Iraq Seeks Turkish ‘Diplomatic Solution’
ANKARA, Turkey— Iraq urged Turkey not to send troops across the border to fight rebel Kurds, dispatching the vice president to Ankara on Tuesday and calling for “a diplomatic solution” to tensions that have sent oil prices soaring.
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other senior officials. The Turkish Parliament was expected to approve a motion Wednesday allowing the government to order a cross-border attack over the next year.
“The passage of the motion in Parliament does not mean that an operation will be carried out at once,” Erdogan said Tuesday. “Turkey would act with common sense and determination when necessary and when the time is ripe.”
Oil prices surged more than $1 a barrel to new industry highs on Tuesday amid the tensions that also threaten the flow of fuel and other supplies to American forces in Iraq.
“Whenever there is any escalation in political tensions in the Middle East, oil markets become concerned,” said David Moore, a commodity strategist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. “There is production and there are pipelines that people worry may be affected if there are any issues in Iraq.”
Erdogan called on Iraq and Iraqi Kurds to crack down on separatist rebels. He said the regional administration in northern Iraq should “build a thick wall between itself and terrorist organizations.”
Erdogan said any action would only target the rebels and Turkey would respect Iraq’s territorial integrity.
Ali al-Dabbagh, the spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the government would not tolerate violence from the separatist rebels but he urged the Turks to “seek a diplomatic solution and not a military one in dealing with the terrorist threats that target it.”
Washington has urged NATO-ally Turkey not to enter Iraq, fearing that unilateral Turkish military action could destabilize the autonomous Kurdish region in the north which is one of the country’s few relatively stable areas. The Kurds are a longtime U.S. ally.
An offensive could also undermine Turkey’s relations with the European Union, which has pushed Turkey to treat its minority Kurds better.
Full AP article by Suzan Fraser HERE
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Super! Just in time for the Congressional resolution declaring an Armenian genocide by a gov’t that no longer exists! Assholes all of them. I can’t be mad at Turkey though, at the end of the day, Kurds are blowing their shit up.
What’s with the guy wearing NVGs in the picture above? Looks like a daylight photo op.
Also, this should add to the shit storm we call the ME:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/10/16/artist.controversy/index.html
October 16th, 2007 at 8:07 am“The Turkish military has been insisting on a decisive strike against the separatists, against urgings from Washington. The president, parliament, and the ruling party are under pressure to back the military.
“If in situation when Turkey is threatened [by separatists], the government does not support the army, the army will choose another government,” Satanovsky said, referring to a possibility of a military coup in the country.”
dilemn
October 16th, 2007 at 8:27 amThe PKK is not going to stop until some sort of agreement can be reached with Turkey. One thing that should be made clear is that the Kurds in Kurdistan run their own show and that Turkey is not their boss. In return for such an understanding, the Kurds could reign in the PKK. Other incentives that could be used are cross-border trade and oil from Kurdish wells.
Turkey needs to get into it’s thick skulls that these are not Ottoman times anymore; and that the Kurds are a free people. Yes they want their own state. But forcing them to stay in some kind of Dhimi status in perpetuity isn’t going to make the PKK go away. Nor is attacking Kurdistan.
The best solution is some sort of compromise between Iraq, Kurdistan and Turkey. In Islamic jurisprudence, I believe a treaty can be negotiated with other Islamists for up to ten years. So why not give that a shot?
Fat chance huh?
October 16th, 2007 at 8:57 am