Turkish officials signaled they were prepared to send their army into northern Iraq if US and Iraqi forces did not take steps to combat Turkish Kurdish guerrillas there. Such a move could put Turkey on a collision course with the US, which has repeatedly warned against unilateral moves in Iraq.
But Turkey is facing increasing domestic pressure to take some kind of action after 15 soldiers, police and guards were killed in fighting with the guerrillas in the past week.
"The government is really in a bind," said Seyfi Tashan, director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Bilkent University in Ankara. "On the one hand they don't want things to break down with the US. On the other hand, the public is crying for action."
Diplomats and experts cautioned that the increasingly aggressive Turkish statements were likely aimed at calming public anger and pressing the US and Iraq to act against the rebels, who are based in northern Iraq's rugged Qandil mountains. But they also caution that Turkish politicians and military officers could take action if nothing is done.
US officials in Turkey and Washington were in contact with Turkish officials and military commanders to press them to work with Washington to combat the guerrillas and not take action alone, a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Turkey's NTV and Hurriyet daily reported on Tuesday that the government has instructed the military to draw up plans for a push into northern Iraq and to advise on the possibilities that such a move could lead to a clash with Iraqi Kurdish forces or US troops in the area. NTV added that any operation was unlikely to take place before the end of next month, when the current military chief of staff is replaced by an officer regarded as a hardliner.
The Western diplomat said the Turkish military has long had plans for fighting guerrillas in northern Iraq. Those plans range from limited artillery and air strikes on guerrilla bases to attacks by commando forces and a broader ground offensive.
RESPONSES: Ukraine urged the West to strike stronger economic blows against Russia, while Moscow denied that it was responsible for drone incursions in Europe Ukraine yesterday said that Russia pounded the country with “hundreds” of drones and missiles overnight, killing at least four people in the capital alone, while neighboring Poland scrambled jets to secure its airspace. The attacks came after Russia warned NATO against taking sterner action in response to alleged incursions into airspace covered by the military alliance. The barrage also followed the revelation by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Kyiv had received a US-made Patriot air defense system from Israel for use against Russian assaults. “Russia launched another massive air attack on Ukrainian cities while people were sleeping,” Ukrianian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii
The Netherlands yesterday pledged to return to Indonesia the remains of “Java Man,” the first-ever Homo erectus unearthed by modern scientists in a landmark discovery for human evolution. The Dutch plan to hand back about 28,000 fossils of the “Dubois Collection” taken by anatomist and geologist Eugene Dubois in 1891, when Indonesia was a colony of the Netherlands. They include Java Man’s skull cap, molar and femur that form part of evolutionary history — providing the first established link between apes and humans. Using convict labor to do the heavy lifting, Dubois excavated the remains in what became the most sensational ever find
Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus told the UN General Assembly on Friday that the Rohingya refugee crisis is on the brink of collapse as international aid dries up, urging immediate global action to prevent “a catastrophic situation.” Bangladesh is sheltering about 1.3 million Rohingya, most of whom fled a brutal 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar that UN investigators described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” In the southeastern district of Cox’s Bazar, near the border with Myanmar, the refugees live in overcrowded bamboo shelters, facing shrinking aid, closed schools, and little prospect of returning home. ‘CATASTROPHE’ “The ongoing conflict in our neighboring
Thousands of people on Saturday celebrated the 200th anniversary of the historic British train journey that laid the foundations for much of the modern age. On Sept. 27, 1825, the first steam powered railway engine to run on a public railway — George Stephenson’s Locomotion No. 1 — made its 42km journey on the Stockton & Darlington Railway between Shildon and Stockton in the northeast of England. It was a small but significant milestone, which augured rapid changes in the way the UK, and subsequently the world, lived, traded, traveled and communicated. Although the Stockton & Darlington was not the first railway, it
RSS