November 05, 2007

Progress On The PKK-Turkish Front

UPDATED.

In a sign that tensions may be lessening between Turkey and Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, today freed eight Turkish soldiers who were captured last month.

Diplomatic talks have been going on for weeks to try to avert a conflict, but a massive Turkish force was still amassing on the border and PKK rebels continued to partake in skirmishes with Turkish troops in the region. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to Turkey last week to reassure the government that the PKK rebels were a "common threat."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Washington today to meet with President Bush. Erdogan was seeking American support for action against the PKK, while Bush sought to convince the prime minister to hold off on a full-scale incursion.

Following the meeting, Bush and Erdogan exuded a united front before the press.

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Posted to: Europe, Iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Turkey
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October 26, 2007

Iraqi & Turkish Officials Continue Diplomatic Talks On PKK Crisis

Diplomatic efforts to mend a rift between the governments of Iraq and Turkey over how to deal with Kurdish rebels near the countries' border continued today amid airstrikes by Turkish forces on rebel positions in northern Iraq.

U.S. and Iraqi officials are hoping that the talks will help stave off a major Turkish incursion into Iraq to fight the Kurdistan Workers Party, a rebel separatist group that Turkey claims has been using northern Iraq as a safe haven from which to launch attacks. The Turkish parliament has already voted to approve such an incursion, and the government has assembled about 100,000 troops at the border already.

Today in Ankara, Iraqi diplomatic and defense officials met with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and Interior Minister Besir Atalay; U.S. officials were also present. Turkey has been pressuring Iraq and the United States to step up their efforts against the PKK. U.S. officials, meanwhile, have been pushing for a diplomatic solution rather than a Turkish invasion, which they fear could further hinder the already formidable task of stabilizing war-torn Iraq.

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Posted at 1:32 PM
Posted to: Iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Turkey
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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.

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Posted at 12:50 PM
Posted to: Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Turkey
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October 22, 2007

Turkey Forestalls Iraq Invasion

In what could be a tipping point in the conflict between Turkey's government and Kurds in northern Iraq, Kurdish forces ambushed a Turkish convoy on Sunday just three miles from the border. Twelve Turkish soldiers were killed and eight more are still missing.

Turkish forces responded by shelling an area near Kurdish towns and destroying a bridge, and AP reports that dozens of military vehicles were headed toward the border to join the tens of thousands of troops already gathered there. The Turkish government believes thousands of PKK rebels are also massed at the border.

But today, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said his government would try to seek a political solution to the conflict before an invasion. Tension has been mounting for months, and last week, Turkey's parliament authorized incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan to hunt down rebels in the area.

"We will continue these diplomatic efforts with all good intentions to solve this problem caused by a terrorist organization," Babacan told reporters. "But in the end, if we do not reach any results, there are other means we might have to use."

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Posted at 10:18 AM
Posted to: Europe, Turkey
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October 18, 2007

SCHIP: Democrats Lose The Battle, Stand To Win The War

UPDATED.

The House Democratic leadership failed to wrangle the 12 to 15 additional votes it needed to push an expansion of a health care program for poor children past a presidential veto.

Lawmakers voted to override President Bush's veto 265 to 159, just under the two-thirds majority required. Squabbling over the bill, popular in spirit but contentious in practice, culminated in lawmakers using and attacking real live children volunteered by their parents as props in the debate.

Today's vote was originally scheduled for around noon, but had to be delayed because of still more ugliness. During floor debate preceding the vote, California Democrat Pete Stark accused Republican fiscal conservatives of "telling lies" about the breadth of the expansion. He continued: "You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

The National Republican Congressional Committee fired off video of Stark's remarks so fast that it misidentified the loose-cannon lawmaker as a fellow Republican. Protesting GOP lawmakers called for a reprimand vote on the remarks, which failed.

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Posted at 1:45 PM
Posted to: Bush Administration, Campaigns, Congress, Europe, Health, House, President Bush, Turkey
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October 16, 2007

Iraqi Crisis Envoy Dispatched To Turkey

In an effort to stave off a looming incursion of Turkish forces into his country, Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi crossed the border today to meet with Turkey's prime minister and new president.

Turkey has been threatening to stage assaults on separatists operating in Iraqi Kurdistan. According to the Turkish government, those separatists (called the Kurdistan Workers Party or the PKK, which the EU and the U.S. have classified as a terrorist group) operate in northern Iraq without interference. Iraq had promised to address the group in a late September resolution; Turkey claims nothing has been done and that the PKK is becoming emboldened.

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Posted at 8:50 AM
Posted to: Europe, Iraq, Kurds, Turkey
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October 11, 2007

Two Journos Convicted Of 'Insulting Turkishness'

A Turkish court has convicted two journalists for publishing content that mentions the Armenian genocide, following a vote by a U.S. congressional panel officially declaring the Ottoman Empire massacres to be genocide.

Arat Dink and Serkis Seropyan, editors at a Turkish-Armenian weekly, were given one-year suspended sentences under a law that makes it a crime to "insult" Turkish culture. The government of Turkey officially denies that the early 20th-century genocide took place, despite the widespread consensus of historians.

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Posted at 4:06 PM
Posted to: Europe, Turkey
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October 10, 2007

The Armenian Genocide: When Purity Meets Pragmatism

Let's get this detail out of the way: The United States does not brook genocide. Maybe this country does not always go far enough to stop genocide where it occurs (Rwanda, Sudan), but it has not ignored, let alone denied, the mass extermination of an ethnic group since World War II. What the U.S. always does do in reaction to genocide is condemn the killing wherever it occurs.

So why the opposition to a nonbinding House resolution that compels the U.S. government to formally recognize the 1915-17 mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide -- something George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did not do as commander in chief?

