Turkey sharpened its threat to invade northern Iraq on Saturday when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared its army ready to attack Kurdish rebels ”when needed”, regardless of international opposition.
With Turkey massing troops on the Iraqi border and preparing to invade and crush the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Erdogan has been under intense pressure from America, Iraq and other countries to pull back from a move that could further destabilise the region.
But the prime minister ratcheted up the rhetoric on Saturday. ”Whenever an operation is needed to be carried out, we will do that,” he told a crowd in the western city of Izmit. ”We do not need to ask anything from anyone for that … we make our decisions on our own.”
On Friday, Turkey’s military chief said the country would wait until Erdogan met President George Bush in Washington on November 5 before deciding on an offensive. Erdogan said Turkey could not be pinned down by dates in deciding whether to attack. ”We can’t say when or how we will do it, we will just do it,” he added.
In a series of protests on Saturday, about 1 000 Turkish nationalists marched on the United States Embassy in the capital, Ankara, accusing the US of supporting the rebels by not cracking down on them in northern Iraq. ”Down with the USA, down with the PKK,” the group chanted, carrying pictures of Turkish soldiers killed in the conflict, before laying a black wreath at the embassy gate.
Another 1 500 people, mostly children, took to the streets of the predominantly Kurdish city of Sirnak in south-eastern Turkey near the Iraqi border to protest against the recent surge in rebel violence. Waving red-and-white Turkish flags, people chanted ”Martyrs never die, the nation will never be divided,” in one of several demonstrations in the border area.
Hundreds more gathered in Istanbul’s Taksim Square waving flags and images of modern Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
In Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, a group of local NGOs issued a statement calling on the PKK to end the violence, while urging Turkey not to send troops across the border. The groups said that if Turkey sent troops into northern Iraq, it would ”further complicate the problem and dramatically increase the loss of lives”.
The PKK has killed at least 42 people in the past month, including about 30 soldiers in two ambushes. Turkish troops, meanwhile, repelled another attack by a large Kurdish rebel group last Tuesday as it tried to cross the border, the military said.
Kurdish rebels said they were considering a request for the release of eight Turkish soldiers captured just under a week ago, an incident that significantly increased tensions. Speaking in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah, PKK spokesperson Abdul-Rahman al-Chaderchi told the Associated Press: ”Within a short time, we will end the issue of the captives.”
The Turkish military presence remained heavy in the border area on Saturday, with patrols securing roads and checkpoints. Helicopters ferried in more troops and military units were put on alert against rebel attack. Military posts in Cukurca, near the Iraqi border, were fortified with cement barriers.
Colonel Hussein Tamr, an Iraqi border guard officer, said Turkish forces had shelled two areas along the western portion of Iraq’s border with Turkey.
About 35km miles from the border, near the village of Ikizce, Turkish tanks fired 10 rounds into the mountains towards Iraq. No casualties were reported, but AP Television News footage showed smoke billowing from the area where the shells landed. — Guardian Unlimited Â