Turkish Army Chief Insists on Incursion Into Iraq

Source: DefenseNews/AFP

The head of the Turkish armed forces insisted June 27 on the need for a military incursion into northern Iraq to hunt down Turkish Kurd rebels based there, but said he needed the government’s green light to do so.

“I cannot say that we will go in and finish off the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party), but a cross-border operation will deliver a big blow,” against the rebel group, Chief of General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told a televised news conference at a commando training camp in the southwestern town of Egirdir.
“It will be very useful,” he said.

Buyukanit said the army needed a “political directive” and guidelines from the government for such an operation.

“All cross-border operations have a political target,” Buyukanit said. “Military planning starts with a political directive.
“It is one thing to go into northern Iraq to fight PKK rebels or, for example, it is another thing to come under attack from local Kurds while doing that,” Buyukanit said. “If the political target is determined, the armed forces would determine what kind of force it needs and seek formal approval.”

Read more: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2862139&C=mideast

The Turks are understandably doing their saber rattling against the restive Kurds. The Kurds have oil. The Kurds are the main allies of the US to deal that oil to US corporations for....PROTECTION. So now, the Turks who did not get suckered into invading iraq from the north for us and getting subsequently cheated out of the oil prize themselves for their trouble and wisely taking advantage of American weakness for all the grief we put them through trying to pressure them in for our own ends.

Is the ever incompetent US doing anything except looking into their option of betraying the Kurds? The Kurds are not being seen as an in into Iran. The oil plank is stalled anyway. Maybe the oil companies shrug and see divide and conquer as a neutral sort of game anyone can play so long as the contracts end up in their pot. But this might as well be North Korea even though is is US OCCUPIED IRAQ , not Kurdistan the free nation. With amazing sense of curiosity and laser like focus the media glosses over this like the state of the banana crop in Guatemala. This might seem like surreptitious partition were it mot marked by all the heavy handed blunders with blinders of the new American Quagpire.

I seem to remember about a dozen Turks were killed and many times that were injured, in a public marketplace. Now then, if that happened in the U.S., I suspect we'd be launching an invasion within weeks to catch the culprits.

Umm -- I guess we did do that.

I wonder when he will give the "green light".

level, in SO many places around the globe. Naturally, the ever-incompetent U.S. is incapable of seeing these nuances, or the danger which could escalate at any moment.

It's just amazing. I wonder if they even read the news in Washington.