By Andrew Borowiec
The Washington Times
NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Their uprisings have been drowned in blood, but the cry "Freedom for Kurdistan" reverberates in the barren, wind-swept mountains where Turkey meets Syria, Iraq and Iran.
The unfulfilled quest of the Kurds for statehood is now emerging as a major barrier in Turkey's path to the European Union and in Ankara's relations with the United States.
It risks becoming the dominant issue of this year's Turkish parliamentary and presidential elections, and a considerable diplomatic irritant involving the United States, Europe and a large portion of the Middle East inhabited by Kurds -- an ethnic group deprived of self-rule for centuries.
Hardly a day goes by without Turkish threats to enter northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels waging a 32-year-old guerrilla war that has claimed an estimated 37,000 lives. It is in that part of Iraq that the Kurds have succeeded in establishing a form of limited autonomy which, to the Turkish government, looms as the possible nucleus of a Kurdish state. full text
The Washington Times
NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Their uprisings have been drowned in blood, but the cry "Freedom for Kurdistan" reverberates in the barren, wind-swept mountains where Turkey meets Syria, Iraq and Iran.
The unfulfilled quest of the Kurds for statehood is now emerging as a major barrier in Turkey's path to the European Union and in Ankara's relations with the United States.
It risks becoming the dominant issue of this year's Turkish parliamentary and presidential elections, and a considerable diplomatic irritant involving the United States, Europe and a large portion of the Middle East inhabited by Kurds -- an ethnic group deprived of self-rule for centuries.
Hardly a day goes by without Turkish threats to enter northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels waging a 32-year-old guerrilla war that has claimed an estimated 37,000 lives. It is in that part of Iraq that the Kurds have succeeded in establishing a form of limited autonomy which, to the Turkish government, looms as the possible nucleus of a Kurdish state. full text
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