Tension remains along the Turkish-Iraqi border though a possibility of Turkey's cross-border military operation against the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) seems to be decreasing while Ankara expects more cooperation from the United States.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Nov. 30 that Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) were authorized for cross-border operation against the PKK as of Nov. 28.
Erdogan made the remarks following his meeting with Hasim Kilic, the Chief Judge of the Constitutional Court. However, it was not immediately clear whether Erdogan's comments meant such an operation was imminent.
PKK members, who fear of being captured in an operation possibly to be launched by Turkey with Iraq's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), are leaving camps in northern Iraq and have been separated to small groups for going to the inside of Iraq, a Xinhua correspondent reported recently from the border region.
According to the report, some main PKK members left camps at the areas of Qandil, Metina, Gare, Hakurk in northern Iraq and went to more secure areas along the Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish border.
Roads which are going to the PKK camps are being blocked and PKK areas are now under control of Iraq's special forces, while Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops along the mountainous border in preparation for the cross-border operation approved by the parliament last month.
Reliable sources in Ankara told Xinhua that Turkish leaders recently did not mention too much about the cross-border incursion against PKK but only vowed to eradicate terrorism and terrorists, which means Ankara still hope to solve the PKK problem through diplomatic way.
Two top U.S. generals paid a brief visit to Ankara on Nov. 20 to discuss jointly combating the PKK and the new mechanisms of "timely intelligence sharing."
General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, met with Turkey's Deputy Chief of General Staff General Ergin Saygun during the visit, the office of Turkey's General Staff said in a statement.
"At the meeting, cooperation and comprehensive sharing of intelligence in the continuing struggle against our common enemy, the PKK, were discussed," added the statement.
On Nov. 22, Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman (Time) reported that Gen. Cartwright and Gen. Petraeus had promised that the U.S.-Turkish cooperation would flush out PKK terrorists by May, 2008, in return, Turkey would not mount a major incursion into northern Iraq because it may destabilize the wider and mostly-Kurdish region.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan has revealed that the process of intelligence sharing between Turkey and the U.S. had begun though it does not mean Ankara has started to receive intelligence from its ally.
Meanwhile, Iraq has also vowed to make full efforts to stop PKK attacks against Turkey, saying that terrorism poses a threat to both countries.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is also a leader of Kurdish origin, has said that any PKK military action against Turkey would also be considered "hostile" against the Iraqi people, including the country's Kurdish minority.
No Kurds in Iraq support the PKK and the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq are helping Turkish forces monitor PKK activities, he added.
Calling on the PKK fighters to lay down their arms and follow a peaceful path, the Iraqi president also promised that Iraq is committed to defusing any crisis with Turkey via peaceful means and the government has stepped up its pressure on the PKK.
The Turkish government also called on Nov. 26 for the extradition of PKK members who were known to be abroad.
"We asked for extradition of the PKK members who are responsible for the attacks staged against Turkey, those terrorists are not only in Iraq, but also in other countries," said State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Cecil Cicek.
Three days later, Germany extradited to Turkey two PKK rebels who have long been on Ankara's wanted list.
"Intensified efforts and diplomatic undertakings" to get back PKK members who have fled Turkey after staging attacks have "started bearing positive results," the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
On Oct. 17, the Turkish parliament approved a government motion backing a cross-border operation into northern Iraq for pursuing PKK militants, straining the relations between the two neighboring countries.
However, three days later, the PKK, which has been fighting more than 20 years for an independent Kurdish country in southern Turkey, further fueled the tension by killing 12 government soldiers in a deadly ambush.
According to a poll in October, some 81 percent of people said Turkey should conduct a cross-border military operation against the PKK, the number of people was up sharply from 46 percent in the last poll in July.
Turks were also angry about U.S. failure to tackle the estimated 3,000 PKK militants hiding in northern Iraq, fearing U.S. policy is leading towards a creation of an independent Kurdish state there.
However, the poll was conducted before Prime Minister Erdogan held crisis talks in the White House with U.S. President George W. Bush on Nov. 5.
During the meeting, Bush termed PKK "the common enemy of Turkey, Iraq and the U.S.," pledging more help to Turkey, a NATO ally, in fighting against PKK rebels.
The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict that has lasted more than two decades.
Though the U.S. and Iraq have pledged to hunt down and arrest PKK leaders to decrease the tension at the Turkish-Iraqi border, Baghdad has little influence over the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the North, whose cooperation is very important to the success of any measures against the PKK.
For that, Ankara has been urging Washington and Baghdad to take swift and concrete steps to strike PKK rebels.
Otherwise, a possibility of Turkey's cross-border military operation will not be ruled out in any time if PKK renews attacks against Ankara as some 100,000 Turkish troops have still been along the mountainous border with Iraq, said political analysts.
Source: Xinhua
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