Turkey Readying For New Offensive?

By Cernig

While all eyes have been on the faction fighting between Sadr's movement and the ISCI's proxy Iraqi security forces, Turkey has continued with artillery and air strikes on Kurdish separatist positions in Northern Iraq.

Now the PKK terrorist group targeted by those Turkish strikes says it is seeing a new build-up of troops across the border.

"We have information that new (Turkish) troops are being gathered along the border," said Ahmed Danis, spokesman for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"We expect Turkish troops to launch a new incursion into northern Iraq. The PKK is ready to confront any Turkish aggression."

Most analysts have been expecting a new Turkish incursion this Spring, after the thaw, and had described February's one-week ground offensive into Iraq as a "reconnaissance in force" for what's likely to be an even bigger operation this time.

The dangers are the same as in February - that indiscriminate Turkish force draws the main Kurdish authority and its peshmerga into the conflict and that the Kurdish authorities then demand that the Iraqi central government and the US in its role as UN-mandated protector get involved. From there, there are no good options for U.S. forces as Turkey is a key NATO ally. Whether the U.S. fence-sits or picks a side, it loses.

That no-win situation, however, is mostly a construct of Bush administration policy - it happily looked the other way on Kurdish tacit aid to the PKK for four years, in return for a relatively stable Kurdish North being the only bright spot in Iraq for all that time. During all that time, analysts outside the administration warned that it was a matter of "when, not if" Turkey would cross the border and that inaction would only get America caught in the middle.