NBC: Turkey denies any incursion. AP: "Two senior [Turkish] 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. 'It is not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands,' one of the officials told the AP by telephone. [...] Meanwhile, U.S. officials in Washington told NBC News that Ankara has told the United States that there has been 'no Turkish incursion into Iraq.' There was no immediate explanation for the differing statements. [...] An official at military headquarters in Ankara declined to confirm or deny the report that Turkish troops had entered Iraq."

I reported on the problem for Washington of growing tensions between Iraqi Kurds and the Turks over the PKK issue in the May 5 issue of National Journal, "Iraq's Potential New Front," story excerpts below the fold. Summary: " ... The task of finding a diplomatic solution to the PKK problem comes at a time when the Bush administration is struggling with more-pressing security concerns in the rest of Iraq and is showing signs of exhaustion as it confronts an array of problems abroad and at home. The risk, regional experts say, is that a distracted Washington could miss signs that Turkish-Kurdish tensions are approaching a full-blown crisis." I also profiled the Kurdistan Regional Government's Washington representative Qubad Talabani in this month's Washington Monthly, and reported on Kurdistan's covert back channels in Mother Jones.

"Iraq's Potential New Front," National Journal, May 5, 2007 issue:

As if Washington doesn't have enough problems in Iraq, now it faces growing tensions between Turkey and the Kurds of northern Iraq.

In advance of Turkish presidential elections this month, the presence of more than 3,000 members and sympathizers of the Kurdistan Workers Party -- known as the PKK -- at a camp in the remote Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq has become a major source of public outrage in Turkey. The Turkish military leadership has threatened an incursion, and Turkish public opinion of the United States has turned sharply hostile.

Turkey and the U.S. consider the PKK a terrorist organization, and during the 1980s and 1990s the party fought a war with the Turkish military that left tens of thousands of people dead -- many of them victims of terrorist attacks. Although the PKK has been less active in recent years, Turkey claims that the group has killed 130 of its citizens in the past year. And Ankara complains that Washington is all talk and no action when it comes to getting the Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq to clamp down on the party.

The heightened tensions between two of Washington's most reliable partners in the region, the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds, occur amid the continued cooling of relations between Washington and Ankara. Some quarters of official Washington still resent Ankara's refusal to allow the United States to use Turkish territory to invade Iraq from the north in 2003, a decision driven by public opposition in Turkey to the war. The Turks also were afraid that the war would lead to a more independent Kurdish entity in Iraq's north that would spur similar demands by Turkey's own large Kurdish population.

The task of finding a diplomatic solution to the PKK problem comes at a time when the Bush administration is struggling with more-pressing security concerns in the rest of Iraq and is showing signs of exhaustion as it confronts an array of problems abroad and at home.

The risk, regional experts say, is that a distracted Washington could miss signs that Turkish-Kurdish tensions are approaching a full-blown crisis. Last month, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey's military chief, asked Ankara for permission to send forces into northern Iraq, and there are reports of troops moving toward the border. The activity follows remarks by Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, advising Turkey to get used to the idea of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan. It also comes amid concerns that the PKK will step up terrorist attacks in Turkey this spring and summer.

Zeyno Baran, a senior fellow and specialist on Turkey at the Hudson Institute, says that several factors are making the situation particularly nettlesome. "Barzani is a difficult man to manage," Baran said. "On the PKK issue, Barzani doesn't want to talk about it, and the Americans can't make him talk about it.... Also, on the military side, basically the north of Iraq is the only stable place in Iraq, and the Americans don't want to create instability." She continued, "I also think, unfortunately, that in [Bush's] second term, people making decisions are tired, exhausted, frustrated, and they are not able to think in the longer term. People are thinking: 18 months."

Asked for comment on the PKK situation, one State Department official, speaking on background, said that U.S. reluctance to move more decisively against the PKK now was driven by simple realities: "There are no U.S. troops in Kurdistan," the official said. "America has a multiplicity of problems in Iraq, and the PKK are not killing Americans."

"The Turks are really pissed," the official acknowledged, "but they have pulled back a bit" recently. He noted that Turkey is participating in a meeting in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt, on May 3-4 involving the foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbors, and that the Turks "have even been helpful in leaning on the Iranians in the past, and to get the Iranians to participate in regional meetings." [...]

But Turkish experts say that Washington should not take the relationship and such good offices for granted. Before the Iraq war, Baran said, the situation between Turkey and its own Kurdish population was improving dramatically. "The PKK was almost completely delegitimized in the eyes of Turkish Kurds, and political will was good. Now the United States is telling the Turks, 'Our terrorists are the bad guys, but we are not going to touch your terrorists.' " The Turks say they have done their part in working with Iraqi Kurds, providing them with electricity from Turkey and investing in Kurdish companies. Now, Baran said, Turks feel that it's time for the U.S. and the Iraqi Kurds to do something for them.

For their part, Iraqi Kurds appear relatively content with Washington's de facto position on the PKK issue, which essentially kicks it down the road. "The United States has handled this correctly for now," says Qubad Talabani, the Washington representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. "They have tried hard to encourage a dialogue between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Turkey on this issue. They understand that there can be no military solution to the PKK issue, neither inside Iraq nor Turkey.The United States has appointed a seasoned and decorated general, [retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph] Ralston, to lead this effort, but unfortunately his mission and our requests for dialogue are handcuffed by some in Turkey that constantly reject dialogue."

The Iraqi Kurdish political leadership has so far been unwilling to dislodge the PKK from its territory. Some analysts suggest that it wants to use the issue as a bargaining chip for other, larger goals, including Iraqi Kurds' demand for a referendum before the end of the year on the status of the ethnically mixed Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Both Turkey and Iraqi Arabs fiercely oppose the city's coming under Kurdish control and are seeking to delay any such referendum. Ankara's opposition is said to be based in large part on the concern that if the Kurds were to gain control of Kirkuk's oil and natural-gas resources, the added wealth would bring them one step closer to establishing a viable, independent Iraqi Kurdistan -- something that Turkey considers a serious threat to its territorial integrity because so many Kurds live in southeastern Turkey.

Amid the official stalemate and malaise, some outside of the administration are looking for creative solutions to the PKK problem. Later this month, a private group of policy experts -- American, Turkish, and Kurdish specialists affiliated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- plan to travel to northern Iraq to see if an early-1990s agreement between Iraqi Kurds and Iran over armed Iranian Kurdish parties based in the area can be refashioned to apply to the PKK. [...]

More from the AP here.

Posted by Laura at June 6, 2007 03:11 PM