Q&A: why might Turkey attack Iraq?
Updated on 22 October 2007
Why is the Turkish government under domestic pressure to pursue the PKK into northern Iraq?
What's happened?
The Turkish military shelled the Iraq border region early on Sunday, but there were no casualties. A Kurdish military official told Reuters: "This morning at 6am (0300 GMT) they shelled about 11 areas along the borders. There were no casualties."
The deputy governor of the Kurdish province of Dahuk, Gorkeis Sulaiman, said the Turkish shelling targeted areas close to the towns of Zakhu and Amadiya, destroying a bridge linking two villages near Amadiya.
One Zakhu resident in his fifties said: "Today at dawn the Turkish artillery shelling started in villages around Zakhu. We were sleeping and we all jumped from our beds. We thought that war had started ... My children started screaming."
Why is this shelling significant?
Turkish shelling of the border area is not unusual, but tension has been growing since Wednesday when Turkey's parliament authorised troops to conduct cross-border raids into northern Iraq to hunt Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) rebels using the region as a base.
Some 3,000 PKK fighters are based in northern Iraq and launch attacks on security and civilian targets in Turkey. A few thousand PKK rebels are also believed to be inside Turkey.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called crisis talks that may authorise a cross-border military offensive into northern Iraq after Kurdish rebels killed 17 Turkish soldiers in an ambush on Sunday near the Iraqi border.
Around 40 Turkish soldiers have been killed in fighting in the past month alone. Erdogan's government is under heavy domestic pressure to pursue the PKK into northern Iraq.
What is the history of Turkey and the PKK?
The Kurds are a non-Arab, mainly Sunni Muslim people, speaking a language related to Persian and living in a mountainous area straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
For most of their history they have been subjugated. In modern times Iran, Iraq and Turkey have resisted an independent Kurdish state and the Western powers have seen no reason to help establish one.
Kurdish nationalism stirred in the 1890s when the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which imposed a settlement and colonial carve-up of Turkey after World War One, promised them independence.
But three years later Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk tore up the treaty. Kurdish revolts in the 1920s and 1930s were put down by Turkish forces. The Kurds were not recognised as a separate people or allowed to speak their language in public.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), named in 1978, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast.
Since then more than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
Fighting dwindled after PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in 1999, leading to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of rebel fighters from Turkey.
Ocalan, whose death sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in October 2002 after Turkey abolished the death penalty, put new emphasis on seeking Kurdish rights through political rather than armed struggle.
What do Kurdish leaders say?
The leader of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region Masoud Barzani said dialogue was the best option to solve the PKK problem and the Kurds in Iraq would not take sides in any battle.
But he added Kurdistan would defend itself if Turkish forces launched an incursion and attacked Kurdish targets.
"We are not going to be caught up in the PKK and Turkish war, but if Kurdistan region is targeted, then we are going to defend our citizens," Barzani told reporters after meeting Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd.
Talabani said the Turkish shelling was an "unjustified escalation" adding that Iraqis do not want war. He said Iraq will discuss the tension with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan when he arrives in Baghdad this week.
Turkey's decision to hunt down PKK rebels in northern Iraq has alarmed Washington as it fears any incursion would bring chaos to the region, threaten oil supplies and hurt US efforts to quell violence elsewhere in Iraq.
What is Iraq's position?
Iraq has called repeatedly for Turkey to avoid any military incursion and stressed further dialogue is the way to resolve the problem of Kurdish separatists based in Iraq.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said last week he wanted members of the PKK fighting for a Kurdish homeland to leave northern Iraq as soon as possible.
The Kurds fared little better in northern Iraq where, under a British mandate, revolts were put down in 1919, 1923 and 1932. Under leader Mustafa Barzani, the Iraqi Kurds waged an intermittent struggle against Baghdad after World War Two.
Kurdish northern Iraq won autonomy from Saddam Hussein with US help in 1991, and has benefited from more than a decade of economic development.
There has been some violence but it has not approached the levels seen in Baghdad. Saddam's fall deepened the desire for autonomy and in September 2006 the president of Iraq's Kurdistan ordered the Kurdish flag to be flown on government buildings instead of the Iraqi national flag.
