Turkey launches ground operation in Iraq

Associated Press

Turkish troops have launched a ground incursion across the border into Iraq in pursuit of separatist Kurdish rebels, the military said Friday — a move that dramatically escalates Turkey's conflict with the militants.

It's the first confirmed ground operation by the Turkish military into Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and it raised concerns that it could trigger a wider conflict with the U.S.-backed Iraqi Kurds.

The ground operation started after Turkish warplanes and artillery bombed suspected rebel targets on Thursday, the military said on its Web site. The ground incursion was backed by the Air Force, the statement said.

Turkey has conducted air raids against the PKK guerrillas in northern Iraq since December, with the help of U.S. intelligence, and it has periodically carried out so-called "hot pursuits" in which small units sometimes spend only a few hours inside Iraq.

So the announcement of a cross-border, ground incursion of a type that Turkey carried out before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a major development in the conflict.

"The Turkish Armed Forces, which values Iraq's territorial integrity and its stability, will return as soon as planned goals are achieved," the military said. "The executed operation will prevent the region from being a permanent and safe base for the terrorists and will contribute to Iraq's stability and internal peace."

Private NTV television said 10,000 troops were taking part in the offensive and had penetrated six miles into Iraq.

The Kurdish militants are fighting for autonomy in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, and have carried out attacks on Turkish targets from bases in northern Iraq.

The military said its target was the PKK and that it would take care not to harm civilians "and other local groups that do not act in enmity against the Turkish Armed Forces."

Nihat Ali Ozcan, a terrorism expert with the research center TEPAV, said the operation was launched at this time to hit the group before any infiltration by rebels into Turkey in the spring, the traditional start of the fighting season.

"I think it is aimed to keep the PKK under pressure before the group starts entering Turkey," he said on CNN-Turk television. "I don't think the operation is a large-scale one."

Iraqi border forces officer Col. Hussein Tamer said Turkish shelling on Thursday hit several Kurdish villages in the Sedafan area, some 20 miles from the border.

Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for Iraqi Kurdish security forces, said sporadic bombing was taking place in the border areas, but no casualties were reported.

Fouad Hussein, a spokesman for the semiautonomous Kurdish government, said the Kurdish Peshmerga forces had been put on alert.

He said Iraqi Kurdish forces also had tightened security around bases housing Turkish military monitors operating in northern Iraq with permission from local authorities under a 1996 agreement.

"The government of Kurdistan ordered the Peshmerga forces to be on alert in fear of any Turkish incursion on Iraqi territory," he said, claiming that Turkish military monitors had tried to leave their bases in violation of the terms of the 1996 agreement.

"Those troops tried to move out but the Peshmerga forces forced them to return to their camps within half an hour," he said.

In Ankara on Thursday, Turkey's civilian and military leaders issued a statement after a meeting on national security, saying cross-border attacks by the military would continue as long they were "deemed necessary."