Turkish Army Chief Insists on Incursion Southern Kurdistan
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ANKARA June 27, 2006
The head of the Turkish armed forces insisted June 27 on the need for a military
incursion into northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan) to hunt down Turkish Kurd
rebels based there, but said he needed the government’s green light to do so.
“I cannot say that we will go in and finish off the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’
Party), but a cross-border operation will deliver a big blow,” against the rebel
group, Chief of General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told a televised news
conference at a commando training camp in the southwestern town of Egirdir.
“It will be very useful,” he said.
Buyukanit said the army needed a “political directive” and
guidelines from the government for such an operation.
“All cross-border operations have a political target,” Buyukanit said. “Military
planning starts with a political directive.
“It is one thing to go into northern Iraq to fight PKK rebels or, for example,
it is another thing to come under attack from local Kurds while doing that,”
Buyukanit said. “If the political target is determined, the armed forces would
determine what kind of force it needs and seek formal approval.”
Since April, Buyukanit has been calling for a strike against PKK rebels based in
Kurdish-controlled autonomous northern Iraq where, Ankara says, the PKK enjoys
free movement and obtains weapons and explosives for cross-border attacks
against Turkish targets.
Turkey also accuses local Kurdish leaders of tolerating and even supporting the
PKK.
The head of the Turkish land forces, Ilker Basbug, said June 27 that there were
some 5,000 PKK rebels in total, an estimated 2,800 to 3,100 of them based in
northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan).
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not ruled out an incursion but said
Ankara should focus on fighting the rebels inside Turkey and seek dialogue with
Baghdad to resolve the issue.
Washington opposes Turkish military action in northern Iraq, wary that this
could destabilize the relatively peaceful region of conflict-torn Iraq and
further strain tense ties between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds, staunch allies of
the U.S.
Buyukanit stressed that armed force was not the answer to eliminating the PKK
and called on the government to introduce measures to deal with the “economic,
social and psychological aspects of terrorism.”
“You cannot expect the struggle against terrorism to succeed when it is reduced
to only armed struggle,” Buyukanit said.
He said the PKK has an extensive network of collaborators and sympathizers
providing logistical support and said the rebels receive substantial political,
financial and weapons support from abroad.
“There are some among our allies who provide direct or indirect support to the
PKK. This negatively affects our struggle,” Buyukanit said.
To combat the PKK more efficiently, Basbug said, the army will transform its six
existing commando brigades into professional units from the end of 2009, putting
an end to the practice of sending conscripts to those units.
The announcement followed a wave of public outrage over the deaths in clashes
with the PKK of several young conscripts, raising questions on how well soldiers
sent to the combat zone are trained.
