Turkish Commandos Inside Iraq?

[babylonsister]

Turkish Commandos Inside Iraq?
Kurdish Media Reports 300-350 Turkish Troops Have Deployed 1 KM Inside Border
By CHRISTINA DAVIDSON Posted 1 hr. 53 min. ago



Hundreds of Turkish commandos have crossed the border into northern Iraq, according to a report by PUKmedia, a news service associated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. The news comes just as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is scheduled to lead an Iraqi delegation to Ankara for talks on Tuesday.

There has been no official confirmation, but PUKmedia reported that on Saturday the Turkish military began an intense shelling of Zakho district, followed by the infiltration of 300-350 Turkish commandos into Sari Spi region, northeast of Zakho.

Villages in the area, situated along the northwestern border with Turkey, face regular bombardment by Turkish mortars, and it is not unheard of for a limited number of Turkish troops to cross the frontier in hot pursuit ops. However, if the PUKmedia report that these troops have deployed across the border and taken control of strategic sites is accurate, that would seem a more significant operation may be imminent.

There are a number of scenarios that could explain what is happening on Iraq's northern border. First, PUKmedia reports the Turkish military as having moved just 1 km inside the Iraq border, which could be a geographic miscalculation on the part of either side, or a show of force designed to warn that more could follow if Maliki's upcoming meeting in Ankara does not produce the desired outcome.

Since Ankara has barred the Iraqi Kurdish leadership from participating in the upcoming meeting, it could also be that the account of Turkish troops crossing the border may have been invented or exaggerated in order to sabotage Maliki's planned meeting on Tuesday.

more...

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3830/Turkish_Commandos_Inside_Iraq

[seemslikeadream]

1. yep

:hi:

[Joe for Clark]

2. Yeah - I saw that on the Turk wires.

Started Sunday.

It started with an artillery barrage and followed thru with the commandos.

The US - apparently - has pledged commandos too - according to Mr Novack.

This is going to hit head on with the Kurdish Regional Government now - no avoiding it.

Yeah -

This is REALLY bad.

Joe

[Adsos Letter]

4. JoeForClark....

Do you think my scenario a likely one?

:) :hi:

[Joe for Clark]

8. Yes

[Adsos Letter]

3. yep, indeed...

...among the many things it could be is an attempt to secure entry corridors prior/in concert with operations to clear mined areas so the armor can follow (initial infantry insertion could be by airlift)...

...just a guess...

What do you think, seemslikeadream. I've weighed in on some of your op's before...?

[Joe for Clark]

7. Oh - that is exactly what is going on.

If they can clear enough out of the way - they are on.

What do you think they are doing??

I think they will take weeks to do so though.

Turks are a good army - but not as good as us.

It will take a little to get on line here.

They are preparing to move against the PKK and PUK - I think.

But if they do - they are moving against the KRG- just as Novack implied.

Joe

[Adsos Letter]

11. Yup...

...the kurdish government said they would not allow the Turks on their soil, as I recall. And I'm sure the PKK and others are well-equipped with shoulder-fired, or wire-guided anti-tank weapons...no cakewalk for anyone.

What do you think we will do if the balloon goes up?

[Joe for Clark]

15. According to Novack we are or have sent 4700 special ops

to counter PKK and PUK soldiers. I think "have sent" is more right.

And it is just true - Kurds said they would stand and the Turks said they don't trust us.

And the state department issued that really lame statement in response - it was actually sad - that everything was under control.

Reminded me of Bar Brady "Nothing to see here folks..."

Joe

[Adsos Letter]

20. I wouldn't want to be...

...riding a Turkish tank into that mess (aren't they still using a version of the M-60 ?)...the 2-man teams with the anti-tank missiles have a lot of advantage in that terrain...

[Joe for Clark]

22. Boy you got that right!!

[seemslikeadream]

13. Eric S. Edelman

Eric Edelman: key conspirator in Sibel Edmonds case
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1494180

Supporting Shiites, Arming Sunnis, Selling Out the Kurds-Bush's Personal Surge
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1525101

Novak: Bush considering secret military action in Turkey
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1474571&mesg_id=1474571

It is really a little too quiet up north right now -
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1472171#1475150
Iran Promotes US War with Turkey
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1463997


Kurdish officials in northern Iraq say they fear a full-scale invasion
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1411790

Eric S. Edelman -- NeoCon, Scapegoater, Perjurer, Traitor, More?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1384563

[Joe for Clark]

17. That man should be in jail -

And he probably will be before this one is over.

