TURKEY STEPS BACK FROM IRAQ INVASION AFTER POLL

Turkey steps back from Iraq invasion after poll

Independent
By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul
Published: 24 July 2007

As Turkey's government savoured an overwhelming electoral victory yesterday, regional analysts agreed that the immediate impetus for an invasion of northern Iraq had receded.
Sunday's clear mandate for the Islamic-rooted AKP of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been received as a snub to his secularist and nationalist opponents, who put the fight against Kurdish separatist guerrillas across the border at the centre of their failed campaign.
Orhan Miroglu, one of the Kurdish politicians elected to parliament, said the veiled threat of military intervention and a massive military build-up in Turkey's south-east had failed to attract votes.
"Sunday's results are a victory for common sense and civilian democracy over a politics of nationalism and foreign intervention," he said in a telephone interview from the southern port city of Mersin.
With more than 100,000 troops on the border, Turkey's military has been talking about the strategic value of Iraqi operations for months. But it needs parliamentary permission to cross into Iraq. Mr Miroglu, one of 24 deputies to be elected from Turkey's Kurdish nationalist party, says he will oppose an invasion. "We've had enough war," he says.
On the Iraqi side of the border, Murat Karayilan, the military commander of the Kurdish separatist group the PKK, which has been at war with the Turkish state since 1984, is still expecting a fight. "The date of the Turkish offensive has drawn near," he told the Associated Press. "We are ready to defend ourselves." Despite repeated assurances that it will do what is necessary to combat the PKK, the signs are that the victorious Justice and Development Party (AKP) has little enthusiasm for starting a new war.
One of the most striking aspects of it winning 47 per cent of Turkish votes this weekend was the increased support it gained from the south-eastern heartlands of Kurdish nationalism. At least 100 AKP deputies are of Kurdish origin. With unemployment in some Turkish Kurdish towns higher than 50 per cent, they know that war in Iraq is the last thing their constituents want. For a start, much of Turkey's $2.7bn (£1.3bn) trade with Iraqi Kurdistan is in the hands of Turkish Kurds.
A security expert at the Ankara-based International Strategic Research Organisation, Ihsan Bal, was unwilling to rule out the likelihood of small cross-border raids by highly-trained anti-terrorist groups.
Anything bigger would be a sign of government weakness, and the AKP has just been given an overwhelming public mandate. "Soft power is in the ascendant," he said.
How Turkish analysts interpret "soft power" depends on their political allegiances. Umit Ozdag, the author of an unsuccessful attempt last year to take over the leadership of Turkey's newly elected right-wing nationalist party, believes that Turkey should simply impose sanctions on Iraqi Kurds.
Under pressure from the secular establishment, AKP has until now avoided talking directly to the Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani and the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. Faruk Logoglu, whose term as Turkey's ambassador to Washington ended last year, said: "These are the first people we should be talking to about the PKK. I hope the government, now it has its massive new mandate, will have the courage to enter into dialogue with them."