Middle East News
Turkey refuses to give timetable on withrawal from Iraq (Roundup)
Feb 28, 2008, 13:31 GMT
Ankara/Baghdad - Turkish political and military leaders on Thursday refused to give US Defence Secretary Robert Gates an exact date for the withdrawal of Turkish troops fighting Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq, with Chief of General Staff Yasar merely saying that they would leave in the 'shortest time possible.'
'The shortest time possible is a relative concept. For some it may be one day or for others it might mean a year,' Buyukyanit was quoted by NTV private television as saying before talks with Gates in Ankara.
Earlier, Gates said that Turkey should quickly wrap up its military incursion against Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq.
In order to stop 'terror,' not just military but also economic and political initiatives must be made, he said.
Gates was quoted by CNN-Turk television as saying after talks with Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul that the Washington wanted the operation to be 'short and precisely targeted.'
Gonul said that while Turkey had no plans to become an occupying force, 'we will stay for as long as necessary.'
The defence minister reiterated Turkey's stance that the sole target of the operation was Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) fighters based in northern Iraq.
With heavy fighting continuing Thursday in and around two Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) camps in mountainous northern Iraq, Gates was later scheduled to meet President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Buyukyanit.
According to a statement released by the Turkish military on Wednesday 230 PKK fighters, 24 Turkish soldiers and three state- employed village guards have been killed since Turkey launched 'Operation Gunes' on the night of February 21.
A senior member of the PKK said its forces had killed 18 Turkish soldiers and wounded two on Thursday in a mountainous area in northern Iraq, media reports from Baghdad said.
'We (the PKK) managed to kill three Turkish soldiers and wound another two when our forces set an ambush in the Dojka mountains near Zab,' Ahmed Damis, a senior PKK official, told the Iraqi news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
He added that the PKK killed another 15 Turkish troops during clashes with Kurdish forces in the eastern Imadiya area.
With access to the region extremely limited, none of the casualty figures could be independently verified.
Up to 10,000 Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq the night of February 21 in an operation designed to destroy the PKK's ability to launch attacks inside Turkey. The Turkish military estimates there are between 4,000 to 5,000 PKK guerrillas based in the region.
Ankara blames the separatist group for the deaths of more than 32,000 people since the early 1980s when the PKK began its fight for independence or autonomy for the mainly Kurdish-populated south-east of Turkey.
Baghdad has said it sympathizes with Turkey concerning the PKK but that the incursion will not solve the problem, and has called on Ankara to call off the operation.
The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Sounds like they are trying to anex northern parts of Iraq as they did with Cypress. Leaves the US in a bit of a bind as they managed to instal there military in Turkey. As history shows once the US military have have occipied part of someone's country its almost impossible to get rid of them (eg Gantanimo bay in Cuba or Okinawa in japan)
Why is the US criticizing Turkey? They are simply copying our policy.
Could it be that we are going to turn on the Kurds as we turned on Saddam Hussein? Or will we continue to support the Kurds and a contrary united Iraq?
Few people realize the core of the problem stretches back to the Treaty of Versailles, when national boundaries were drawn that split apart a shatter belt, where Armenians, Turks, Arabs both Shia and Sunni, and Kurds have all competed for years. Kurds were the ones who were left out, and Iraq forcibly stuck together. Yet we support Turkey, and the Kurds.
We cannot keep helping both sides. We shouldn't even pick a side at all. We never hurt the PKK before, and we have used Turkey as a strategic bastion. We need to let all of these problems be.
... they're just following Bush's example.
And the US has no credibilty at all - zero, zip, nada - in pressuring Turkey for a quick mission and withdrawal.
Thank you again Mr. Bush.
page: 1
SubhashFeb 28th, 2008 - 15:00:03
Let me get this right: WE reserve the right to go into any country threatening us, refuse to set deadlines, occupy the country for 6 years, all in the name of fighting terrorism, but we expect Turkey to provide deadlines and refrain from 'destabilizing' Iraq?? Oh, and by the way, says GAtes, there is no military solution to terrorism, either in Turkey or in Pakistan. Really? So why are 140,000 American soldiers in Iraq?
Just you wait friends, this is only the beginning of the Pandora's box we have opened up in the world with our 'pre-emptive' strike against any country perceived to harbor terrorists, our imprisoning human beings for years without due process, our torture, our warentless wiretapping. We will be suffering the blow back from all this for generations. Rather than promoting democracy and freedom around the world, we did the very opposite, emboldened and empowered the bad guys and provided them with thousands of new recruits.
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