Kurds attack Turkish troops, break 5-year truce

Uh oh, this isn't good:

Kurdish rebels attack Turkish troops, shattering truce

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Kurdish guerrillas attacked Turkish troops in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday, a day after the rebels announced an end to a five-year unilateral truce, the Turkish news agency Anatolia reported.

The attack in the province of Tunceli shattered a fragile peace that had largely held despite sporadic clashes since 1999. The rebels opened fire on Turkish troops, wounding a noncommissioned officer near the town of Ovacik, and clashes were still under way, Anatolia said.
...
The rebel group said Tuesday it was ending the truce and warned foreigners and investors to avoid Turkey, saying that the government has failed to respond to their truce.
...
Turkish authorities have recently complained that the United States failed to act against the Kurdish rebels holed up in mountain bases in northern Iraq despite promises.

Sounds to me like the Kurds either see that there's a power vacuum, or they've gotten fresh info from somebody. I doubt we've got the forces on the ground to act against the Kurds in the north and I bet they know that too. If the Kurds still believe we destroyed Saddam to let them form an independent Kurdistan, this is just going to get worse.

•  Oh shit

  Just when I thought things over there couldn't get any worse.

  Read MyDD and The Swing State Project

  by Chris Bowers on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 02:22:41 PM PDT

  •  Oh $%^*&*#$!!!

    #$%&%$!!!!   $&!$#@%&& Bush!!!! What the #@^#$$##@ do we $#%$^ do now?!!!

    OH $#@^@#%#@%@#$%@@#$%%&^&@$!$(#$#!$%!@#$#(%#$((%!#@$%)($#)(%^(@#$)^@^#$)((@#)#$)% ^(@#$*(#)#$@)%#)$@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Read MyDD and The Swing State Project

    by Chris Bowers on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 03:27:13 PM PDT

  •  What are you going to say if China invaded Taiwan?

    Er.... "Hey, I didn't know Moses was a Chinese general!"

    Let's keep our panic material in touch with reality, unlike the ReThugs.

    by sagesource on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 04:42:50 PM PDT

•  Yet

  another predictable example of why invading Iraq was a bad idea.  It'll be interesting to see how far this goes...

  by Jsea on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 02:26:50 PM PDT

•  the kurds

  haven't been getting no respect in this new gov-- IIRC, a Kurd is Foreign minister, but not much else.  and all of this talk about Sunni and Shi'ite insurgents/rebels/patriots/terrorists (depending who you read) means no talk about the Kurds.  

  by skiddie on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 02:27:04 PM PDT

•  Let's see what happens

  The last time Turkey ran an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurds (1992-94, I think) the first Bush and Clinton administrations were silent, but continued to supply weapons to Turkey.

  I don't think there is any peaceful (or just) solution other than the creation of an independent Kurdistan.

  by tyronen on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 02:31:23 PM PDT

  •  Prescient

    Cremation is pretty much what happened before and may well happen again.

    The thing this time is that there is a de factor independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, and they won't give that up without a fight.

    by tyronen on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 02:56:02 PM PDT

•  I'm actually

  surprised this didn't happen sooner.  If you'll recalls, during the first night of the Iraq War, their were reports of Turkish troops entering the North of the country just in case the Kurds decided to try something.  These two have been itching for a fight for a while.

  We were safer with Saddam in power.  Anyone who was involved in aiding the start of this war should be damned ashamed.  The region has been thoroughly destabilized, and will remain so for 20 to 100 years.  The amount of bloodshed we will see will be inconceivable.  You haven't even begun to see how nasty it will get.  By the end of the year, we'll be losing 200 troops a week.

  by Chik Patty on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 02:33:48 PM PDT

•  So the Kurds are "threats ..."

  ... to their neighbors and to regional stability"  Hmmm.  

  I caught a few minutes of an overnight replay of Hitchens, beaten down, but still blabbing about how great it was to invade iraq, and how peaceful the Kurds are.  He even had a flag of Kurdistian on his lepel.  Back in mid-march, before all hell broke loose, he was calling for an invasion of Syria, in his Slate column, on behalf of the Kurds in that region.

  Too bad he hasn't called for the liberation of Iraqi Wedding Parties, and Torture.

  by Al Rodgers on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 02:46:08 PM PDT

•  This is bad

  but not necessarily in the way that the comments made here seem to assume. The Kurds who have attacked are not (as best I can tell from the article) the Iraqi Kurds, but Turkish Kurds -- the ex-PKK. The PKK was never closely aligned with the Iraqi Kurds, and has at times been involved in open hostitilies with them. However, the reason Turkey is so opposed to any independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq (or elsewhere) is because they are worried that it might give their own Kurdish population ideas, and for this reason the reappearance of the civil war in eastern Turkey would be bad. More importantly, it would of course be awful for the population of Turkey's Kurdish areas, who suffered a lot during the civil war.

  by hilzoy on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 03:04:18 PM PDT

  •  Well there was the big bomb

    just yesterday (was it? or the day before?) set outside the offices of Talabani's PUK.... and we don't know, necessarily, who set it... then this.

    by Marisacat on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 03:49:17 PM PDT