Joe

[kenny blankenship]

5. This is just more good news - tourism in Iraq is expanding!

But of course there will be handwringing and doomsaying from the usual America-hating Antiwar crowd.

[Adsos Letter]

9. Ya know...I hadn't thought of it that way...

...I suppose, like all good military enterprises, the soldiers will bring money to spend and the inevitable military towns will be a boost to local economies...

:scared:

[spindoctor]

6. Another course of events that was inevatable from the start

The whole Kurdish issue will escalate before long. While Shi'ites and Sunis bomb the shit out of each other the Kurds have quietly taken position. In the end they will need to have a sovereign state but who will allow them to have one that's worth a barrel of oil? Iraq? Syria? Turkey? The USA????

Turkey even today continues to deny the Armenian genocide and they would prefer to handle the Kurds in the same way.

And what ever happened to the Kurdish terrorist groups like the PKK? Did they just seize to exist?

[The Magistrate]

10. Probably, Ma'am

The numbers are probably exaggerated, but there are more than likely Turkish soldiers there across the border, and deeper than one kilometer, too....

[Joe for Clark]

12. Oh - I think the numbers are probably right-

I was looking for a Kurd denial - it never came.

You can tell that way - whenever one party says something - the other side denies.

And that didn't happen.

It was going to happen you know - one time - those artillery barrages were going to get followed thru - sooner or later.

Joe

[seemslikeadream]

14. Turkey To Issue "Final Warning" to Iraq

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/08/5103_turkey_to_issue.html

I wrote last week of a secret plan to send U.S. Special Forces troops to hunt down Kurdish PKK rebels in the mountains of northern Iraq. The plan was first exposed by columnist Robert Novak. Well, in this morning's Washington Post, Ellen Knickmeyer reports that the Turkish political establishment and military have agreed that the time for action against Kurdish rebels has come. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will visit Ankara tomorrow for discussions with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Knickmeyer writes that the Turkish leader will deliver "a final warning" for Maliki to act against PKK guerillas based on the Iraqi side of the Turkish-Iraqi border. One analyst quoted in the article said that a Turkish incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan could took place as early as August or September.

Meanwhile, Xinhua, the Chinese press agency, reports that Maliki could sign a cooperation agreement with Erdogan during their Ankara summit. According to one Turkish official quoted in the article, "We to sign a cooperation agreement on counter-terrorism, and they welcomed the offer. They two countries are now working on a draft agreement... There is a chance to sign the agreement during Maliki's visit, if it is completed on time." No word on how the regional government in Iraqi Kurdistan feels about this...

As for U.S. participation in a drive to oust the PKK from Iraq, Novak's column may have altered the political calculus. According to The Journal of Turkish Weekly, published by Ankara's International Strategic Research Organization:

Sources close to the Turkish military say the military did not look warmly to the idea of a joint covert operation with the Americans to capture PKK leaders in northern Iraq because they felt even the gossip of such a plan would be leaked and would drive the terrorist leadership deeper underground thus preventing planners from monitoring their whereabouts.
They feared exactly what happened after the Washington Post leaked a story that American officials had briefed senior congressional members about a planned joint operation to capture leaders of the PKK terrorist organization holed up in the northern Iraqi mountains.
They said the news leak meant such an operation had now become null and void

[The Magistrate]

19. It Will Be A hole And Corner Business, Ma'am, No Question

All Kurdish factions, whether tribal or political, will hate and fear some other Kurdish faction more than they do Turks or Arabs or Americans. It is just a question of finding the right cleavage....

[Joe for Clark]

21. You should be aware -

The US has been pulling and shooting units north a few weeks now - I thought to settle the Turks down - guess I was wrong.

Robert Novack - the SOB - maybe did a great service here. Maybe he made up for some very bad Karma -

We are going to send our guys up to covertly support ops against the PKK and PUK -

And we will run head long into the Kurdish Regional Government. He is right.

Joe

[Joe for Clark]

18. If it is true - the Turks had to penetrate deep enough to cut

a response. They have the ability to shoot back about 5 miles with accuracy back over the border??

AT least five mile you can be sure.

You can be sure too - they are cutting as much as possible any way for the PKK or the PUK has to respond - that would be their job.

