by Aamer Madhani
With reports of Turkey building up troop levels on its border with Iraq, the country’s top diplomat in Washington said this morning that U.S. weaponry has been found in the hands of Kurdish guerillas who have been staging attacks along the two countries border.
Ambassador Nabi Sensoy said that he does not believe the United States is supplying the weapons directly to fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a group better known as the PKK that for years has been fighting for an independent Kurdistan within Turkey. But Sensoy pointed to the weaponry as emblematic of U.S. officials doing too little to stop the PKK from staging attacks out of northern Iraq.
“I think the Turkish people have shown enough patience,” Sensoy said. “We have to show the public some concrete results.”
Turkey has been fighting the PKK since the early 1980s and has periodically crossed into Iraq to battle with guerillas staged on the Iraqi side of the border. For years, Iraq has also hosted thousands of refugees from Turkey aligned with the PKK that live in decrepit camps along the border and in the north-central Iraqi city of Mahkmour.
Sensoy said that Turkish officials have been pressing the U.S. to make sure that American weaponry is not funneled to the PKK by Kurdish members of the Iraqi government to the guerillas. Meanwhile, Washington has been pressing Ankara to dial down the tough talk against the Kurds.
The Kurds have been among the strongest allies of the U.S., and the three northern provinces in Iraq’s Kurdish region have been largely peaceful.
But some worry that the peace in the north could be in peril, and that the saber rattling by the Turks underscores how a U.S. pullout from Iraq could further complicate the fragile region.
In recent weeks, the Turks have renewed complaints that members of the PKK are carrying out attacks against their countrymen on in its southern border. The rhetoric has become more serious as Turkey’s military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, last month asked his government to set political guidelines for an incursion into northern Iraq.
The Turks claim that PKK fighters have killed dozens of Turks this year alone, and the Turkey Army has killed more than 100 of the PKK fighters in the same period.
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The tension between Turkey and Iraq’s Kurds has also been exacerbated by Iraq’s plans to hold a referendum in December to decide whether the oil-rich city of Kirkuk should become part of Iraq’s Kurdish region. The city, which is home to large populations of Arabs and Turkmens, is considered by Kurds as the economic nucleus that would make an eventual Kurdish state viable.
Earlier this week, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said that the Turkish army has deployed 140,000 soldiers along its border with northern Iraq as part of a “great mobilization.” The Pentagon and State Department have disputed the accuracy of Zebari’s numbers. Today, Sensoy said that there has been an “ongoing movement” of Turkish forces, but he would not comment on exact force levels.
Sensoy was coy about what it would take for the Turks to invade Iraq. He added that the U.S. has failed to use its leverage to get the Kurds to take necessary action to stamp out the PKK>
“On the one hand, this part of … normal precautions being taken within our borders,” he said of the troop buildup. “But of course, I cannot say Turkey would be able to rule out any alternative in the fight against the terrorists.”