Mixed signals from Turkey about its intentions to send troops into northern Iraq are frustrating U.S. officials and appear to have delayed the American offensive on the key northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
Belatedly–and after much haggling over technicalities–Turkey opened its airspace to U.S. military flights late Friday. Thus far no American warplanes have used that route into northern Iraq, although diplomatic sources said operations might begin within hours.
U.S. war planners also indicate that they may now bypass Turkey and instead use Jordanian airspace when they insert the ground troops who are supposed to secure Mosul and Kirkuk.
After agreeing to open its airspace, the Turkish parliament complicated the U.S. battle plan by also claiming the right to send its own troops into northern Iraq.
The Pentagon’s original battle plan called for the deployment of as many as 40,000 Turkish troops in northern Iraq to maintain security–this despite vehement protests from the Iraqi Kurds, who have controlled the territory since 1991.
But the U.S. changed its mind after the Turkish parliament rejected its request to allow American troops to use Turkish bases. The U.S. wanted the bases as a staging area for 62,000 U.S. ground troops who were supposed to swoop down from the north and take control of Mosul and Kirkuk.
After the unexpected rebuff, U.S. officials told the Ankara government they didn’t want any Turkish troops in northern Iraq because they feared it could provoke a fight between the Turks and the Kurds.
“At the moment we don’t see a need for any Turkish incursions into northern Iraq,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said a Turkish deployment at this time would be “notably unhelpful.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul had a different interpretation of these discussions.
“All problems with the United States have been resolved,” he said Friday night. “Turkish soldiers will go into northern Iraq.”
On Saturday, a senior Iraqi Kurdish leader said that any unilateral Turkish incursion would be met with force.
Kurd vows to fight
“Our policy is clear,” said Hosher Zebari, the ambassador at large for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two Kurdish factions that have ruled northern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war. “There will be resistance.”
By early Saturday, Turkish media were reporting that 1,000 to 1,500 soldiers had crossed the border.
The Turkish government immediately denied this, and so did Iraqi Kurdish commanders on the other side of the border. But Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. invasion force, said at his briefing Saturday that small numbers of Turkish troops had crossed into Iraq.
Franks seemed to shrug off the importance of any Turkish troop movement.
“Actually, I believe that the Turkish formations that we see in northern Iraq are very light formations. We see them move in and out of Turkey,” he said.
Franks declined to be drawn into a discussion about the dispute between the U.S. and Turkey, joking in military fashion that such matters were “above my pay grade.”
He also downplayed the impact of the dispute on operational plans in northern Iraq.
“I have one of my general officers in Turkey working with the Turks and have had him there for some time. So we are able to maintain coordination and, I believe, the necessary cooperation with the Turkish government up to this point,” he said.
Turkey has had a significant military presence in northern Iraq for about a decade, the result of its long war against the Kurdistan Workers Party, the violent Kurdish separatist group that has on occasion taken refuge in the desolate mountains just across the border.
“The number of Turkish troops in northern Iraq has been about 5,000 for many years, but recently it has been upgraded to roughly 20,000,” said Mustafa Aydin, a military affairs expert at Ankara University.
“What difference would another 1,000 make? It wouldn’t reflect a big change,” Aydin said.
“I don’t believe Turkey will send large-scale armed forces into Iraq without getting prior agreement from the U.S.,” he added. “It would be foolish. It is a difficult situation already, and it would worsen relations.”
On Saturday, small convoys of trucks carrying troops were observed moving toward border areas in southeastern Turkey.
There also were reports of much larger formations of troops and equipment massing on the borders, but military checkpoints prevented reporters from getting close enough to have a look.
Ankara’s supposed rationale
The Turkish government says it wants troops in northern Iraq to prevent a recurrence of the refugee crisis that followed the 1991 gulf war when tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds flooded across the border after their uprising against Saddam Hussein was crushed by the Republican Guard.
Turkey also says it wants to protect the rights of ethnic Turkmens living in the Kurdish areas of Iraq.
But analysts say Turkey’s real concern is its restive Kurdish population. An independent Kurdish state on its borders would be cause for alarm in Ankara, and if Iraqi Kurds were able to secure control of the oil fields around Kirkuk and Mosul, it might make an independent Kurdistan economically viable.
Similarly, Kurds are suspicious of the Turks’ motives.
“Nobody comes to give humanitarian assistance with artillery and tanks,” said one angry Kurdish official. “If the Turks come over, it will be a nightmare for the Americans.
“The Americans will be fighting Saddam Hussein but also have a destabilizing war in Kurdistan at their backs.”
With that possibility in mind, the U.S. has given the Turks repeated assurances that it will not allow the Kurds to make such moves toward independence, but given the sudden souring of U.S.-Turkish relations over the past week, neither side is listening to the other.
`Trust already lost’
“The trust is already lost. Turks don’t trust American intentions, and the Americans don’t trust the Turks,” said Ankara University’s Aydin.
Meanwhile, near the Iranian border in northeastern Iraq, U.S. cruise missiles slammed into the remote enclave controlled by the Ansar al-Islami fundamentalist militia early Saturday morning, blowing up caves, hilltop bunkers and an ammunition depot that exploded in a huge fireball, Kurdish sources said.
The guerrilla group, which the Bush administration has linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terror network, reportedly suffered scores of casualties in the attack. One of the villages hit was Khormal, which was once singled out by Secretary of State Colin Powell as the site of a terrorist chemical poisons factory.
Al-Jazeera television, one of the few media outlets with access to the area, showed footage of dozens of dead Ansar guerrillas being rolled into blankets.
Intelligence sources put the group’s total troop strength between 800 and 900 fighters.