Joe

[Adsos Letter]

23. Joe, on another thread you observed that...

...individuals were being targeted in a fashion that avoided unintended casualties. I suppose someone may be going after didtinct crucial individuals prior to invasion, just as al Qaeda did when they killed Massoud immediately prior to 9/11/01 ?

[Joe for Clark]

24. Man- there is a new player -

I don't know who they are.

But they are sure not from any government.

There are so many players with an interest in this "game". It is a lot of money on the table right now.

Joe

[Adsos Letter]

25. Yeah...

...I wonder how much differently things would have gone had Massoud not been assassinated...2 days before 9-11.

Massoud always said that Washington was too focused on bin Laden (although he was certainly willing to try to kill him) and that the US should focus more on "Taliban, Saudi, and Pakistani support for terrorism that is propping him up." (Washington Post, 2/23/2004)

Curious...

[Joe for Clark]

26. I don't know -

Personally - I really want the people that did NYC dead. Just dead. No prisoners.

That is the way war goes - ain't it??

We didn't start this. And I am tired of morons distracting from it.

They killed our people - it is that simple to me.

I really think - probably I am just stupid - that we can put this Iraq thing down and still go after the SOBS that did us.

And kill them. I do think that way. And if it was LA I think NYC would say the same thing.

Joe

[seemslikeadream]

16. Three crises are coming to a head at once in Turkey

http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Analysis/2007/08/06/walkers_world_the_turkish_crisis/5451/

PARIS, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Three crises are coming to a head at once in Turkey. And despite its powerful mandate from last month's elections, the re-elected government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ill-placed to tackle any one of them.

The first crisis is the appearance in Parliament of 18 elected new members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, accused of links to the outlawed separatist guerilla movement of the PKK, the Kurdish Workers' Party. One of the new members, Sebahat Tuncel, was only released from nine months in jail for alleged PKK membership after she was elected in an Istanbul constituency, giving her automatic immunity from prosecution.

Tuncel has declared that her election as a representative for Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city and its gateway to Europe, shows that people nationwide, not just in the country's Kurdish-dominated southeastern region, want peace. "That is how it should be understood," she insisted after being sworn into office Saturday.

Nonetheless, it should be a fiery session in Parliament, as the 18 new Kurds face off against the 71 members of the of National Action Party, who are fiercely against more concessions to the Kurds and campaigned on a demand for the execution of the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Turkey's military, which has never been reluctant to intervene or to mount a coup when it fears the country's secular constitution or its national security are at risk, have been battling against PKK guerilla attacks in recent months after some years of uneasy truce. The fighting has been serious enough for airstrikes.

[Ilsa]

27. Oh crap. It's getting worse already. And there were

posters scoffing at news posts about Turkey and violence in No. Iraq over the last three weeks, as if we were dreaming this mess up.

Hey Joe For Clark, I hope you only get good news from over there.

[Joe for Clark]

28. Thank you -

The only news I want to hear is my kid walks away.

It is soon now - after all these shitty years -

He lives now and the war is over for him.

He is a goddamn combat veteran now - knows what it feels like to have somebody shoot at you.

And to shoot back.

I am so proud of the kid - and you know - he really didn't believe in the war either - he just did what he had to do for honor. And I tried to get him out - no way - he was going to do what he had to.

My god - what a great little soldier boy.

Yeah - I am so proud of the kid.

Joe

[Ilsa]

29. I understand. My brother was in artillery in Germany and was sent to

Saudi arabia and then into Iraq and Kuwait for the first war. He went when he was short on his enlistment, and when his sarge intentionally broke his own arm to keep from going. He took so many injections for chemical warfare it made him and all the other soldiers sick. He hated it. He hated killing people. And he hated seeing Iraqi conscripts get killed. It stayed with him for many years. He can't even enjoy a thunderstorm any more. And he is terrified of having a child because of all the disabled children born to vets. I hope your son stored some "juice" away or is through with having kids, just to be on the safe side.

When my brother was on his way over there, I was so distracted that I was having all kinds of minor accidents. I used to do visualizations of him coming home safe and whole to help me cope.

Hugs to you.

[TahitiNut]

30. DON'T mess with the Turks!!

If the U.S. "fighting man" wants to get his sorry ass in a sling FAST, he'll mess with the Turks. We ain't even begin to see an ass-kicking until we tangle with them on the ground.

FWIW, their reputation is deserved!