Detailed map shows areas in southeast Turkey, and across the borders of Syria and Iraq, in which the Turkish military hopes to surround PKK terrorists and conduct operations against them.
By Roy Gutman, McClatchy Newspapers –
ISTANBUL — Turkish tanks are deployed on hilltops overlooking Syria and additional combat aircraft have been moved to bases close to that war-torn country in an escalation that began Oct. 3, when a Syrian artillery round landed in the border town of Akcakale, killing five Turkish civilians.
But while the developments have all the appearance of two countries heading for a major clash, the Turkish government’s moves may relate not so much to the civil war now raging across Syria, but to what is for Turkey a far deadlier conflict: The long-running war against militant Kurdish separatists, whom the Turkish government sees as a threat to the existence of the state itself.
Since July, when the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK by its Kurdish initials, launched its latest offensive, at least 112 Turks have died, 99 of them from the army and other security forces and 13 civilians, according to a McClatchy Newspapers compilation of Turkish news accounts. Government forces claim to have killed 325 separatists, and casualties mount.
One of the most serious assaults occurred early last month, when some 70 PKK guerrillas stormed the center of Beytussebap in southeastern Sirnak province, blew up the town’s only bridge and opened rifle and rocket fire from four different directions on the governor’s office, a military barracks and police offices. They killed 10 security personnel. The army deployed a special commando unit and claims to have killed 50 of the attackers. Continuing incidents have rattled the country.
Turkey also sees a growing PKK threat immediately across the border.
In apparent retaliation for Turkey’s backing of the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad, Syria has transferred control of many Kurdish towns in northern Syria to the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, causing alarm in Ankara. Moreover, the PKK is said to have deployed a sizable number of fighters — possibly 2,000 or more — into Kurdish Syria to bolster its local affiliate there, the Democratic Union Party.
Turkey, the United States and the European Union all view the PKK as a terror organization whose aim is to break up the Turkish state. Turkish leaders say they will not permit a PKK-led entity to be set up on its border.
In the view of many diplomatic observers here, if Turkey does use force in or around Syria, it will not be seeking the overthrow of Assad, which is not a core security concern for Turkey, but the demise of the PKK, whose hope to set up an independent Kurdish state would impinge on the sovereignty of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.
For the past two months, Turkish aircraft have been pounding PKK bases in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq, at times sending bombers up almost every night, according to diplomatic sources. Last week, it moved a squadron of U.S.-supplied F16s to Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, and while this was widely seen as a precautionary move after the exchange of shells with Syria, the base in question is the primary launching pad for attacks against PKK bases in Iraq.
PKK forces dive into their bunkers when the flights take off, thanks to a primitive but effective warning system. According to defectors, the PKK rank-and-file all stay tuned to a Kurdish radio station called Radio Mezopotamya, and when flights take off, listeners phone in coded song requests.
On Oct. 4, when the Turkish Parliament gave the government a green light for retaliation against Syria following the killing of the five Turkish civilians, it explicitly approved the use of force abroad, without specifying against which countries.
Three days later, the Turkish military’s general staff announced that it had established 15 zones of operation in Kurdish areas, covering some 611 square miles, where all entry is forbidden until Jan. 7, 2013. At least two of those exclusion zones extend into neighboring countries — Syria and Iraq, according to the coordinates posted on the military’s website.
All are miles from the areas where Syrian shells have been falling inside Turkey.
