Turkey's foreign minister asserted his country's right to act against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq on Monday, just before rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost, killing eight soldiers. The army sent attack helicopter and reinforcements to Tunceli Province in southeastern Turkey after three people thought to belong to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rammed a vehicle into the military post and opened fire with automatic weapons and rockets, local media reported. Eight soldiers were killed and six more wounded. Soldiers returned fire, killing the vehicle's driver, the military said.The gendarmerie is a paramilitary force responsible for security in rural areas of Turkey."Turkey places great importance on Iraq's territorial integrity and has no secret agenda regarding its neighbor," Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in Ankara shortly before the attack in Tunceli. "But Turkey undoubtedly has the right to take all kinds of measures when it comes to terrorist activities at the border," he told European Union officials visiting Ankara.At the same news conference, visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said: "Mr. Gul told us the Turkish government naturally wants to protect its own people and that there is therefore a need to take action against terrorist activity.But "I received no indication an action is planned with a view to a military intervention in northern Iraq," he added.
Turkey's foreign minister asserted his country's right to act against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq on Monday, just before rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost, killing eight soldiers. The army sent attack helicopter and reinforcements to Tunceli Province in southeastern Turkey after three people thought to belong to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rammed a vehicle into the military post and opened fire with automatic weapons and rockets, local media reported. Eight soldiers were killed and six more wounded. Soldiers returned fire, killing the vehicle's driver, the military said.
The gendarmerie is a paramilitary force responsible for security in rural areas of Turkey.
"Turkey places great importance on Iraq's territorial integrity and has no secret agenda regarding its neighbor," Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in Ankara shortly before the attack in Tunceli. "But Turkey undoubtedly has the right to take all kinds of measures when it comes to terrorist activities at the border," he told European Union officials visiting Ankara.
At the same news conference, visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said: "Mr. Gul told us the Turkish government naturally wants to protect its own people and that there is therefore a need to take action against terrorist activity.
But "I received no indication an action is planned with a view to a military intervention in northern Iraq," he added.
Of course, if the US can do this, so can Turkey, right?. They're in NATO after all, and Iraq isn't. Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
Now it seems to me that if turkey do this, they will end up with large chunks of their army in kurdistan for a fair old while. I cannot help thinking this may not be as good an idea as the turks think it might be.
Of course, the turks could stop behaving like exterminationists towards minority populations, (we've done for the armenians, now for the kurds) but they seem to have a bee in their bonnet about stuff like that. keep to the Fen Causeway
