Turkish Troops Enter Iraq
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Steven Taylor | Wednesday, June 6, 2007 |
Via the AP/CNN: Sources: Thousands of Turkish troops enter Iraq
Several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who operate from bases there, Turkish security officials said.Two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the raid was limited in scope and that it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks.
“It is not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands,” one of the officials told The Associated Press by telephone. The official is based in southeast Turkey, where the military has been battling separatist Kurdish rebels since they took up arms in 1984.
I suppose it depends on the definition of “major offensive”–”thousands” sounds pretty major, although granted not as major as “tens of thousands.”
ABC News sent out an e-mail alert on this as well, but has no link up at the moment.
This could be quite serious and certainly qualifies as “developing.”
About the Author: Steven is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Troy University in Alabama. He is the author of the book Voting Amid Violence: Electoral Democracy in Colombia, forthcoming from University of New England Press and the contributing editor on Colombia to the Library of Congress’s Handbook of Latin American Studies. He has his PhD from the University of Texas in Austin and a BA from the University of California at Irvine.
He does most of his blogging at PoliBlog, which he started in February 2003.
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No good can come of this. Of course, the Turks are playing it down, both in the CNN article and here:
Two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, characterized the action as a "hot pursuit" raid that was limited in scope.
but still - a 'hot pursuit' scenario involving 'thousands' of troops?
Cross-border raids and bombardment of camps has been going on for months, maybe years, both from the Turkish and from the Iranian sides. Until it disappeared KurdMedia was reporting this stuff regularly.
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