Blame it all on DEBKAfile.
Today the rumor-intelligence website ran with a story alleging that the Turkish military buildup in southeastern Turkey boiled over into a 50,000-troop invasion of northern Iraq — designed not only to crush the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists across the Turkish-Iraqi border but to send the distinct message that Kurdish independence is a pipe dream. DEBKA’s story promised that “this is only the first wave of Turkish invaders, with more to come.” From there, the AP and Reuters went to their sources in Ankara, Erbil (the capitol of Iraqi Kurdistan) and Baghdad, and ran with pieces suggesting that Turkish troops were engaged in what one anonymous Turkish official called “hot pursuit,” but not an actual invasion. All of a sudden, it looked like the sum of all fears — a full-fledged Turkish intervention in Iraq due to Kurdish ambitions — was manifesting.
It wasn’t. A White House official deferred comment to the State Department, which began this morning to put out the line that there was no indication of a cross-border operation by the Turks. A State Department spokeswoman, Janelle Hironimus, explained to Muckraker that the department was unaware of “any Turkish incursion into Iraqi territory,” calling the story “false.” (Efforts to contact Defense Department officials on the question were unsuccessful.) Nevertheless, Hironimus added that “Turkish forces are active in southeastern Turkey” due to a military build-up described as “part of the war on terrorism,” referring to the PKK, which the State Department classifiesas a terrorist group.
For the Kurds, that military build-up is “worrisome” but not anxiety-inducing, according to Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and longtime confidante of the Kurdish political leadership. Galbraith spent the last week in Iraqi Kurdistan, meeting with top Kurdish officials — including Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani — and found them “not blase about it, but there was not enormous anxiety either.” Reached in Copenhagen right after he left Kurdistan, Galbraith told Muckraker that the Kurds thought it was “highly possible that the Turks might do something in the highly mountainous areas” that house “supposed PKK camps” but that there was “no expectation an invasion was imminent.”
That’s not to say that the threat of a Turkish invasion is gone. While such a move would represent an extreme step — especially after Defense Secretary Bob Gates pointedly warned the Turks against “unilateral” moves into Iraq — the Turks’ military buildup along their southeastern frontier provides them with a none-too-subtle reminder to the Kurds of their vast military capabilities. Little of enduring significance occurred along the Kurdish-Iraqi border today, but as long as the Turks suffer attacks from the PKK and the Kurds desire their independence, the potential for conflict remains.
So what was the actual incident that sparked today’s brief-but-intense international controversy? According to Reuters, this:
Jabar Yawir, deputy minister for Peshmerga Affairs in Kurdistan, said: “This afternoon 10 Turkish helicopters landed in a village in Mazouri, which is … 3 km (2 miles) inside the Iraqi border. They landed with around 150 Turkish special forces.”
“After two hours they left and there were no confrontations with the PKK,” he told Reuters. He said the village was in a PKK-controlled area.
