Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Us Clashes With Pkk In Iraq Turks

Juan Cole 11/10/2003

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

US Clashes with PKK in Iraq; Turks Complain of Lack of Influence

Turkish Chief of Staff Hilmi Ozkok has complained that the US is showing favoritism to Iraqi Kurds. He said in an interview with Radikal, “The United States favours the group in the north a little too much. We don’t know what shape Iraq will take, because we don’t know the internal situation. They are doing some things. We don’t have the right to a say in the matter because we are not there.”

He expressed worries about Kurdish autonomy, which would threaten Turkey (it has a large Kurdish population in Anatolia), and about potential Iranian influence in the Shiite south.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, meanwhile, has announced that US forces, supported by peshmerga, have clashed with Kurdish PKK fighters. The Kurdish Workers’ Party or PKK waged a long and bitter guerilla war against Turkey, and 5,000 of its fighters are said to be in Iraq. The peshmerga are Kurdish paramilitaries generally loyal to either Massoud Barzani or Jalal Talabani, both of whom serve on the Iraqi Interim Governing council. They have clashed with the PKK in the past.

Presumably this limited US operation against the PKK was intended to mollify Turkish public opinion.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....