We're not talking about your alley. We're talking about northern Iraq, the mountains of northern Iraq, where the rebel group PKK has long set up a camp. Others do live in the mountains of Iraq. The media works hard to avoid telling you that. They want to pretend like no one's in that area except the PKK.
Turkey can't stop bombing northern Iraq. They started again last week. The Turkish military was sent in because the PKK had reportedly killed some Turkish soldiers the week before.
And so what?
One week the PKK 'scores' some kills, the next it is the Turkish military. And this has been going on forever and ever.
The PKK is one of many Kurdish groups which supports and fights for a Kurdish homeland. Aaron Hess (International Socialist Review) described them in 2008, "The PKK emerged in 1984 as a major force in response to Turkey's oppression of its Kurdish population. Since the late 1970s, Turkey has waged a relentless war of attrition that has killed tens of thousands of Kurds and driven millions from their homes. The Kurds are the world's largest stateless population -- whose main population concentration straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria -- and have been the victims of imperialist wars and manipulation since the colonial period. While Turkey has granted limited rights to the Kurds in recent years in order to accommodate the European Union, which it seeks to join, even these are now at risk." The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has been a concern to Turkey because they fear that if it ever moves from semi-autonomous to fully independent -- such as if Iraq was to break up into three regions -- then that would encourage the Kurdish population in Turkey. For that reason, Turkey is overly interested in all things Iraq. So much so that they signed an agreement with the US government in 2007 to share intelligence which the Turkish military has been using when launching bomb raids. However, this has not prevented the loss of civilian life in northern Iraq. Back to Aaron Hess, he noted, "The Turkish establishment sees growing Kurdish power in Iraq as one step down the road to a mass separatist movement of Kurds within Turkey itself, fighting to unify a greater Kurdistan. In late October 2007, Turkey's daily newspaper Hurriyet accused the prime minister of the KRG, Massoud Barzani, of turning the 'Kurdish dream' into a 'Turkish nightmare'."
[KRG President Masoud Barzani pictured above with US Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey.]
Because they want to be in the European Union, the Turkish government has offered token 'rewards.' For example, the long outlawed Kurdish language? Turkey's now offering a TV channel in Kurdish. They even let some Kurds run for the Parliament, and some of the winners got seated (and one got tossed into prison).
Reality: The Israeli-Palestinian conflicts is mirrored in the Turkish-Kurd conflict. The Kurds have been denied their rights for years. Now, in an attempt to prove that they are 'a new kind of Turkey,' not the Turkey that committed the Armenian genocide -- not that they will allow anyone to use the term genocide for that genocide, but they are a new kind of Turkey and, European Union take notice, they're letting Kurds have a channel in their own language! It's a regular glasnost!
Reality, the struggle between the PKK and Turkey has been going on for years. Reality, Turkey air bombs northern Iraq. Reality, any Turkish troops being killed are on Turkish soil. Reality, Turkey's never learned to protect their border.
Instead of bombing Iraq, instead of bombing the Kurdish region in another country, they need to get off their fat asses and protect their borders. That's a bit like leaving your front door unlocked while you're off on vacation and then being shocked when you return home and your home's been cleaned out.
Iraqis are put at risk of being wounded or killed by this non-stop air bombing and it's not safe or helpful for children to grow up forever hearing these bombs falling in their own country. Turkish war planes need to patrol the Turkish border if they're going to patrol anywhere. And the message needs to be made clear to Turkey that the bombings of northern Iraq are harming the region and the population so they need to stop.