The answer, of course, is Turkey's resistance to the resolution. Almost anywhere else in the world, official government condemnation of genocide is an easy position for Washington to take. Not so with the Armenian genocide, because Turkey holds many cards, and the U.S. is in no position to strong-arm anyone it might still count as an ally in the war on terror.

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Posted at 3:50 PM
Posted to: Bill Clinton, Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice, Congress, EU, Europe, France, George H.W. Bush, House, Iraq, Israel, Kurds, Middle East, President Bush, Robert Gates, Senate, Turkey
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August 28, 2007

Turkey Gets First Ex-Islamist President

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul received the simple majority of votes he needed to finalize his election, making him the first Turkish president with an Islamist background.

Gul, of the ruling AKP party, won 339 of 550 votes in a third round of parliamentary balloting. His win brings to a close a tension-filled election, in which Turkey's military threatened a coup in order to uphold the overwhelmingly Muslim country's secularist constitution.

Strains between Turkey's secularists and those who backed Gul's candidacy remain. With Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan still in office, AKP now controls Turkey's highest offices as well as Parliament. Gul, a devout Muslim, has promised that his associations with political Islam are in the past, and AKP remains popular for shepherding an unprecedented economic boom.

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Posted at 11:15 AM
Posted to: EU, Europe, Turkey
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August 20, 2007

Turkey's Vote: Ready Or Not, Here Gul Comes

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is pressing forward with his bid for the presidency today, despite losing an initial round of voting. If he fails to win a two-thirds majority in Parliament in Friday's second round, he will need to muster only a simple majority in the third round. The controversial politician's eventual election is a certainty, since his AK Party holds a majority in Parliament.

Gul's campaign for the presidency is controversial because of his past involvement with an Islamist party. He has said that he no longer has ties to political Islam, and is vowing to uphold Turkey's secular constitution. But suspicions linger because Gul remains a committed Muslim, and his wife wears a headscarf -- despite a ban on headscarves in Turkey's public institutions.

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Posted at 12:14 PM
Posted to: Europe, Turkey
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August 13, 2007

Turkish Political Crisis In Works Yet Again

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has again nominated Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to be president, in a direct challenge to millions of his countrymen and the military, AP reports. Gul is a member of the ruling AK party, which is viewed by critics as advocating political Islam.

Erdogan's decision will likely reignite a tense confrontation between his government and Turkey's fiercely secularist military. In the spring, when Erdogan first announced he wanted outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a secularist, to be succeeded by Gul, more than a million Turks took to the streets and the military threatened a coup.

Parliamentary elections were moved up to last month to help resolve the crisis. To most observers' surprise, voters decisively sided with the AK party in that vote.

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Posted at 6:13 PM
Posted to: Bush Administration, Congress, EU, Europe, Turkey
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June 27, 2007

Members-Only Sentiment Overtaking EU

As American lawmakers debate the cultural impact of immigrants in this country, some of their counterparts across the globe are also trying to pull a curtain around themselves. In the case of the European Union, nations that are already members seem to want to prevent others from joining their ranks.

The EU's explosive growth in 2004, when it added 10 nations, was of dubious wisdom, many members now believe. The body's failure to agree on a constitution has resulted in a disjointed entity, with conflicting and confusing trade and finance rules nearly nullifying the EU's raison d'etre.

Another common complaint is that some politically immature nations were permitted entry too soon. Two cases in point are Romania and Bulgaria, both of which joined this year. The former Eastern bloc countries narrowly escaped suspension of their EU membership today after coming under criticism for not bringing legal reforms up to snuff. Both countries are sapling democracies in which high-level corruption scandals are unfolding.

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Posted at 6:16 PM
Posted to: EU, Europe, Turkey
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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.

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Posted at 12:43 PM
Posted to: Iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Turkey
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June 06, 2007

Turkish Troops Enter Northern Iraq

"Several thousand" Turkish troops have crossed the border into northern Iraq in what military leaders describe as a small-scale operation to root out Kurdish fighters, according to AP.

"Two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the raid was limited in scope and that it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks," AP reports.

National Journal (subscription) reported on the growing tensions between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Iraq last month; see the full story for details.

Posted at 12:08 PM
Posted to: Iraq, Middle East, Turkey
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May 22, 2007

Turkish Capital Rocked By Blast

UPDATED.

At least five people were killed and 60 injured today after an explosion hit a busy shopping mall in Ankara, Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

Erdogan also said the blast was clearly the result of a terrorist attack. CNN is reporting that anti-terror police on the scene have found traces of a type of explosive known to have been used by Kurdish separatist groups.

Video footage broadcast on CNN showed bodies laying among the rubble as emergency workers tended to the injured.

The explosion comes amid political unrest in Turkey. Parliamentary elections were moved up to this summer after secularists protested the presidential candidacy of Erdogan's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, who has since withdrawn from the race. Fearing a greater Islamic influence on their government, Turks have come out in droves to protest the current Islamic leadership.

Posted at 3:11 PM
Posted to: Turkey
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May 01, 2007

The Trouble In Turkey

UPDATED.

Regular cable news viewers are probably familiar with an ad sponsored by Turkey's tourism ministry promoting the history-rich Eurasian country as a place where the past meets the present. This week, that juxtaposition is playing out in a very alarming way.

Turkey faces the prospect of a moved-up presidential election -- under threat of military coup, no less -- in a clash between forces that equate the country's fiercely secular political system with modernity, and those who want the leadership to be a more accurate representation of the almost wholly Muslim populace. Not only is the nation's short-term stablity at risk -- its long-term wish of joining the European Union is more in danger than ever.

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Posted at 3:20 PM
Posted to: EU, Europe, Turkey
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