By Patrick Cockburn
October 12, 2007
Turkey is threatening to send its troops into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish guerrillas in a move likely to destabilise the one part of Iraq which is at peace.
The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will ask parliament next week to authorise a military incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan after attacks by Turkish Kurds killed more than 10 Turkish troops last Sunday. Threatening a push into Iraq would also underline Turkish anger at the US Congressional vote describing the Ottoman Turk killing of Armenians in 1915 as genocide.
A statement from Mr Erdogan's office said: "The order has been given for every kind of measure to be taken [against the PKK] including, if needed, by a cross-border operation."
An attack into Iraqi Kurdistan by Turkey would be deeply embarrassing for the US because the five million Iraqi Kurds are the only Iraqi community which fully supports the US occupation of Iraq . US reliance on Kurdish military units was emphasised yesterday by a report that Peshmerga 34th Division is to move outside the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) area to guard roads between Kurdistan and Baghdad . Full Text
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