PREVENTIVE STRIKE

The beginning of October 2008 was a starting point for a new stage in Turkey's fight against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party - the PKK. The terrorist attack on a military convoy in the Semdinli district in Hakkari Province, which claimed the lives of 17 servicemen, showed that neither preventive air strikes nor ground operations in Northern Iraq, about the success of which the Turkish army leadership has been loudly speaking in the recent period, yielded the expected result and weakened the infrastructure of the PKK. An official spokesman for the Turkish general staff, General Metin Gurak, said that the attack occurred on the evening of 3 October. A large terrorist group crossed the Iraqi-Turkish border and suddenly attacked the military convoy using heavy artillery. In response, Turkish army units stationed in the region launched a large-scale operation, killing 23 militants and bombing PKK bases 10 kilometres off the Turkish border in Iraq.

Although terrorist attacks in southeastern provinces of Turkey are nothing new, such a great number of deaths alarmed the country's public.

Having realized the need to reconsider and speed up anti-terrorist methods, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded an immediate extension of the mandate to carry out trans-border military operations in Northern Iraq. On 8 October, 497 MPs votes for (and 18 against) extending this document for another year. Otherwise, any steps of the Turkish army in Iraq would be regarded as illegitimate after 17 October - even according to Turkish legislation.

In this way, the Turkish parliament granted the army the right to carry out military operations abroad for the 22nd time in 58 years.

The Turkish opposition, except for the pro-PKK Democratic Society Party (DSP), supported the Cabinet of Ministers and voted to extend the mandate. Addressing the parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said that since December last year, the Turkish army has carried out 29 military operations (mainly air operations) in Iraq, admitting that PKK units are still active in regions bordering on Turkey. It is also obvious that 80,000 so-called "village defenders" - people who were given arms to prevent sudden terrorist attacks - are not in a position to defend villages from PKK militants who have been fighting the Turkish authorities for 24 years.

Meanwhile, according to representatives of leading opposition parties of Turkey, it is impossible to destroy the PKK only with preventive air strikes and short military operations. In this regard, the leader of the Nationalist Action Party (NAP), Devlet Bahceli, proposed creating a security zone on the Iraqi border in order to prevent terrorists from infiltrating into Turkish territory. In his opinion, this zone should stretch several kilometres into Iraq, which will make it possible "to foil terrorist attacks on the territory of Turkey proper".

However, the Turkish leadership was more than reserved about this proposal because the Erdogan government understands that by carrying out long-term military operations on the territory of another state, Ankara is jeopardizing its already strained relations with the USA and the Iraqi leadership where the key figure is an ethnic Kurd - President Jalal Talabani.

So the arguments against the deployment of Turkish units in Iraq are still topical as was the case a year ago. It is no secret that Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq is regarded as "an island of stability" and the only territory from where the American command does not expect an attack. This allows the USA to concentrate its troops in central and southern Iraq populated by "intractable" Shias and Sunnis.

It is also common knowledge that Iraqi Kurds have a negative attitude to anything Turkish. The leader of Northern Iraqi Kurds - the chairman of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Masud Barzani, has repeatedly said that if Turkish troops invade Iraq, military units (peshmerge) will not remain indifferent to their ethnic brethren from Turkey whose problems are "an internal affair of Ankara, not of Baghdad". If Turkish units are deployed in Iraq, Kurds threatened to launch operations in southeastern provinces of Turkey, populated mainly by Kurds, specifically, in the city of Diyarbekir.

In a word, any clash may destabilize the situation in the region. These threats forced Washington to offer Ankara "intelligence assistance" a year ago. Specifically, the White House promised to provide Turkey with information from its military satellites. The latest events in Hakkari Province showed that this was not enough because terrorist attacks on Turkish population centres and the Turkish army did not subside. In the current situation, the only way out for Ankara is to convince the Kurdish leaders of Northern Iraq to stop supporting PKK members. According to information from Baghdad, the sides have already begun negotiations with the mediation of Iraq's central authorities.

