the US in 1998, but started The generals would like, if given half a chance, to recapture the it became clear that while cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and of course the oil fields around Most of the media frenzy about a possible Turkish incursion into South Kurdistan generating more heat than light.
The ostensible aim of the plan, approved with great fanfare by the Turkish Parliament, is to enable their army to cross into Iraq
attack PKK fighters based there.
Actually, Turkey has maintained some forces within
near the Turkish border, for some years, and before the US occupation of Iraq used to make regular incursions. But these operations were never very successful - the Turkish army suttered significant losses and never came anywhere close to dislodging PKK forces from South Kurdistan.
At present, many, possibly most of the active PKK guerrillas are back in Turkey. They largely withdrew to South Kurdistan for some years soon after their leader Abdullah Ocalan's kidnapping by Turkey and reappearing in Turkey when they had lowered their pronot really changed its attitude to the Kurdish question.
In Turkey they are often a long way from the Iraqi border, so the idea that invading South Kurdistan will enable the Turkish state to crush them, especially in the absence of any sort of political solution within Turkey, is ludicrous.
Furthermore, while some PKK forces in South Kurdistan might well be within reach of the Turkish army, and indeed one of the justifications advanced by Turkey is that 30 or 40 solPKK fighters ready to repel Turkish invaders file, the Turkish state had Kirkuk for Turkey. diers have been killed by PKK guerrillas in the last few weeks, the main forces in South Kurdistan, and the top leadership, are weknown to be in the high and rugged Qandil Mountains, a long way from the area of Donuk wnere some OI lne border clashes have taken place and where the invasion is apparently threatened. So neither can a serious expectation of destroying the PKK in Qandil be the main reason for the noisy threats of invasion.
To destroy them in Qandil would be difficult even with the help of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan forces (led by the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani) who know the area very well, and with the help of massive US firepower.
In any case, such assistance is almost certainly politically impossible at the moment. This is because a Turkish attack with US and PUK assistance on Kurdish forces in Qandil would badly damage the existing goodwill of the Southern Kurdish population towards the US, and render Talabani and Barzani even more unpopular than they are already. None of them want the extra political headaches this would cause.
In my view the Turkish generals have three reasons for threatening to invade.
The first is to put pressure on the US and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to take more active measures to destroy the PKK and its supporters in Iraq.
The threat here is that if the US does not take action, Turkey will take WALLCIS into its own hands and do something that would destabilise the US position, something they can scarcely afford at the minute.
Turkey has rejected the Iraqi government's somewhat feeble and unconvincing offer to close PKK offices in Iraq, and is again asking them to hand over the PKK leadership Turkey, which Talabani and other PUK officials have reiterated is impossible.
The second is to threaten an action that, if it went well, might destroy the relative independence (at least in relation to Turkey) currently enjoyed by the South Kurdistan entity in Northern Iraq.
The people who run the Turkish state are themselves deeply racist towards the Kurds and encourage and encourage similar sentiments amongst the Turkish population. This includes a strong irrational component comparable to the Nazis' attitudes to the Jews or of the Afrikaaner nationalists to the Black South Africans.
One of the reflections of this is Turkey's ambition of undermining the Kurdish entity from within using CYCL possible licals. investing in the area so they control as much of the economy as possible and know strategic locations inside out. (e.g. Talabani allowed them rebuild Sulaimaniyah airport).
They undermine the local
by dumping lethally poor quality foodstuffs and medicine into the area, periodically disrupting the economy by cutting off fuel supplies. They cultivate the right-wing pro-Turkey Turkmen nationalist activity in Kirkuk not to mention cultivating relations with Baathists, and perhaps even running "suicide bombing" operations such as the massacre of over 500 Yezidi Kurds in Shengal near Kirkuk recently. Thirdly, the generals would like, if given half a chance, to recapture the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and of course the oil fields around Kirkuk for Turkey. For most of its history Kirkuk has been a Kurdish city, with substantial Turkmen element appearing in perhaps the 13th century, but Turkey tries to manipulate the Turkmen population to serve its own ends by claiming that it Turkmen city whose inhabitants have been persecuted by the Kurds. In fact there is plenty of land in the Kirkuk area for anyone to live there who wants to - the real problem
that the governing Kurdish PUK and KDP authorities have not acted effectively to make a fair settlement of the land disputes arising from Baathist and earlier Arabisation attempts (in which many Kurds and Turkmen were expelled), so the disputes have been allowed to fester. On the positive side there have also been reports of strenuous efforts by longstanding members of all local ethnic communities to keep the tension down. But it is not clear from the outside to what extent the accusallulls and accusations between some leaders of the various ethnic groups of discrimination and unfair exercise of authority are justified; nor is it generally clear what the sources are of the many horrific bombings in Kirkuk which have also contributed to raising the tension. They see themselves as in