June 12, 2007
Kurds, Turkey Appear To Pull Back From Fighting
Kurdish rebels declared a unilateral cease-fire with Turkey today, as that country's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, indicated he would seek out his Iraqi counterpart to put a lid on the brewing conflict.
AP reports that Turkey has not yet responded to the separatist PKK's statement, though it has ignored the organization's cease-fire calls in the past. The PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, is considered a terrorist group by Turkey as well as by the United States.
AFP reports that Erdogan seems eager to seek out alternatives to a full-blown military incursion into northern Iraq. Last Wednesday, Turkey raised the hackles of Iraq and the United States when AP reported thousands of troops had entered northern Iraq. That turned out not to be the case, but Turkey has over the past week or so been amassing forces along the border, with the military gunning for cross-border raids on PKK fighters.
Erdogan said that he will invite Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to Ankara for talks. "What matters is to find a solution by negotiating at the table. Those other things that are being debated are the last things to consider and do," he said.
Kurds represent about a fifth of Turkey's population, and separatists have carried out terrorist attacks on Turks since the 1980s. The PKK is being fingered for a bombing in Istanbul on Sunday that injured 14 and a bombing in Ankara last month that killed eight people. The group denied responsibility for both incidents.
Erdogan is embroiled in a political controversy surrounding his pick for president, Abdullah Gul, a fellow member of the Islamist-rooted AK party. The election was moved up to this summer after massive protests from the nation's secularists and threats of a coup from the military.
As much as Turks want membership in the EU -- one of the reasons Erdogan backed down on the presidential election -- they also want to crack down on the PKK. The prospect of an independent Kurdish state next door -- the peaceful Kurdistan, still part of Iraq -- is said to be unsettling to the Turkish government. But cross-border fighting into Iraq, which Ankara insists is a haven for Kurdish terrorists, would be deeply unpopular with the EU and the United States. Washington counts both Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish population as allies.
The Turkish military, unusually independent for a developed country, has indicated that aspirations for EU membership are weakening its ability to fight terrorism, Reuters reports. Terrorism watch site GlobalSecurity.org has background on the PKK. And the Christian Science Monitor is the latest paper to warn Turkey away from Iraq.
Posted at 12:43 PM
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Iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Turkey
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