Turkish Troops Ambushed

In a news story being reported today, Kurdish rebels ambushed a Turkish military convoy on Sunday less than three miles from the Iraqi border, killing 12 soldiers in the face of growing threats by Turkey to cross the rugged frontier and root out the guerrillas. Turkey shelled the border region in response to the attack, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, ordered the rebels to lay down their arms or leave Iraq. Turkey dismissed his call, saying the time had come for action.

As we all know there has been an approval of force in Iraq, by the Turkish parliment, so a crossing is expected, but the violent reaction to it, so quickly may have caught everyone off guard. Nothing good can come of this incursion and subsequent killing of the Turkish troops, and are mission in Iraq has just gotten so much more complicated. This would be a good time to slink away and let them have at it, without our troops in the middle of one more group against group butchery.

As should be expected Turkey expects the United States to act against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq but will take its own measures if it sees no results in the fight, the prime minister said on Saturday. What is wrong with our goverment? Do they not believe that Turkey will indeed invade, if there are no substantive results, and soon. If we had Canadians attacking across our northern border, we would have already moved to stop the attacks. I would have used the southern border, but we are already being attacked from there, but our President is on their side, so there will be no action taken there.

Back to Iraq and Turkey, it is very clear that we must find a resolution that both sides can agree too, or face a full scale attack that will take one of the most peaceful areas of Iraq and turn it into another center of killings and reprisal killings.

It was reiterated friday and saturday that Turkish officials expect us to do something to stop the rebels. In an interview with the private Kanal 24 TV channel late Friday,Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "We have expectations mainly from the U.S. more than Iraq. We want the coalition forces - mainly the U.S.-to take a step here,our demands from them are known and we will see what happens in time, we will put into action our own road map if we do not get the results we want." Erdogan is supposed to meet with White House officials, including President Bush on November 5th, so perhaps the full scale assaults will wait until after those meetings.


Rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, operate from bases in the mountains of northern Iraq and periodically cross the border to stage attacks in their war for autonomy for Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast. More than 30,000 people have died in the conflict that began in 1984.

This attack by the rebels against Turkish troops and possible hostage taking is quickly going to get out of control if calmer heads on both sides of the border do not prevail!! The precarious position that we are in, is just one more area of "mission accomlished" that no one in Washington planned for, and that is the worst part of this whole Iraq mess. They thought it was going to be a "cake walk" and it has instead turned into a "food fight"!!






rebel attack