Kurdish Protest at Dail as Turkey Plans to invade Northern Iraq

by iosaf Tue Oct 30, 2007 23:30

Readers might be interested in background to the current situation. For certain reasons there have not been many articles written (by myself at least) directly about the Kurdish situation. But there have been important comments placed at various points along the way. With regard specifically to the likelihood of a Turkish land invasion of Kurdistan as it is geographically defined as a province of the Iraqi state - I'd suggest people go back to 2 comments which I (with permission I hope) appended to an article by Miriam Cotton & Dave Manning entitled "Irish Times Continues to Misrepresent Iranian 'Threat'. Those comments were I hoped an attempt to spill the beans on the mobilisation by the Turkish army in July this year on the frontier & the regular cross-border forays by both Turkish & Iranian military into what I call Kurdistan & what I suspect too many still call Iraq.
http://indymedia.ie/article/83413#comment201252
http://indymedia.ie/article/83413#comment201417
Those two comments & the military build-up & accompanying "deterioration" of US/Turkish relations when the Turkish claimed to find US ordinance being used by the PKK came just before the last elections in Turkey which prompted an article by Michael Y http://indymedia.ie/article/83524 & a few comments of which only the last 2 I supplied. But therein I did mention that Mark Marsdell the editor of the BBC Europe desk had cut short his holliers in Dorset the same time as I had left the comments to Miriam's thread to cover the Turkish election when of course 23 Kurdish members were elected. & to ram home the point Mark left a photo of a young guy in a 23 t-shirt on his BBC blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/200....html

So - what has seemed a certainty since July 14th at least - is now becoming common news. I really hope people see it for what it is.
(1) Turkey &most particularly the military caste of Turkey want to invade Iraq. Not Kurdistan.
(2) Turkey & its military are estranged from the West & care little for its criticisms.
(3) the Turkish elections (forced by the military) of July did nothing to avert this situation.
(4) this is exactly what happens or was going to happen when the "coalition of the willing" leave / will leave Iraq. = Both Iran & Turkey will slice up the place.
(5) you have mostly wasted your passion & energy on calling US style for no war on Iran when really you should have seen the wood for the trees & remembered how the war on Iraq began & realised the slogan of 2007 & 2008 should be - Freedom for Kurdistan! for it is not Iraqi, it is not Iranian & it is not Turkish.

by Joe Wed Oct 31, 2007 13:18

As far as I can see it was the PKK who launched terrorist attacks that killed Turkish soldiers. It has also been long established that Israel is behind training and direction much activity of groups in Kurdistan.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/21/1087669917091....html

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/studies5.htm

by Franz Wed Oct 31, 2007 13:55

The Irish Government agreed to take in a quota of Kurdish refugees a few years ago. A certain number of them were found accomodation in the Leitrim town of Carrick-on-Shannon. They have taken various education courses and several have found jobs in the area. They are jolly people according to some accounts.

I don't know anything about Israel and the Kurds. What I do know is that they are found in three countries with adjoining borders, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. There are about a million Kurdish refugees in Syria. Are the Kurds entitled to separate statehood? What are the legitimate criteria for statehood?

by iosaf Wed Oct 31, 2007 14:50

(a tough little conundrum at the best of times) it might be worthwhile remembering that in the last years since the so-called war on terror began only one Irish tourist was killed, & she was a teenager celebrating her leaving cert results by taking a holiday on the Turkish mediterranean coast & her death was claimed by Kurdish seperatists.
The coalition of the willing varyingly classified the Kurdish as democratic players on the eastern slopes of their "Turkish" mountains, as insurgents on the "Iranian" side of their mountains, as drug smugglers on the northern side of their Armenian mountains &.... need I go on?
This isn't about a fight against Terror. This is about a military invasion & occupation of Iraq strange as it might sound . At what stage do we call foul? When Turkish & Iranian military are in shelling distance of each other?

by iosaf Wed Oct 31, 2007 22:07

Lots is happening & that's generally the way when you've had four months to sit on a problem. As everyone knows the Turkish have amassed a force on the Kurdish frontier. But actually to be finickity, the current deployment is not the largest that they have made in the last 5 years, it is simply the most widely reported preparation for war = Wipe the sweat off your brow.... for we are at rattling sabres.

Iran & iraq have decided that action is needed on the Kurdish problem Without getting too historical, they are opting for continued autonomy within Iraq & quite naturally under the watchful eye of Tehran when (not if) the USA finally leaves. That makes perfect sense as since the 23rd of october they've agreed to build a pipeline through the place to Turkey.

The Pentagon press officer and ex-ABC newsman Geoff Morrell has confirmed tonight that the USA is giving actionable intelligence on PKK positions to the Turkish. For those of you who don't do the lingo of the spook community, pure intelligence is basically being a hands-off know-it-all in sensible shoes who can explain why you don't go to war & why nothing that has happened is what it seemed to be. Pure intelligence heads generally go mad or burn out around 25 & choose dj careers instead. Whereas actionable intelligence is basically sizing up situations for covert sneakiness (which only pure heads will understand) or overt nastiness (which no-body likes & almost always involves lots of blood or big hightech military bills).

The news has been reported on the BBC site http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7071569.stm but has not yet gone up on the US defence site. So at the moment I can't tell you which of the 16 US agencies who do "pure" or "actionable" intelligence are happily offering bits of their files to the Turks. But I'll skip through it all, & tell you this is all utter bullshit which if treated the proper way by us lot ought help expose one the long overlooked reasons the illegal occupation of Iraq was a very bad idea . It's hallowe'en night, I'm tired but promise I'll write a proper article on this whole thing, because this thread though it show you who the Kurds are (nice bunch of people in the main), is silghtly flawed in that it only focusses attention on one aggressor - Turkey or the Turkish. We're not providing enough analytic space to Iran, the federalists of Iraq, the Russians or (& this might seem odd to many of ye) the rivalry of Israel with Turkey which will undo traditional US assistance.

They used to be called the Ottoman empire. big sprawling affair it was too. Spoke for Islam a lot. & no-one wore Ahmadinejad jackets either. Hmmmmmm. The post-US occupation state of Iraq will present all sides to the conflict with puzzles of such complexity that (even though I hate to allude to such a thing so obliquely) old George Tenet, the ex director of the CIA might just see his reformed Saudi Arabia after all.

.....................as if they were nice people.

Now who do you think has more reliable missiles to surgically strike PKK positions with minimal collatoral damage?

The Turkish Ottomans with their US gear?
or the Iranians with their own stuff?

scintillating stuff....... apart from me, (& a few of ye) who's on the Kurdish side? Will they be able to elude the actionable intelligence & missile demo?

by Mike - Judean Popular Peoples Front Sat Nov 03, 2007 11:33

Is there any organisation for Kurds in Ireland North or South ?

by voiceofreason - People Against Politically Correct Thought Police Thu Nov 08, 2007 19:11

Groovy dude!! But what on earth does this do with the elected representatives of Ireland? Last time I checked there were 71,158,647 Turkish people who can worry about this kind of thing.

by rostam - kurds in ireland Thu Oct 24, 2013 14:43

well i was there in this day , i dont now what should i say if any one need information about Kurds in Ireland fell free to ask thanks