Bush seeks to keep Turkey out of Iraq
By Bay Fang
Washington Bureau
October 23, 2007
Chicago Tribune
The Bush administration is considering air strikes against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq in an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of Iraq to fight the rebels, administration officials said.
President Bush spoke with Turkish President Abdullah Gul by phone Monday in an effort to ease the crisis. According to an official familiar with the conversation, Bush assured the Turkish president that the U.S. was looking seriously into options beyond diplomacy to stop the attacks coming from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
"It's not 'Kumbaya' time anymore -- just talking about trilateral talks is not going to be enough," the official said. "Something has to be done."
While the use of U.S. soldiers on the ground to root out the PKK would be the last resort, the U.S. would be willing to launch air strikes on PKK targets, the officials said, and has discussed the use of cruise missiles. But air strikes using manned aircraft may be an easier option because the U.S. controls the air space over Iraq, the officials said.
Another option would be to persuade the Kurdistan Regional Government, which runs that part of Iraq, to order its Peshmerga forces to form a cordon preventing the movement of the PKK beyond its mountain camps, said U.S. officials and experts. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani on Sunday to request his cooperation in dealing with the PKK.
"In the past, there has been reluctance to engage in direct U.S. military action against the PKK, either through air strikes or some kind of Special Forces action," said the official familiar with the Bush-Gul conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But the red line was always, if the Turks were going to come over the border, it could be so destabilizing that it might be less risky for us to do something ourselves. Now the Turks are at the end of their rope, and our risk calculus is changing."
An ambush over the weekend by 200 PKK guerrillas left 12 Turkish soldiers dead and 8 missing. The attack's sophistication and scope surprised not only the Turks but also the U.S. and its Iraqi allies.
The U.S., with Iraqi help, also could squeeze the flow of supplies and funds for the PKK coming across the border, or through the airport in Arbil, the largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan, according to U.S. and Kurdish officials and experts. The Bush administration, which has an intelligence-sharing operation with Turkey, also could lean on the Kurdistan Regional Government to provide more of its own intelligence to the Turks, experts said.
Rice called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday in an appeal for patience, and administration officials said Erdogan granted a 72-hour reprieve on any cross-border attack by the Turkish military. The Turkish leadership is under heavy pressure from its public, with thousands of demonstrators shouting anti-PKK slogans in Istanbul after the weekend ambush.
The U.S.-Turkey alliance is particularly important to the Bush administration in its conduct of the Iraq war. About 70 percent of the American military's air cargo headed to Iraq is shipped through a U.S. air base in southern Turkey.
Analysts say the PKK, fighting for Kurdish self-rule since 1984, would like to incite Turkey to attack its bases inside Iraq to help fuel its movement, which lost political ground to the ruling Justice and Development Party, in Turkey's last general election.
"The Turks know these are provocations to draw them across the border, and they're reluctant to charge at that cape, because they know a sword is behind it," said Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey now at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "But Erdogan doesn't have any cards left to play."
Last week, Turkey's parliament authorized the government to send troops across the Iraqi border at any time in pursuit of the PKK.
The Kurdistan Regional Government warned that any air strikes by the U.S. or the Turks could inflame nationalist sentiments among the millions of Kurds who live inside Turkey.
"If the U.S. starts bombing PKK camps in the north, Turkey will be ablaze tomorrow," said Qubad Talabani, spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington.
He added that the Peshmerga has already formed a sort of security belt around the PKK to keep the fighters from coming down from the mountains into the cities of Iraqi Kurdistan. The only long-term solution, the regional government said, would be for it to be part of a serious dialogue among Turkey, the U.S. and Iraq. It complained that it is currently being left out of any discussions.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a Kurd who visited the White House on Monday, said at a Brookings appearance, "My worry is that there are demands of the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] and the Iraqi government to 'fight the PKK.' That could well be a recipe for an open-ended conflict in which we will not win and will basically destabilize the only stable part of Iraq."
Rice issued a statement with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, calling on Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government to "take immediate steps to halt PKK operations from Iraqi territory."
Kurdistan Regional Government spokesman Talabani said, "Everyone's passing the buck. The Turks want the U.S. to do something, the U.S. wants us to do something, and we don't think we can do anything. We fought the PKK in the '90s with the full force of the Turkish military and couldn't eradicate them."
On Monday, the PKK issued a statement that it would be ready for a cease-fire "if the Turkish army stops attacking our positions, drops plans for an incursion and resorts to peace," but most analysts dismissed this announcement as meaningless.
"The PKK always declares a cease-fire when winter approaches and it can't operate anyway," said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Then when the snow melts, they start fighting again."
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