October 24, 2007

Reports: Eight Turkish Soldiers Captured, Iran Seizes Opportunity

U.S. and Iraqi officials are working quickly to appease an angry Turkish government after tensions on its southern border boiled over this week. Efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting, however, are further complicated by reports that Kurdish separatists have captured eight Turkish soldiers and that Tehran is leveraging resentment toward Washington and Baghdad to its advantage.

Photos of the alleged captives have been published by several news outlets. The Turkish government has not confirmed the claims by a group of Kurdish fighters that the soldiers, missing since an ambush on Sunday, were captured. Turkey authorized a cross-border incursion earlier this week against militants with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, who have been launching discrete attacks on Turkey for years. Forty-two Turkish civilians and soldiers have been killed by PKK fighters this month alone, Bloomberg News reports.

Turkey has been warning its allies in the U.S. and Iraq that if they did not clamp down on the PKK's attacks, the Turkish military would be sent to do the job. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have sought to persuade Ankara to approach the problem diplomatically, but in Turkey's view neither ally has acted forcefully enough. In August, the Pentagon admitted that American weapons issued to Iraqis had been used by PKK rebels in cross-border attacks against Turks.

Earlier this week, unnamed U.S. officials conceded to the New York Times that neither Washington nor the Kurdish government had done much to restrict the activities of the PKK. The U.S. and Iraqi governments have been overwhelmed by sectarian fighting between Shiite and Sunni extremists elsewhere in Iraq. The U.S. troop presence in Kurdistan is thin, and the officials said the prospect of American military intervention in the fighting up north was dim, despite the fact that the PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.

State spokesman Sean McCormack described U.S. efforts to put the lid back on the situation as a "full diplomatic press," and blamed the boiling over in part on a House effort to pass a resolution condemning Turkey for denying the early 20th-century Armenian genocide.

"It raises a question where there shouldn't be one, about the U.S.-Turkish relationship, and makes it more difficult with respect to Turkish public opinion," McCormack said.

The House Democratic leadership backed down after it became clear that Turkey, a crucial ally in the region, would seek to punish Washington for the committee-passed resolution. Bloomberg's Ken Fireman is reporting that Ankara's disaffection toward the U.S. and Iraq over the PKK issue has created an opening for Iran.

"Iran's radical Islamic government, eager to expand its regional influence and resist U.S. efforts to isolate it, is wooing the Turks by showcasing its bombardment of the camps of Kurdish fighters along its border, according to experts on the region," Fireman reports.

Those strikes are the result of PKK attacks on Iranian troops. Still, "Iranians are realizing the lack of U.S. action is creating a massive amount of anger against the U.S. in Turkey,'' Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Fireman. "It's an incredible opportunity for Iran, which the Iranians have used so smartly, driving a wedge between Turkey and the United States."

Allies are rushing to hold Turkey back from launching a full-scale invasion of northern Iraq. NATO defense ministers are expected to address the issue today during a meeting in the Netherlands that was intended to focus on the fighting in Afghanistan. Turkey has already rejected an offer of a cease-fire, prompting about 100 members of Kurdish Iraq's official security force to amass along the border as a defensive measure.

Posted at 12:50 PM
Posted to: Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Turkey
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