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| Intelligence-Sharing Deal Eases U.S.-Turk Tensions By UMIT ENGINSOY And BURAK EGE BEKDIL Washington and Ankara — A U.S. agreement to share intelligence that will help Turkey attack separatist Kurdish militants has helped defuse tensions over the possibility of a large-scale Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was “happy” after a Nov. 5 meeting with President George W. Bush at the White House, when the two men discussed measures to prevent the northern Iraq-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) from attacking targets inside Turkey. The meeting came after Turkey threatened to send troops into Iraq to fight PKK militants. The United States, which recognizes the PKK as a terrorist entity, says Turkey has a right to defend itself against terrorists, but it staunchly opposes an incursion, fearing that it would further destabilize the war-torn country. Bush promised to hand over more information. “Good, sound intelligence delivered on a real-time basis using modern technology will make it much easier to deal effectively with people who are using murder as a weapon to achieve political objectives,” he said. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the U.S.-Turkish talks included “intelligence information that we can give to the Turks as they carry out limited and targeted exercises against the PKK.” One Istanbul-based political analyst said Ankara hadn’t been eager for an incursion. “Despite heavy public pressure to do something visible against the PKK, both the Turkish government and the military are actually quite reluctant for a large-scale incursion because of political repercussions and at a time when a harsh winter is coming to the mountains of northern Iraq, so this agreement came as a breathing space for the Americans, the Iraqis and the Turks,” Istanbul analyst Reha Tartici said. The PKK killed more than 35 Turkish soldiers and 15 civilians in several attacks in October, prompting Turkey’s parliament to authorize the government to order military action inside Iraq if deemed necessary. Ankara’s earlier calls for Washington and Baghdad to put an end to the PKK’s presence in northern Iraq have brought no concrete results. Erdogan said after talks with Bush that “a process for anti-PKK operations kicked off.” But he added that Turkey would act “at the necessary time, when the conditions are ripe,” hinting that no major action was imminent. The two leaders created a military liaison, under which Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army Gen. Ergin Saygun, deputy chief of the Turkish General Staff; and Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, would coordinate work against the PKK. The U.S. already has been providing the Turks with some information, but officials from both sides said this time the focus would be on actionable electronic intelligence — collected by satellites, spy planes and UAVs — which would enable the Turkish military to strike specific targets. “The kind of information we had been receiving from the Americans under earlier arrangements were mostly old and not usable for operational purposes,” one Turkish military official said. “We now will see how the new arrangement works.” Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said before the Bush-Erdogan meeting that intelligence-sharing with Ankara was conducted by the U.S. European Command, responsible for an area including Turkey. But Iraq falls under the re- sponsibility of the U.S. Central Command. Washington also has been urging Iraqi Kurds in control of northern Iraq to rein in the PKK, State Department officials said. The PKK on Nov. 3 released eight Turkish soldiers it had abducted two weeks earlier. The United States also is pressuring Iraqi Kurds to force the PKK to stop attacks on Turkish targets. “The coming winter will be a key factor, because it will limit both the Turkish military’s operations and the PKK’s terrorist activities in Turkey’s southeast areas bordering Iraq,” Tartici said. “So it is not clear if this new intelligence-sharing scheme could lead to Turkish Army action in the short term.” He warned that while the la-*test*-('") agreement defused U.S.-Turkish tensions, “the PKK problem remains there and has not been resolved. This is just a temporary relief.” å E-mail: uenginsoy@defensenews.com, bbekdil@defensenews.com. |
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