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Hunting the Rebels of PKK

Turkey Again Bombards Iraq

Once again, Turkish warplanes this weekend flew sorties into Iraq in an effort to eradicate the Kurdish rebel group PKK. Nobody casualties were reported, but the tension on the border continues to rise.

Tensions on the Turkish border with Iraq are once again on the rise. Turkish planes bombed targets in northern Iraq on Sunday, according to an Iraqi Kurdish official, as part of an ongoing effort to eradicate Kurdish rebels ensconced in the mountains there. The raid came one day after jets attacked suspected rebel positions inside Iraq on Saturday in an offensive confirmed by the Turkish military. The Sunday attack was at least the third such cross-border assault in a week.

"We are using our rights based on international law," said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday without directly confirming the Sunday attacks. "We only have determination and that determination will continue as planned."

There were no casualties reported in either raid over the weekend. The Sunday bombing campaign lasted for three hours starting in mid afternoon local time. Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for Iraqi Kurdish security forces, said that only farmland had been damaged, with the bombs falling mostly in a difficult-to-reach mountainous area not far from the border. Hundreds of Kurdish fighters, members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) -- which Turkey, the US and the European Union consider to be a terrorist group -- are suspected to be holed up in the Qandil Mountains just inside Iraq.

So far, Turkey has relied on air and mortar attacks along with limited cross-border ground attacks in its ongoing effort to crush the Kurdish rebels. The PKK has been fighting for autonomy for Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast since 1984 and has recently stepped up its attacks against the Turkish military inside Turkey. Because PKK fighters generally slink back across the border into their mountain redoubts in Iraq, Turkey has amassed 100,000 soldiers on its southern frontier with Iraq and threatened to invade.

The situation threatens to destabilize the one part of Iraq that has been reliably peaceful. On Sunday, US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker repeated his government's line that Turkey has a right to defend itself against the PKK rebels. But he once again voiced Washington's concern that the situation could ultimately destabilize the entire region.

In addition to respecting Turkey's right to act, he said "we've also said that we all have a pretty substantial interest in the stability of Iraq and none of us want to see operations pursued in a manner that can threaten basic stability inside Iraq."

US President George W. Bush promised in November to share intelligence information with Turkey to help it combat the PKK raids. Turkey has also spent much of the autumn underlining its right to go after the Kurdish fighters, and on Dec. 16th staged its first air assault, a one-day bombing campaign involving 50 warplanes. Several hundred troops chased PKK rebels across the border a few days later.

Iraq continues trying to walk the fine line between the two sides. The Kurdish region in northern Iraq is semiautonomous, and the Kurdish government has shown reluctance to deal firmly with the rebels. Still, Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, has pledged to do whatever possible to keep the PKK from attacking Turkey.

"We must not let our soil be used for making threats against our neighbors," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE earlier this month. "We will do whatever is necessary (to stop them). I can't say now exactly what, but we will do whatever we can to prevent them from using our soil against (our neighboring countries)."

cgh/reuters/ap