Turkish tanks in northern Iraq: an unlikely solution

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=45499

By Kerim BALCI (TZ)

ANKARA - For a long time Turkey's strategy against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was criticized as "fighting with terrorists and not terrorism." Today Turkey is discussing who the subjects and objects of the war against terrorism should be.

Is it the army that needs to ask for the political will to go on, or is it the government that needs to pre-empt and ask the army to do so? Is northern Iraq the source of terrorism, or is it only the safe haven of the terrorists? Is it the PKK that deserves denouncing, or should we put the Iraqi government, the local Kurdish administration in northern Iraq and the Americans on the list of "usual suspects"? Or is there an unusual suspect in this case?

Associate Professor Sedat Laçiner, chairman of the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK), believes that the oft-discussed cross-border military operation of Turkey into northern Iraq will do no good whatsoever. Laçiner believes the source of terrorism is in Turkey. "There was terrorism in Turkey even before northern Iraq was in this situation. It is obvious that the authority gap created in northern Iraq caused the situation to deteriorate, but the real source of terrorism is not at the other side of the border," Laçiner says. He warns that a cross-border operation may even move the terrorists in northern Iraq into Turkey and that Turkey may engage in a fierce fight within its borders.

"We have not dealt with those in our mountains yet. In the past, there was the central authority of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Turkey was using the powers of a state of emergency and yet we failed to solve the problem," he said.