Turkey troops mass at Iraq border, await orders

updated 10:36 p.m. ET Nov. 6, 2007

ANKARA, Turkey - Tens of thousands of Turkish troops were poised Tuesday on the border with Iraq awaiting the order to attack Kurdish fighters, and President Abdullah Gul said the country will do “what it believes to be right” to tame the rebels.

But with winter rapidly approaching in the mountainous region, and pressure from the U.S. to avoid an all-out cross-border incursion, officials and experts said Turkey will likely be looking toward a limited offensive involving raids and aerial assaults.

Several possibilities are currently being discussed, including F-16 strikes on rebel positions, helicopter raids and special forces missions, according to a government official familiar with the planning.

“The area is heavily mined and a big incursion with tens of thousands of troops is out of the question,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

With the Turkish government talking openly for weeks about the likelihood of an attack, the official said intelligence information shows the guerrillas have been evacuating their camps and melting away into cities and other regions.

A high-ranking retired military officer who participated in the planning of previous incursions into northern Iraq in the mid-1990s said he had received the same information.

“They are apparently evacuating camps along the border ahead of a Turkish operation, as usual,” said the officer, also on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

But rebels attacked a Turkish military outpost in southeastern Tunceli province, far from the border area, and killed a sergeant Tuesday evening, the governor’s office said.

U.S. pressure to avoid cross-border strike
The U.S. and Iraq have been pressing Turkey to avoid a major cross-border attack on Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, rebel bases in northern Iraq out of fear such an incursion would bring instability to what has been one of the calmest areas in Iraq.

In northern Iraq, a spokesman for one of the two parties that governs the semiautonomous region urged Turkey to refrain from any attack, but suggested scaled-down raids would not be as destabilizing.

“We reject any kind of Turkish military strike, whether limited or not,” Azad Jindyany, spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, told The Associated Press in Sulaimaniyah. “A limited one would cause a limited problem, but an unlimited strike would destroy the whole situation.”

The former military officer said Turkey was planning for airstrikes from planes and helicopter gunships, as well as special forces commando raids.

But scaled-down assaults wouldn’t necessarily rule out the use of large numbers of troops, he said.

“A few thousand troops could still penetrate the Iraqi border to block escape routes of the rebels during a pinpoint raid,” he said.

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