[A-List] Turkish army chief calls for Iraq incursion]

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

Agence France Presse	       April 13, 2007

Turkish army pushes Iraq incursion, calls for truly secular President

Ankara, April 12, 2007 (AFP) - Turkey's army chief called Thursday for a
military incursion into neighbouring northern Iraq to hunt down Turkish Kurd
rebels based there, despite US objections.
	
In a rare press conference at the army headquarters, the first in almost two
years, General Yasar Buyukanit also said Turkey's next president, to be
elected in May, should be committed to secularism "in earnest".
	
Buyukanit's call for a cross-border operation was the latest effort to
ratchet up the pressure on Iraqi Kurds, who run northern Iraq, over the
presence of Turkish Kurd rebels there.
	
"If you ask me whether a cross-border operation is needed, yes it is
needed," said Buyukanit, though he added that it would require parliamentary
authorisation.
	
"If the armed forces are given this mission, they are strong enough to carry
out such operations," he said.
	
Turkey has accused Iraqi Kurds of tolerating, and even backing the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish
self-rule in Turkey's southeast since 1984. The conflict has claimed some
37,000 lives.
	
Ankara says thousands of militants of the PKK enjoy unrestricted movement in
northern Iraq and are able to obtain weapons and explosives there.
	
The group is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the
international community.
	
Wary of turmoil in one of Iraq's sole relatively calm areas, Washington has
warned its NATO ally against a cross-border operation and pledged to curb
the PKK through non-military means.
	
Responding to Buyukanit's comments on Thursday, a US State Department
spokesman urged Turkey to refrain from launching raids in Iraq, although he
agreed the rebels "need to be dealt with."
	
"Certainly that's an option that everybody should work to avoid," spokesman
Sean McCormack said of a military operation.
	
He said Turkey and the leadership of the Kurdish autonomous area of northern
Iraq should pursue US-brokered negotiations.
	
Buyukanit said the Iraqi Kurdish region, led by Massud Barzani, had become a
"protection zone" for the PKK and could be slipping out of Baghdad's
control.
	
Turkey on Monday handed a stern diplomatic note to Iraq, demanding "urgent"
measures against the rebels.
	
Buyukanit also struck a political note in long-anticipated comments on the
army's position on who should be Turkey's next president.
	
"We want to underline our hope that parliament will elect a president who
adheres in earnest, and not just in words, to the basic principles of the
republic and the ideal of a secular, democratic state," he said.
	
He declined to answer further questions on the elections, in which Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Islamist, is widely expected to run.
	
The military, the self-appointed guardians of Turkey's secular system, is
mistrustful of Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP).
	
The AKP is the offshoot of a now-banned Islamist party which the army forced
from power in 1997.
	
Even though Erdogan has disowned his past and now describes himself as a
"conservative democrat," the secularist elite suspects he still has Islamist
ambitions.
	
The president is elected for a seven-year term by parliament, where the AKP
holds a two-thirds majority that will allow it to easily elect the candidate
of its choice.
	
The AKP says it will announce its candidate after parliament begins to
collect candidacy applications on April 16.
	
Erdogan's purported intention to run for the presidency has raised tensions
in Ankara amid harsh objections by secularists that the AKP wants to seize
the "last stronghold" of secularism.
	
Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch secularist, has often
clashed with the government.
	
He blocked the appointment of officials he saw as AKP's Islamist cronies and
returned to parliament laws he considered breached the country's
constitutionally protected commitment to secularism.

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