TURKEY’S PHONY INVASION OF IRAQ
Turkey Invades Northern Iraq blared headlines around the world last weekend (2/23-24). Thousands of Turkish troops had crossed several miles into Iraq to "root out" PKK Kurdish guerrillas from their "mountain strongholds."
Here is a map of the Turkey-Iraq border. It runs west-to-east or left-to-right from Syria (the triangle that Highway 6 runs through is Syria) to Iran. [See map in main article.]
Note the Turkish town of Cukurca. This is the Turkish Army's staging point, where the invasion was launched, and from where, as CNN announced yesterday (2/27), Turkey Sends More Troops Into Iraq. The farthest penetration of Turkish troops has been about 24 kilometers or 15 miles into Iraq in the area of the Iraqi village of Al Amadiyah.
Anyone who sees this map and knows where the PKK is based is instantly LOL - laughing out loud. The PKK "stronghold" is in the Qandil mountains where Turkey, Iraq, and Iran come together - almost 100 miles by road or jeep track from Cukurca.
This is a phony invasion. Check out this story in the Washington Post, whose eyewitness reporter states the Turkish troops can "go no farther" than 15 miles into Iraq, that the Turkish military has "targeted Kurdish civilians in villages that are often far from the bases of the [PKK] guerrilla group," and quotes an Iraqi Kurdish soldier: The Turks "say there are PKK in this area, but actually the PKK are very far from here."
Why would the Turkish Army stage a Potemkin invasion of Iraq and pretend to attack the PKK? To ramp up anti-Kurdish Turkish jingoistic nationalism while preserving the business deal the Turkish Army has with the PKK to run drugs.