TURKEY BEATS EVERYONE

By late October the Turkish army has completed preparations to a trans-border operation against the Kurdish Marxist terrorist organization PKK in northern Iraq. CNN Turk reports that a 150,000-strong force of the Turkish army has been deployed on Turkey's border with Iraq. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the operation might start at ant time. He added that Ankara has no intention to ask permission from anyone, including the USA which has delayed implementing its promise to help fight the Kurdish terrorists. "America should not try to stop us. Our strategic ally - the USA - should now act together with us," Erdogan said during his official visit to Bucharest.

However, many experts think that Ankara will listen to Washington's request not to intrude into Iraq and will wait till US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit. Experts say that Turkey will make its final decision following Erdogan's visit to the USA and his talks with US President George Bush on 5 November.

However, the way things are developing shows that in the current situation Washington will have to listen to Ankara. The US administration understands very well that they cannot afford to lose a strategic partner like Turkey because that can do serious harm to the US position in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the Iran issue as well. 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad has already made use of the situation that is not favourable for the USA and voiced his support to Turkey in its struggle against the PKK. 

He has strong reasons to do it - the Kurdish separatists claim a part of Iran's territory (however, the problem is not a pressing one for Tehran yet). In any case Iran behaves on the principle the enemy of my enemy is my friend. 

In the current situation the US administration has no choice but to start real operation against PKK terrorists to escape coolness in relations with Turkey. As a proverb says: "if you cannot prevent revolution, you should be the head of it".

Thus, the Kurdish factor that was always used to exert pressure on Turkey has backfired and become Ankara's trump card.

US President Ronald Reagan was wrong to say that Kurds are a matchstick that can be struck any time. It is hard to believe that the US intelligence did not know that the PKK was set up by the KGB, not by the Kurdish people.

The Kurdistan Workers Party was set up in 1974 as a Marxist guerrilla group allegedly with the purpose to obtain the creation of an independent Kurdish state in the south-east of Turkey.

It was not a wish of the Kurdish people to whose defence the USA can always come to.

Indeed, the PKK does not mean the Kurdish people. Thousands of Kurds are fighting against this evil within the Turkish army, showing that terrorists have no ethnicity. 

The President of the Autonomous Kurdish Government in Iraq, Massoud Barzani, should be reminded of Turkey's attitude to the Kurds. He is now trying to present Turkey's struggle against terrorists as a war against the Kurdish people. However, he forgot that it was Turkey that received Kurdish refugees when Saddam Hussein used poison-gas in northern Iraq following the Iran-Iraqi war in 1988.

At that time Barzani himself contacted the Turkish government and promised not to help the Kurdish terrorists henceforward. However, neither Barzani, nor the USA or the Iraqi government have kept their promises. The result is obvious today.