However, analysts in Ankara believe that it will hardly be possible to win over Masud Barzani who dreams of creating an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq, which Turkey opposes. In response, Iraqi Kurds whose leadership is headquartered in Erbil continue to pander to PKK members, turning a blind eye to arms supplies to the region to fight Turkey. Though the economy of Northern Iraq is supported mainly by economic relations with Turkey, the odds are clearly against Ankara.

It is no surprise that a number of Turkish politicians have already demanded a harder line on the Iraqi leadership. Specifically, the former Turkish foreign minister, Murat Karayalcin, suggested that Ankara start negotiations to change the border with Iraq. He said that the current state border was defined in 1924 without the participation of Ankara, which allows it to reconsider this issue.

At the same time, the director of Turkey's Eurasian Strategic Studies Centre (ASAM), former ambassador Faruk Logoglu, thinks that the creation of "security zones" on Iraqi territory will not solve the PKK problem. Besides that, this step by Ankara will encounter serious opposition from Washington and Baghdad.

The former deputy foreign minister of Turkey, Nuzhet Kandemir, expressed similar fears. He said that immediately after the deployment of Turkish units in the region, the Kurdish leaders of Northern Iraq will start an anti-Turkish propaganda, which will foment tensions in the whole region. "We should not forget that the whole of Iraq is a de facto US territory and it is necessary negotiate with Washington," Kandemir said in an interview with leading Turkish media.

Kaya Toperi, an adviser to the former Turkish President Turgut Ozal, pointed out that the decision to send Turkish troops to Iraq should be considered in terms of international law. "We should clearly understand that the international community will consider any step by the army in Iraq to be an act of aggression against the territory of another state," Toperi said, stressing that the establishment of military roadblocks jointly with Iraqi Kurds would be a more effective step for Turkey.

Incidentally, the Turkish troops have already started hastily fortifying roadblocks along the entire perimeter of the Iraqi border. According to the country's general staff, 175 roadblocks in border provinces have already been included on the list of the "most important ones".

Diplomatic sources in Ankara say that the Turkish government is discussing Toperi's proposal more actively. It is no accident that while commenting on the parliament's decision to extend the mandate of the military operation in Iraq, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said that this document will be used only if it is necessary to carry out preventive strikes on PKK bases.

At the same time, the Turkish leadership immediately rejected the proposal of individual politicians to impose a state of emergency in the southeastern provinces of the country. Ankara remembers very well the lessons of the state of emergency imposed in 1979. It remained in force for 23 years, but did not weaken support for the PKK in predominantly Kurdish-populated regions. At the same time, it slowed down socioeconomic reforms and prevented the development of democratic institutions in the region. Nor should we discard the approaching elections to local government bodies in Turkey. Victory in these elections has always been regarded as a factor of vital importance for the success of the policy of any ruling party. Voting is scheduled for March 2009, and representatives of the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP) must do everything in their power to strengthen their positions which were undermined by the recent court hearings on the closure of the JDP. Otherwise, the opposition will start working with voters in regions, which means the serious weakening of the authorities' image. At the same time, demands to reconsider the policy of fighting terrorists in favour of carrying out democratic reforms in Kurdish-populated provinces are becoming stronger and stronger in Turkey itself.

President Abdullah Gul said during his visit to Helsinki that terrorism cannot flourish in strong democracies because the population aspires to stability and welfare and rejects the very possibility of interaction with terrorists. However, these statements by the Turkish head of state are unlikely to have an effect on the operations of the Turkish army in Iraq, especially as Ankara is continuing to rely on the general staff, putting the economic component on the back burner.

Concluding the aforesaid, I would like to point out that in the issue of countering the PKK, Ankara should try to persuade Washington to wage a more active fight against terrorists. However, considering the approaching presidential elections in the USA, Turkey will be forced to take a break until the new president is known at the end of November. Turkey is expected to take more radical action against the PKK in Iraq if Democratic candidate Barack Obama wins the elections as he favours a gradual withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, which will strengthen the positions of Northern Iraqi Kurds who will certainly declare Kirkuk their capital. There will be no-one to fill in the gap left by the coalition forces in Iraq, which will strengthen centrifugal forces and lead to the breakup of the country.