Turkey approved military action against Kurdish separatists

[Wezil]

Put Zombie Saddam back in charge.

[Arrian]

edit: crosspost. Damnit, Wezil!

Seriously. There are no more troops to be had. If there were, they'd have been involved in the Surge, or the Surge would be set to last longer.

If we had enough troops to control the entire country, Kurdish areas included, this conversation would be a lot different. But we do not.

-Arrian

[Dinner]

The reason the US doesn't want to take part in any assualt on the PKK is because it doesn't want to offend the Kurds. Kurdistan is the only part of Iraq which isn't in the ****ter and where the people are actually pro-US. Any US action against a Kurdish group will piss off a lot of Kurds especially if the US action is seen as helping the hated Turks. Thus the US has ignored the problem hoping it goes away while the Turkish public has become absolutely outraged by the endless stream of Kurdish Terrorist attacks inside Turkish Kurdistan.

[Arrian]

Sure. But the lack of enough troops plays a big part too. If we had a spare division lying around, it might be different (I very much doubt we'd "assault" the PPK, but patroling the border might be an option in this alternative universe).

-Arrian

[Patroklos]

but had almost nothing to do with the authorization to use military force.

I didn't say this, what I said is it makes them less likely to want to listen to us on anything, including convincing them to back down from this.

And as Z pointed out, the Turks themselves don't have the distiction between Ottomans and Turks.

Oerdin, your cute. I bet you whine about sitting at the big boys table at Thangsgiving too

We've intentionally handicapped the Iraqi military so we can keep them under control then we whine they're not doing enough.

You seemed far more at home as the hermit of the Civ4 forums.

[Imran Siddiqui]

[q=Patroklos]what I said is it makes them less likely to want to listen to us on anything[/q]

Well, I'm not sure they are very likely to listen to us anyway. The American approval rating in Turkey had been dropping steadily since our invasion of Iraq.

[Arrian]

And I'd say their concerns about the Kurds are serious enough to trump diplomatic pleas from us (even ignoring approval ratings for the moment).

Wasn't there a Turkish poster here who went on about how they'd held back at our request but were running out of patience? It seems to me there is probably some truth to that. They probably *did* restrain themselves somewhat due to US pressure. But if they're getting hit over and over by the PPK, that wasn't going to last forever.

-Arrian

[Riesstiu IV]

I feel especially sorry for the Turds, those who are of mixed Turkish and Kurdish background. I imagine that their rejection by both sides and this conflict will only serve to further isolate the Turds.

[Ramo]

I didn't say this, what I said is it makes them less likely to want to listen to us on anything, including convincing them to back down from this.

I agree. I assumed that you took issue with my post in some way...

Incidentally, what happened to the earlier resolution? I remember a long argument with lotm about this way back when...

[onodera]

Kurds
Turks
So, you hanged Saddam for gassing the "noble freedom fighters" of the Iraqi north (as well as some other stuff), but now you let Turkey do they same to the "brutal separatists" of the Iraqi north? Isn't this this: ?

[Arrian]

That's not quite fair, but it's not worth arguing about.

-Arrian

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
I'm not sure the Turks will actually invoke the Bush Doctrine (ie, attacking states that harbor terrorists), but they want to try to force the US to change its policy or they'll threaten to use more force. Meh, if Iran did this, we'd tell them to screw off.

Originally posted by Arrian
If Iran did this, we'd scream bloody murder and threaten airstrikes.

-Arrian

Iran is not in NATO.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Irrelevant. NATO countries are not required to back each other in wars of aggression.

[DinoDoc]

Except it isn't one. The PKK has been using Kurdistan as a base from which to attack Turkey and we've been turning a blind eye to it.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Irrelevant. NATO countries are not required to back each other in wars of aggression.

They are, however, proscribed from actually bombing each other.