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| The Grand Turk |
| Turkey Hits Back at Wikileaks Accusations |
| 2010-11-27 |
| While the world awaits the big document dump from Wikileaks, some of those leaks have already been pre-leaking. One of the most explosive of those has been that the U.S. secretly aided Turkey's longtime foe the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and conversely, that Turkey had aided al Qaeda in Iraq. If true, this would obviously put some serious strain on an already strained relationship. Hurriyet has been doing some good reporting from the Turkish side of this story and finds that, of course, all parties involved are denying that report: “Turkey has never given support to any terrorist organization. Fighting against terror is our priority and we don’t make differentiations between terrorist organizations. Turkey has launched many operations against al-Qaeda,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry official told the Daily News. Asked about the allegations that the U.S. helped the outlawed PKK, the same official said, “Turkey and the U.S. are carrying out an efficient cooperation in the fight against the PKK.” And from the U.S. side: Deborah Guido, spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Ankara, told the Daily News that the U.S. government’s policy “has never been nor will ever be in support of the PKK. Anything that implies otherwise is nonsense.” Recalling that the United States considers the PKK a terrorist organization, Guido said: “Since 2007, our military cooperation with the Turkish government in fighting the PKK has shown results. The U.S. Treasury Department has also named top PKK figures as ‘drug kingpins’ in issuing further sanctions against the PKK.” The story goes on to quote several analysts about what the revelation could mean. Most don't believe that the news is true, and point out that there could be other explanations. For example, the U.S. has worked closely with Iraqi Kurds, who have a difficult relationship, but a relationship nonetheless, with the PKK. And surely some U.S. intelligence agencies have some contact with the PKK, but that is not the same as support. But until the documents themselves leak -- this weekend? -- for everyone to peruse, there's nothing to do but speculate. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #1 Turkey's interests in Iraq are complicated. First of all, they want to protect the Turkoman who are just south of Iraqi Kurdistan. They also have a vested interest in the Turkoman claims to some of the oil around Kirkuk. However, no doubt there are some Turkish radicals who would render support to al-Qaeda. They have also been hobnobbing with Iran for longer than they let on. For its part, the US has probably engaged the PKK with the idea of destabilizing northwestern Iran, even going so far as to providing them a little intelligence as to where and who they could hit to do the most good. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-11-27 12:12 |