In Turkey, New Fears That Peace Has Passed (PKK back from Iraq)

[Barrett808]

In Turkey, New Fears That Peace Has Passed
Army Takes Offensive As Kurdish Rebels Return From Iraq
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service

PERVARI, Turkey -- Residents of this town nestled in the cliffs of southeastern Turkey counted 86 military vehicles lurching deeper into the mountains one day last month, with foot soldiers peering out. Overhead, Cobra attack helicopters stuttered across an epic blue sky laced by the contrails of F-16 warplanes.

The Turkish military was attacking a guerrilla army in its alpine camp.

The combined-arms assault here, sweeping a remote mountain stronghold by air and ground, was precisely the kind of offensive that Turkey has spent most of the last two years asking U.S. forces to mount in northern Iraq -- against the same rebel group. The Kurdistan Workers' Party, an armed group of Turkish Kurds that the State Department calls a terrorist group, maintains a large base in Iraq's Qandil range, about 200 miles north of Baghdad.

Although the Bush administration has vowed repeatedly to confront the PKK, as the guerrilla force is known, its fighters have not only continued to enjoy a haven in Iraq, they have begun returning in force to Turkey. And with them come reminders of a conflict that people here, after almost five years of peace, had begun to believe was over.

(more)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/09/AR2005050901253.html

[Inland]

1. But nobody could have ever predicted blah blah blah blah blah

Unaddressed Kurdish ambitions were one of the cautions in invading Iraq.

[David__77]

2. The Kurdish people deserve true self-determination.

They deserve an independent state if that is their choosing. They are making a historical mistake in uniting with US aggression, which will surely toss them to the wolves at the first possible moment. The US has never been a friend of Kurdish national rights.

[eissa]

3. They deserve a country, but

they need to (1) decide where exactly this "homeland" will be, (2) not engage in assassinations and/or land grabs in obtaining this "homeland," (3) respect the indigenous people of the region they intend to call their "homeland."