. A spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, Jamal Abdullah, urged Turkey on Tuesday to drop the idea of a military attack.
"We call upon the Turkish government to exercise self-restraint and not to turn the region into an unstable one," he said.
Turkey's decision to seek a parliamentary go-ahead was made during a three-hour meeting between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and officials from his governing Justice and Development Party, according to a leading member of the party who was at the meeting.
The lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials would try to present it to parliament Wednesday.
Earlier Tuesday, the government said it had begun preparations for a military operation into Iraq in pursuit of the rebels after a series of deadly attacks on soldiers in recent days outraged Turks.
Over the past 10 days, more than two dozen soldiers and civilians died in attacks by Kurdistan Workers' Party rebels in the southeast. The group, labeled a terrorist organization by Washington and the European Union, has fought Turkish forces since 1984 in a war that has killed tens of thousands of rebels, soldiers and civilians.
