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Turks Threaten To Invade Iraq Just

Juan Cole 07/29/2005

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Turks threaten to Invade Iraq

Just a reminder how much of a tinderbox Iraq is, and how easily neighboring countries could be drawn into a war there:

The Kurdish Marxist party, the Kurdish Worker’s Party (Kurdish acronym PKK) has been committing violence in eastern Turkey near the Iraqi border. The Kurdish guerrillas are suspected of then slipping across the Iraqi border to take refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. The latest outrage was their kidnapping of a mayor, “Hasim Akyurek, mayor of Yayladere in the Bingol Province and a member of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party . . . “

Then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan threatened to invade northern Iraq. He cited the US invasion of Afghanistan to support the legitimacy of such an action (in fact, Afghanistan had both NATO and United Nations Security Council support, which a Turkish invasion of Iraq does not, to say the least).

Then Iraqi Foreign minister Hoshyar Zebar, himself a Kurd, warned that any Turkish incursion into northern Iraq would be unacceptable.

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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

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Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


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