The Turkish government will seek parliamentary approval for a military operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, a government spokesman said Monday, taking action on one of two major issues straining relations with Washington.
The government will immediately send a motion to the Parliament in hopes of a vote later this week, government spokesman Cemil Cicek said. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government twice acquired similar authorizations from the Parliament in 2003, but did not act on them.
Cicek insisted the only target was the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK.
“We have always respected the sovereignty of Iraq, which is a friendly and brotherly country to us,” Cicek said. “But the reality that everyone knows is that this terrorist organization, which has bases in the north of Iraq, is attacking the territorial integrity of Turkey and its citizens.”
A lot of this is designed to forestall the genocide declaration being debated in Congress.
http://tinyurl.com/2ww2lo
This is the other issue referred to above (“taking action on one of two major issues straining relations with Washington.”) If Congress kills the genocide declaration, Turkey will call off the invasion.
There is an interesting account (from February of this year) of the evolution of the genocide debate in TURKEY since the 1920s at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6386625.stm
“There is no logical reason why a new republican administration, established in October 1923 in an act of revolutionary defiance of Ottoman power, should consider itself responsible for things done under the previous regime. In fact, when the nationalist movement was founded in 1919, the climate of revulsion over the sufferings of the Armenians was so general that even the neo-nationalists were keen to distinguish themselves from the CUP. Some see significance in the fact that the nationalist movement chose to rally round an army officer, Mustafa Kemal, who had never been anywhere near the places where the Armenians met their fate. The very fact that the Turkish republic bears no formal responsibility for eliminating the Armenian presence in eastern Anatolia (for the simple reason that the republic did not exist when the atrocities occurred) has given some Turkish historians a flicker of hope: one day, the leaders of the republic will be able to face up to history’s toughest questions about the Armenians, without feeling that to do so would undermine the very existence of their state.”
There is no question that the treatment of Armenians under the Ottomans was appalling. The question is why the Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing this resolution at this time. Is it being done, perhaps, to undermine the increasingly promising news coming from Iraq, to create a fissure between the U.S. and Turkey, to create a difficulty in northern Iraq just when things are going far better for the new Iraqi government? This effort, at this particular time, to condemn a horrible atrocity which occurred almost a century ago under a regime which collapsed shortly thereafter, looks like a political rather than humanitarian maneuver.
#3 Katherine, you are right on the money.
And this from those same sophisticates who are always lecturing Mr Bush on how he needs to be more diplomatic!
Follow up to those of you above. The Libertarian columnist Thomas Sowell makes the same point here:
http://tinyurl.com/2jghrw
Katherine (#3), your reasoning is correct.
This action by the anti-Bush Democrats in Congress completely meets the definition of unpatriotic behavior.
They are putting our relations with a critical ally in the Muslim world at risk for purely anti-American and selfish political motives.
American servicemen may die as a result of this behavior by these Democrats. The blood of these servicemen will be on their hands.