Simmering border tensions between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish rebels seem to have come to a boil, with Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, defying the US with steps to counter cross border terrorism, while on the other hand Kurdish separatists vowing to step up their attacks on Turkish government targets.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) said that, far from faltering their recent raids, they planned to increases operations and specifically target Turkey’s ruling AK Party and the opposition CHP. This they are pursuing to counter the ’state terror’ against them by the Iraqi side of the border with Turkey. The PKK’s ideology was founded on revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and Kurdish nationalism. The PKK’s goal has been to create an independent socialist Kurdish state in a territory which it claims as Kurdistan, an area that comprises parts of south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Iraq, north-eastern Syria and north-western Iran; those states oppose any such change.
However, the US cannot afford to loose turkey, its only ally in the Middle East, but the relationship lost its smooth sailing when a resolution approved by the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee describing the killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 as ‘genocide’ prompted Ankara to recall its ambassador from Washington on Thursday. Mr Erdogan made it clear yesterday that the dispute could permanently damage ties. Henceforth Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, is heading to the region and may try to sort out the situation.
With Turkey deciding to deal ruthlessly with Kurdish rebel bases in Iraq, the prime ministers stand in the country has become stronger. Considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the PKK unleashed an independence struggle in Turkey in 1984 that has killed more than 37,000 people.
Image credit
Source: Times Online
