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Turks moving up to start positions
Too long and too much speculation in this one, so here's the meat:The Turkish army has announced that it is sending additional military weapons and equipment to its south-eastern border with Iraq. "The level of readiness of our units should be raised... for possible developments on the issue of regional security," the army general staff statement said. "To this end, equipment and material reinforcements will be dispatched to the 2nd Army Command as of today [Wednesday]." Possible developments should occur real soon now. The 2nd Army is based in the south-eastern city of Malatya and is responsible for maintaining order along Turkey's 330-kilometre (200-mile) border with Iraq. They're going to be busy. The Turkish newspaper Zaman published a front-page picture on Thursday of trucks crossing the Turkey-Iraq border at Harbur. It said its photographer had counted 110 trucks on Tuesday. That sounds modest, actually, except that the trucks will return on Wednesday and make another trip Thursday. ... a retired general told the UK's Guardian newspaper that Turkish troops would send troops into Iraq whether or not Turkey joins the invasion, to "protect refugees and prevent the Kurds getting their hands on Mosul and Kirkuk [oilfields]". A few hundred truckloads of men and material would be a good start on this. Several thousand Turkish troops have been stationed in northern Iraq since 1996, but Kurdish groups have warned that any new Turkish forces entering northern Iraq without the specific goal of ousting Saddam Hussein will meet with armed resistance. This is what we don't want, fighting between the Turks and the Kurds. The Kurds on the Turkish side might then rise up. That would be a major distraction for us and might keep us from using Turkey at all. Posted by: Steve White 2003-01-31 |
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